The Foreign Service Journal, April 2015

30 APRIL 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL and, during which I painted the picture for him that I had found in terms of the collapse of confidence in Pres. Thieu’s adminis- tration, the sense of national despair permeating the civilian and military population and the stark military situation. The general, with whom I had worked from 1971 to 1972 at MACV headquar- ters, did not disagree with any part of my analysis, and sighed audibly when I mentioned the potential three-week timeframe before the South’s complete defeat. Finally, I tried to put in place a mechanism that would allow at least some endangered Vietnamese to be evacuated as the end came. I met with two close friends—FSO Lacy Wright and Frank Snepp, the chief intelligence community analyst at the embassy—and expressed my dismay that no action was being taken, even behind the scenes, to prepare for an evacuation. Since we all had individuals we wanted to rescue (for me that included my wife’s family), I proposed that we create our own secret evacuation plan despite the injunction against any plan- ning in the embassy. Lacy and Frank agreed, and we sketched out a safe house system and basic communication plan with phone numbers that could be shared with those Vietnamese we wished to help. Lacy and I then began making contacts around Saigon. Once back in Washington, I sent dozens and dozens of additional names of relatives, friends and official contacts of State and USAID officers who were now living in the United States, includ- ing those from a large group of FSOs who were meeting daily at the department for a similar purpose (see p. 33). Since my office was at the White House, every phone call I made to Saigon went with “flash” precedence, thus ensuring that I always got through and kept the names flowing. A Long Flight Home The Weyand Mission ended on April 4. On the long flight back to Washington, I drafted my own memoranda to Secretary Kiss- inger, both on the bleak prospects for South Vietnam and what While Gen. Weyand and his most senior advisers called on Pres. Thieu and the top military echelon of the South Vietnamese government, I went off onmy own about the city. The “Most Accurate” Assessment On April 24, 2000, 25 years after the Republic of Vietnam fell, Douglas Brinkley published an essay in Time magazine on the last days of Saigon. It is strikin g that, with access to all of the declassified records at the Ford Presidential Library, the historian points to the report by a Foreign Service officer as “the grimmest and most accurate assessment by the Ford administration of America’s final weeks in South Vietnam.” Brinkley was referring to Kenneth M. Quinn’s April 5, 1975, memo to Henry Kissinger on the results of the Weyand Mission, in which the FSO had stated that South Vietnamese forces “may be totally defeated in as little as three weeks. President Thieu is discredited and almost completely ineffective. He can no longer pro- vide the leadership necessary to rally the country. The morale of the army and civilian population is critically low and bordering on national despair. Fear of the com- munists is widespread, and people from all walks of life are now searching for a way to flee the country. Panic is seemingly just below the surface, and an imminent attack on Saigon could lose it [for us].” —Susan Maitra, Managing Editor But frommy review of the daily embassy cables, it was evi- dent that, while considered extremely serious, the situation was not being reported as hopeless. As a result, there was no mis- sionwide preliminary planning for an evacuation. This differed markedly frommy own judgment that the end could come in a matter of weeks, depending on how quickly North Vietnamese troops would reach Saigon. Time for a Reality Check I did three things while in Saigon to try to address these diver- gent perceptions. First, I made daily phone calls back to Washington to brief my boss at the National Security Council, Bill Stearman. To his great credit, Bill intervened during the Washington Special Action Group sessions (chaired by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger) to interject my much more pessimistic assessment as a counter- point to the official reporting. My second step was to seek a private session with Gen. Wey-