By the second week in April, Colby’s attention was increasingly focused on the evacuation of US personnel and their Vietnamese allies from South Vietnam. He had had to give up the idea of trading Thieu for safe passage. Colby wanted desperately to begin evacuation of at-risk Vietnamese; there would be grave difficulties even with the extraction of remaining American personnel. The Saigon station predicted that an ARVN collapse on any of the approaches to Saigon “could produce additional military disintegration as well as instability and social unrest in the capital that would make phased or orderly exfiltration impractical within two or three days.” Any attempted large-scale evacuation of Vietnamese would produce a general panic, and, moreover, there were indications that “there are those in the Army who would hold the U.S. civilians hostage to their own safety and to insure their own evacuation.” Indeed, Graham Martin reported to Kissinger via their backchannel line of communication that General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the commander of South Vietnam’s National Police, had told him that if the Americans tried to jump ship, the ARVN would turn its guns on them.14
By April 8, the nearest provincial capital east of Saigon, An Loc, was under siege. This time the embattled ARVN defenders put up fierce resistance, but the outcome was never in doubt. “The North Vietnamese now have 18 infantry divisions in South Vietnam supported by numerous armor, artillery, and air defense units,” Colby informed the National Security Council. By contrast, the South Vietnamese could count at most seven divisions. South Vietnam’s “long-term prospects are bleak, no matter how well Saigon’s forces and commanders acquit themselves in the fighting that lies ahead,” he said. Couldn’t US forces execute a flanking movement and attack North Vietnam? Kissinger asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General George Brown. The War Powers Act (Congress in 1973 had passed legislation restricting the executive branch’s authority to commit troops to foreign conflicts) aside, Brown replied, there were no North Vietnamese soldiers left in North Vietnam.15
At a Special Actions Group meeting on April 17, Kissinger and Defense Secretary Schlesinger clashed over the rate of evacuation, with the former increasingly defending his ambassador. “I think he’s getting the people out, don’t you?” Kissinger said. No, Schlesinger replied. A little over a hundred a day were escaping, and there were still more than 5,000 US personnel in and around Saigon. Planes were flying in and out of Tan Son Nhut with only a handful of people on board. “Well, we have to leave some things to Graham’s discretion,” Kissinger said.
The discussion turned to the mechanics of evacuation. “It’s our opinion that if this thing goes to a military operation—use of U.S. forces to get people out—the odds of success are very remote,” General Brown remarked. Some members of the ARVN were going to resist the evacuation by force, and television footage of US Marines shooting down their erstwhile allies would be more than the nation could bear. He told the group that “certain South Vietnamese Airborne and Marine units” had offered to provide security for the extraction on the condition that the Americans took them with them. What about the at-risk South Vietnamese, Colby asked? Tan Son Nhut could come under North Vietnamese artillery fire anytime. Why not tell them to make the 60-mile trip to Vung Tau, where they could be evacuated by ship, someone suggested. There was but a single road for the estimated 93,000 South Vietnamese then in possession of identity cards entitling them to evacuation, Colby observed. There would be chaos, and anyway, the North Vietnamese Army was rapidly advancing on Vung Tau.16
In Saigon on April 18, Colonel Janos Toth, a Hungarian member of the International Control Commission Staff that had been put in place to monitor the 1973 cease-fire accords, came to see Polgar. The two had met at an embassy reception and were on friendly terms. Toth assured the station chief that Hanoi did not want to humiliate the United States. It preferred strangulation of Saigon rather than a full-scale assault. If Thieu could be gotten rid of, there was every possibility of a peaceful, negotiated settlement, which, among other things, would leave an American embassy—limited to normal diplomatic activities—to function in South Vietnam. The south had lost, he said, and the only question was whether the transfer of power would take place “under civilized circumstances,” like those accompanying the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm in 1918, or under conditions more like those associated with the fall of Berlin in 1945, when virtually the entire city was razed.17
As of April 21, there were still 2,000 Americans in Saigon. General Brown feared the imminent breakdown of law and order. He reminded members of the Special Actions Group that rebellious ARVN soldiers had shot three of their generals while they were trying to escape Nha Trang by helicopter: “There is every likelihood of armed mobs, and no leadership,” he said. Colby continued to worry about the South Vietnamese. “If we don’t make at least an attempt to get them out, you are going to have more bitterness than you can believe,” he told the group.18
At last, on April 21, Thieu resigned. Accompanied by members of the Joint General Staff and their families, he boarded a plane for the United States. In his departure statement, Thieu blamed Henry Kissinger for having “led the South Vietnamese people to death.”19 He was replaced by his vice president, the feeble septuagenarian Tran Van Huong, whose lifelong anticommunism made him no more an acceptable negotiating partner for the North Vietnamese than Thieu. In Washington, all eyes turned to evacuation, all except those of Kissinger, who reported that he had asked the Soviets to intervene and restrain their North Vietnamese allies.
The third week in April, Congress appropriated $300 million for the evacuation of Americans from South Vietnam and endorsed President Ford’s request to use troops to facilitate the air/sea lift. On the 22nd, Colby reported to the Special Actions Group that the fall of Saigon was imminent. “They [the North Vietnamese] are not interested in any interim deals,” he said. “What they want is a full military victory and humiliation of the U.S. Tan Son Nhut is about to go.” The next day, he told the national security team that CIA operatives had learned that the Khmer Rouge had instructed their cadres to “secretly eliminate all senior enemy commanders and those who owe us a blood debt.” Would the North Vietnamese do no less? He also reported small arms firings on American planes but observed that it was unclear whether the fire was coming from the North or South Vietnamese. On the 24th, Colby informed the Saigon station that it was “safe to say that only Ambassador Martin, the COS, and to a lesser extent Dr. Kissinger” believed anything could come out of efforts at a negotiated settlement. He ordered Shackley to get with Polgar and see to the evacuation of all Vietnamese dependents of CIA officers. As far as other at-risk Vietnamese were concerned, the situation remained bleak. “We are amazed at the small number of Vietnamese being evacuated,” the State Department complained to Martin, “considering the substantial amount of aircraft available.20
On April 27, Huong was succeeded by General Duong Van “Big” Minh, whom the Americans hoped would be acceptable to the communists. As of the 28th, Graham Martin was still holding out hope for a negotiated settlement, but the White House had had enough. The order was sent out that all Americans were to be out of Saigon by 3:45 A.M. on April 30. Miraculously, Tan Son Nhut remained open, and Kissinger reported to Ford on the 28th that 35,000 to 40,000 Vietnamese had been airlifted out.21
Early on the morning of the 28th, Tom Polgar was awakened by the thump of exploding artillery rounds. He phoned the embassy and learned that US Marines on the roof had reported seeing flames and explosions at Tan Son Nhut. The station chief arrived at the embassy to find that Martin was home, ill with bronchial pneumonia. He called the ambassador and insisted that he come in, which he did, arriving around 6:00 A.M. Polgar and Martin still wanted to talk about the Minh government and a negotiated settlement. At Langley, Colby would have none of it. Get your people ready to evacuate, he told the chief of station. The DCI was particularly insistent about destroying encryption equipment and CIA documents that would incriminate CIA informants. After the fall of South Vietnam, he expressed gr
atitude that “we have not been treated to the show trials that would have shamed us for the plight of our secret friends.” By this point, however, a number of Agency officers who had served in Vietnam had arrived back in-country to help Vietnamese friends and coworkers escape through private means. Gage McAfee, who aided the owners of the Duc Hotel in getting out, would survive the ordeal. Others, such as covert ops officer Tucker Gougelmann, would not. Gougelmann was captured by the North Vietnamese Army, imprisoned, and subsequently beaten to death.22
Meanwhile, Martin refused to admit that the runways at Tan Son Nhut were unusable. After a hair-raising inspection by automobile, however, he accepted the inevitable and ordered the helicopter airlift to begin. At 1200 hours Polgar reported to headquarters that “all files and sensitive equipment [are] being destroyed. . . . We have started [to] lift surplus personnel from Embassy rooftop to warships off coast.” By this time a large and anxious crowd had gathered outside the embassy gates; the crowd remained relatively calm, however, periodically parting to allow US personnel through. When he learned that Vietnamese were being mixed in with Americans during the by-now-continuous liftoff, Kissinger exploded: “Can someone explain to me what the hell is going on! The orders are that only Americans are to be evacuated. Now, what the hell is going on?” Colby explained that humanitarian considerations aside, the South Vietnamese might not allow the US Marine helicopters to land and take off if only Americans were being evacuated.23
At 4:40 P.M. Saigon time, Polgar radioed that “the die is cast. We are leaving. That means everybody, including Ambassador Martin.” Some of the Marine C-46 helicopters were taking ground fire, apparently from disgruntled ARVN soldiers. The embassy, he said, was now a “beleaguered fortress” with an uncontrollable crowd of Vietnamese blocking all entrances. “There is no pretty ending to this,” he said. While the last contingent of eight Americans, including Graham Martin, by then too sick to walk, waited to be ferried out, Polgar received a final message from DCI Colby: “The courage, integrity, dedication and high competence the Agency displayed in a variety of situations over these years has been fully matched and even surpassed by your performance during this difficult final phase. . . . Good luck and many thanks.” Shortly after the last helicopter lifted off, North Vietnamese tanks and troops entered Saigon.24
In Lost Victory, Colby would write of the Vietnam conflict that “the ultimate irony was that the people’s war launched in 1959 had been defeated, but the soldier’s war, which the United States had insisted on fighting during the 1960s with massive military forces, was finally won by the enemy.” It was, moreover, a clear-cut case of aggression, with a communist nation imposing its will by force of arms on a noncommunist one. “The political contest had been won,” he wrote, “the Communists offered no attraction whatsoever. The Thieu Government had designed a program of economic and political improvement that meant a better life for the Vietnamese people.”25
He was only partially right. The North Vietnamese Army had conquered South Vietnam by means of conventional warfare, but it had been able to do so because the South Vietnamese government and its supporters had failed to build a viable society, establish a separate identity, and capture the banner of Vietnamese nationalism. CORDS, working with select mid-level Vietnamese, had been able to bring a better life within reach of some rural Vietnamese, but their community-building efforts were no match for the relentless corruption and venality of the government in Saigon. The sickness that pervaded the regime in Saigon and the top levels of the ARVN was fully manifested during the final collapse. It was Thieu’s “precipitous decisions and poor execution by his commanders,” Tom Polgar cabled Langley, “poor leadership, poor morale, indiscipline, and selfishness[,] . . . that let the nation down and introduced a process of deterioration that led to results far in excess of what North Vietnamese military pressure would have been capable of during this time frame.”26
It was true that refugees fled mainly south rather than north to the communists, but there were areas in South Vietnam where Marxism-Leninism remained deeply rooted. In Hau Nghia west of Saigon, in Quang Ngai on the central coast, and in the Mekong Delta, communism had taken root in the early 1930s in response to relentless exploitation of the peasantry by absentee landlords and the Vietnamese lackeys who served their interests. The Peoples’ Revolutionary Government largely ceased its military activities after Tet, but the Viet Cong remained and became increasingly active after the Easter Offensive of 1972. A Foreign Service Officer, James Nach, recalled driving through My Tho that summer. He was headed for a nearby district headquarters some 3 or 4 miles off of Highway 4. On maps in Saigon, the area was rated “A”—most secure. “I came to this rather sad looking town in the middle of the rice fields,” he said. He then drove to the American advisory compound and introduced himself to the senior district adviser, a US Army major. For the next hour the officer harangued Nach about everything that was wrong in his district. Government control did not exist beyond the town boundaries. “He was basically sitting there in his compound in a sea of red,” Nach recalled.27
In May, after CIA personnel were safely back from what had been South Vietnam, Colby presided over a welcome home and awards ceremony at Langley. To the enragement of many there, he announced that counterinsurgency and pacification had been a complete success, and that if the United States had not abandoned South Vietnam, victory could have been won. A number of those present had been reporting for years on the pervasive corruption, the authoritarian nature of military rule, incompetence within the ARVN, and the general hopelessness of the political and economic situation in South Vietnam. Several had had to leave friends and lovers behind. Frank Snepp stood up and told the DCI that he was wrong. But if the North Vietnamese Army had not invaded, . . . Colby began. That was precisely the point, Snepp said. After $150 billion, more than 55,000 American lives and the best pacification/counterinsurgency program history had ever seen, South Vietnam, with the fourth-largest military in the world, had not been able to defend itself.28
Colby the nation-builder could never admit that the dream of an independent, noncommunist South Vietnam was irreconcilable with the realities of Vietnamese culture, politics, and history. He had expected more of the South Vietnamese—and of the American people, for that matter—than they expected of themselves.
20
FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL
After the fall of South Vietnam, a return to the “family jewels” crisis was almost a relief for DCI Colby. There was another good fight to be fought. The reputation and perhaps the very existence of the Agency to which he had devoted his life were in peril. If he had not been able to save South Vietnam, he could save the Agency. At least, the DCI believed, there was a chance. To succeed, however, Colby was going to have to change the very culture of intelligence in the United States and overcome powerful opposition from within the intelligence community as well as the White House.
All of Henry Kissinger’s worst fears were coming to pass in the late spring and early summer of 1975. There was not only the fall of Saigon and the accompanying humiliation, but the damned mess with the CIA to dog him. Both situations were undermining America’s position in the world. A growing segment of the international community now saw the United States as the evil empire or a laughingstock—or both. And then there was always his personal reputation to worry about. Not only was there the Track II Chilean thing, but Kissinger had chaired the 40 Committee since he had come on board as national security adviser in 1969. Every covert operation initiated by the CIA since then had been undertaken with his personal approval. Perhaps his former patron, Nelson Rockefeller, could staunch the flow of damaging information. He tried in his own way to do just that. After one of Colby’s appearances before the Rockefeller Commission, the vice president drew Colby aside. “Bill,” he said, “do you really have to present all this material to us? We realize that there are secrets that you fellows need to keep.” Not surprisingly, Rockefeller wanted nothing to do with the assassinations issu
e—but others with presidential ambitions, including President Ford and commission member Ronald Reagan, insisted on pursuing the matter. And so it was that the White House announced that the blue-ribbon panel’s mandate was being extended two months so it could look into alleged plots to kill foreign leaders.1
David Belin, the Rockefeller Commission’s executive director, took the commission’s new charge seriously. He immediately requested all pertinent documents from the CIA, no matter how sensitive. Colby resisted. He could see no good whatsoever coming from this line of inquiry, he said. It would not matter that the CIA had never assassinated a foreign leader; it was clearly implicated in at least one plot—against Castro—and revelations concerning Mongoose would be enough to destroy the good name of not only the Agency but the United States. But he protested in vain. The commission, he was told, was part of the executive branch, and thus there was no reason to withhold anything from it, including information about sources and methods. Belin and his staff duly uncovered the Agency’s involvement with Operation Mongoose, including attempts to enlist the Mafia, its connection to the deaths of Patrice Lumumba and Rafael Trujillo in 1961, and the abortive coup against President Sukarno of Indonesia in 1958. In April, Helms, called back once again from Tehran, testified before the commission in closed session for more than four hours. Exiting the committee room, he spotted Daniel Schorr, who had reported extensively on the assassination allegations, loitering with other reporters. “You son-of-a-bitch!” he yelled. “You killer! You cocksucker! Killer Schorr! That’s what they should call you.” On May 20, news of the plot against Castro and the Mafia connection hit the front pages.2
Belin and his staff had completed their work by the first week in June. Their draft report included an eighty-six-page section on CIA schemes to eliminate foreign leaders. “President Ford has firmly announced that assassination is not and should never be a tool of United States policy,” read its conclusion. But that section would not see the light of day for some time.3
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