Honorable Exit
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Hale, Richard W. “A CIA Officer in Saigon.” Vietnam Magazine, June 2003.
Kane, Julie. “Secret Evacuation of the VNN Fleet.” Vietnam Magazine, April 1995.
Leepson, Marc. “Escape to the Sea.” VVA Veteran, April/May 2000.
Maloney, Kevin. “Sgt. Kevin Maloney’s Fall of Saigon.” Saigon Marines Association Page. fallofsaigon.org.
McArthur, George. “It Became Sinful: A Reporter’s Story.” Vietnam Magazine, April 1995.
Pilger, John. “The Fall of Saigon 1975: An Eyewitness Report.” www.lewrockwell.com.
Quinn, Ken. “Integrity and Openness: Requirements for an Effective Foreign Service.” Foreign Service Journal, Sept. 2014.
———. “From Whitehouse to the White House.” Foreign Service Journal, April 2015.
Shaplen, Robert. “Letter from Saigon.” New Yorker, Jan. 6, 1975.
———. “Letter from Saigon.” New Yorker, April 21, 1975.
Shawcross, William. “Shrugging Off Genocide.” Times (London), Dec. 16, 1994.
Smith, Homer D. “The Final Forty-Five Days in Vietnam.” Vietnam Magazine, April 1995.
Summers, Harry G., Jr. “The Bitter End.” Vietnam Magazine, April 1995.
ARCHIVES, MANUSCRIPTS, ORAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS, PAPERS, THESES
Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection.
Butler, David. Papers of David Butler. Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College.
Engelmann, Larry D. “Pushing On.” Unpublished oral history interviews conducted by Engelmann. lde421.blogspot.com.
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor, Mich. Archives.
Herrington, Stuart A. “The Third Indochina War, 1973–1975: A Personal Perspective.” Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., Air University, May 1980.
Texas Tech University. The Vietnam Center and Archive.
U.S. Army Military History Institute. “Last Days in Vietnam” Oral History Project, 1982. Oral Histories of Alan Carter, Wolfgang J. Lehmann, and Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr.
OFFICIAL U.S. GOVERNMENT RECORDS AND DOCUMENTS
Ahern, Thomas L., Jr. CIA and the Generals: Covert Support to Military Government in South Vietnam. Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 2008.
Hanyok, Robert J. “Spartans in Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945–1975.” Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 2002.
Military Sealift Command. “Activities of MSCOV During the Vietnam Evacuation.” Memorandum from Acting Chief, MSC Office Saigon Residual (Bill Ryder), to Commander, Military Sealift Command, Far East, June 27, 1975. (Copy provided to the author by Bill Ryder.)
National Security Agency. Cryptology Magazine. “Special Issue—Vietnam,” Oct. 1975.
U.S. Defense Attaché Office, Saigon, Republic of Vietnam. End of Tour Report. Major General Homer Smith wrote three versions of his report in 1975, marked I, II, and III.
U.S. Delegation—Four-Party Joint Military Team. History: 31 March 1973–30 April 1975.
U.S. Department of State: Office of the Historian. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume X, Vietnam, January 1973–July 1975.
U.S. Marine Corps, History and Museums Division. Frequent Wind.
CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS
Emergency Military Assistance and Economic and Humanitarian Aid to South Vietnam. Hearings before the Senate Appropriations Committee. April 15, 16, 1975.
Foreign Assistance Authorization. Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Testimony of Ambassador Graham Martin, July 25, 1974.
Indochina Evacuation and Refugee Problems. Hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Refugees and Escapees. Part 1: Operation Babylift and Humanitarian Needs. April 8, 1975. Part 2: The Evacuation. April 15, 25, 30, 1975.
Report on the Situation in the Republic of Vietnam. Hearings before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs. Testimony of Ambassador Graham Martin, July 31, 1974.
The Vietnam-Cambodia Emergency, 1975. Hearings before the House Committee on International Relations. Part I: Vietnam Evacuation and Humanitarian Assistance. April 9–18, 1975. Part II: The Vietnam-Cambodia Emergency, 1975. Hearings of March 6–13, 1975. Hearing of April 14, 1975. Part III: Vietnam Evacuation: Testimony of Ambassador Graham A. Martin. Hearing of Jan. 27, 1976.
Illustration Credits
1Courtesy of Melissa Urreiztieta
2Courtesy of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
3Courtesy of Bill Bell
4Courtesy of Walter Martindale
5Courtesy of Tom Glenn
6Courtesy of James Parker
7Courtesy of Theresa Tull
8Courtesy of Marius Burke
9Courtesy of Ken Moorefield
10Courtesy of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
11Courtesy of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
12Courtesy of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
13Courtesy of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
14Matt Franjola (courtesy of the Kennerly Archive)
15Courtesy of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
16Photo by Jean-Claude FRANCOLON / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
17Courtesy of Bill Bell
18Courtesy of Ross Meador
19Courtesy of Allan Topping
20Courtesy of Le Quang Luong, ARVN Airborne
21Courtesy of the author
22Courtesy of Brian Ellis
23Courtesy of Brian Ellis
24Courtesy of Brian Ellis
25Courtesy of John Madison
26Courtesy of John Madison
27Courtesy of John Madison
28Courtesy of John Madison
29Courtesy of John Madison
30Courtesy of Cary Kassebaum
31Courtesy of Cary Kassebaum
32Photo by nik wheeler / Corbis via Getty Images
33Department of Defense
34Photo by nik wheeler / Corbis via Getty Images
35Courtesy of John Madison
36Photo by nik wheeler / Corbis via Getty Images
37Courtesy of John Madison
38Courtesy of John Madison
39© Bettmann
40Courtesy of Theresa Tull
O. B. Harnage was the man in the white shirt leaning down to pull a passenger aboard a helicopter perched on a Saigon roof in Hugh Van Es’s iconic photograph. Here he is standing in front of the U.S. embassy Air Operations headquarters at Tan Son Nhut.
President Gerald R. Ford meets with (from left to right) Graham Martin, ambassador to Vietnam, army chief of staff General Frederick Weyand, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office on March 25, 1975. During this meeting Martin predicted that South Vietnam’s armed forces would give the Communists “a helluva scrap.”
U.S. POWs held in Hanoi by the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (Vietcong) being released during the implementation of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords. Bill Bell (far right) acted as a translator at the release ceremony.
Walter Martindale on board the USS Blue Ridge on May 1, 1975. Martindale led his Vietnamese friends and staff to safety in a hastily assembled convoy after the Communists overran Quang Duc province.
Tom Glenn in Saigon in 1974. Glenn headed the National Security Agency detachment in South Vietnam. The U.S. embassy in Saigon discounted and dismissed his warnings that the Communists would attack Saigon in April 1975.
James Parker in Vi Thanh. When he arrived in the besieged provincial capital in 1974, the CIA agent he was replacin
g told him, “It’s all over. The country’s lost.”
Da Nang deputy consul general Theresa Tull with Lieutenant General Ngo Quang Truong, Military Region I corps commander, at the U.S. Consulate General’s July 4, 1974, reception in Da Nang. Before leaving Da Nang for good in late March 1975, Tull agreed to evacuate three of Truong’s children and raise them as her own in the United States.
Air America pilot Marius Burke several days before the fall of Da Nang. On April 30, he spent fourteen hours in the air and was the last Air America pilot to stop flying.
Ken Moorefield (in sunglasses) leading a patrol in South Vietnam during the war. After leaving the U.S. Army, Moorefield ran into Graham Martin’s son in Washington, leading to a dinner with Martin and his surprising offer to Moorefield that he accompany him to Saigon as his special assistant.
Vietnamese fleeing Da Nang crowded onto a ship preparing to dock at Cam Ranh Bay on March 30, 1975. Soon after David Kennerly took this photograph, renegade South Vietnamese marines opened fire on his helicopter.
U.S. consul general Al Francis waves from a tugboat in Cam Ranh Bay shortly after escaping from Communist forces in Da Nang. Francis would later complain to Ken Moorefield that Martin was dismissing his warning that the collapse of South Vietnamese forces that had occurred in Da Nang could be replicated in Saigon.
Refugees riding on the back of a truck between Cam Ranh Bay and Nha Trang on March 30, 1975. David Kennerly took this photograph while driving to Cam Ranh Bay with Walter Martindale. The scenes along the highway reminded them of World War II newsreels of refugees fleeing the Nazis.
A sick Vietnamese child in his mother’s arms at Cam Ranh Bay on March 30, 1975. A week later this photograph and others taken by David Kennerly would be hanging in the White House on orders from President Ford.
David Hume Kennerly aboard a U.S. Army helicopter in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, 1971. Kennerly was White House photographer under Gerald Ford and a member of the last presidential fact-finding mission of the war.
President Gerald R. Ford carries a Vietnamese orphan from the Pan Am jet that brought approximately 325 South Vietnamese orphans to San Francisco International Airport. The flight landed one day after the catastrophic crash of the Babylift flight that killed Bill Bell’s wife and son.
South Vietnamese babies on a chartered Pan Am 747 flying from Saigon to the United States during Operation Babylift.
Bill Bell’s wife, Nova, and his children, Michael and Andrea, in Saigon during March 1975. Nova and Michael died in the April 4, 1975, Babylift crash. Bell accompanied Andrea back to California for medical treatment but then returned to Saigon so he could help evacuate his Vietnamese friends.
Ross Meador with three of the orphans he supervised at the Friends of the Children of Vietnam orphanage.
Al Topping was the Pan Am station manager during Operation Babylift and also evacuated over 300 of his Vietnamese employees by “adopting” them. He is standing in front of the former Pan Am office during a visit to Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in 1990. Note that fifteen years later the Pan Am logo is still above the front door.
Erich von Marbod (in beret) inspecting a South Vietnamese Army forward position. South Vietnamese troops had presented him with a paratrooper uniform and urged him to wear it because men dressed in civilian clothes attracted the attention of Communist snipers. This position was overrun by North Vietnamese forces on April 28, 1975.
An affidavit of support signed by Sister Marie Therese LeBlanc, who worked at the Friends of the Children of Vietnam. Notice that she has named ten children as her sons and daughters and has agreed to assume financial responsibility for them. This was the affidavit of support that Major General Homer Smith proposed at a meeting with Graham Martin and others at the U.S. embassy on April 19, 1975.
The staff of the CBS Saigon bureau. Brian Ellis is standing at the far right, next to the wall. His employees were people he cared deeply about. In April 1975 they entrusted him with their lives.
CBS Saigon bureau chief Brian Ellis and CBS news correspondent Ed Bradley on assignment in Vietcong territory in 1973. Their Vietcong translator is sitting between them.
Some of the U.S. news agencies’ Vietnamese employees on a bus taking them to Tan Son Nhut for evacuation.
Colonel John Madison, the chief of the U.S. delegation to the Four-Party Joint Military Team, standing next to North and South Vietnamese representatives to the JMT during a meeting in Hanoi in late 1974.
The Vietnamese employees of the U.S. delegation to the JMT and their families at Tan Son Nhut in late April 1975. Colonel Madison had arranged to have them secretly assembled there and evacuated on U.S. Air Force transports that were otherwise returning largely empty to the Philippines.
Remains of the rocket that killed marine guards Charles McMahon and Darwin Judge during a surprise Communist rocket attack on Tan Son Nhut early on the morning of April 29, 1975. McMahon and Judge were the last U.S. service members killed in action in South Vietnam.
Colonel John Madison (right) and Captain Stuart Herrington of the U.S. delegation to the JMT upon arriving at the U.S. embassy on the morning of April 29, 1975. They had been told that they would remain at the embassy to negotiate with the Communists after other American personnel had been evacuated.
John Madison speaking with marine corporal Kevin Maloney on the USS Okinawa on April 30, 1975. Maloney was in command of a marine detachment guarding the U.S. compound at Tan Son Nhut and later helped Ken Moorefield lead a convoy of buses through Saigon on April 29, 1975.
Can Tho consul-general Terry McNamara at helm of an LST during the evacuation that he led down the Bassac River on April 29, 1975. Several armed members of his consulate staff are standing in front of him.
South Vietnamese clamber aboard one of Bill Ryder’s barges at a wharf in downtown Saigon. The high sandbag walls had been added to protect the ordnance that the barges had formerly carried up the river to Cambodia.
A South Vietnamese Navy gunboat intercepting Terry McNamara’s LST on April 29, 1975. An hour later, Commodore Thang arrived on the scene and ordered the gunboat to permit McNamara to proceed down the river. A week earlier McNamara had evacuated Thang’s family, telling him, “If we do have to evacuate I’m intending to go down the river and we may need your help.”
The MSC freighter Pioneer Contender loaded with refugees off the port of Vung Tau on the morning of April 30, 1975. On the top deck is the bridge where CIA agent James Parker stood while seeing Vietnam for the last time.
South Vietnamese attempting to scale the walls of the U.S. embassy on April 29, 1975. The two Americans looking over the top of the gate are attempting to pick out any of their employees from the crowd and help them into the embassy compound.
The U.S. embassy in downtown Saigon. The helipad can be seen on top. The building was sometimes likened to a giant toaster or air conditioner.
Evacuees crowded into the U.S. embassy’s recreation area while awaiting transportation to the U.S. fleet.
Evacuees boarding a U.S. Marine helicopter in the embassy parking lot on April 29, 1975.
Evacuees who had been helicoptered from the embassy assembled on the deck of the USS Okinawa on the morning of April 30, 1975.
Graham Martin being interviewed by journalists on the USS Blue Ridge on the morning of April 30, 1975. A reporter described his eyes as “flat” and his skin as “chalky.” He mumbled the answers to a few questions before bumming a cigarette from a journalist.
Lt. General Ngo Quang Truong’s children outside Theresa Tull’s home in Washington, D.C., on July 4, 1976. General Truong and his wife managed to escape South Vietnam, and Tull remained close to the family.
&
nbsp; About the Author
Thurston Clarke has written eleven widely acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, including three New York Times Notable Books and the New York Times bestseller The Last Campaign. His Pearl Harbor Ghosts was the basis of a CBS documentary, and his bestselling Lost Hero, a biography of Raoul Wallenberg, was made into an award-winning NBC miniseries. His articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many other publications. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and other awards and lives in upstate New York.
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