The Foreign Service Journal, April 2015

40 APRIL 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Once he cracked the gate, masses of people would break through. He had orders to fire on them if they did. He was right. I threwmy Samsonite briefcase over the wall, not wanting to get caught with the two hand grenades inside, if the crowd turned mean. Baffled, I tried to figure out what to do. Finally, another Marine directed me to the small sally-port gate opening into the consulate. It was buttressed by projecting towers, so that only one person at a time could pass. He asked me to collect the various Americans locked outside and quietly slip them over to that gate. Slowly, mustering every courtesy term I could recall from FSI language training, I worked around to the other side of the compound. “Don’t worry, we’ll have helicopters enough for everybody who wants to go. We are not leaving without you,” I assured one and all. To my relief, they seemed to believe me. Because they wanted to, they had to. What other hope could they have? I collected about 10 Americans and their families and gingerly slid them to the consulate gate. Two huge Marines in full battle rattle came over the gate. I positioned myself between them as we passed through each person, including a very pregnant woman. Three stout men on the back side of the gate opened and closed it behind each entrant. The two giant Marines repeatedly muscled the crowd back with their flack-jacketed bulk while snapping the loading slide on their (actually unloaded) M-16s for dramatic effect. I marveled at their cool—despite not understanding the language and being totally vulnerable to a hidden knife or pistol. My job was to pick out those who were to be saved, and keep uttering the implausible promise that we would not abandon anybody. Later, I wrote up the two Marines, and they both got military awards and a coveted assign- ment to guard duty at the U.S. mission at the United Nations. Pulling Up Stakes Inside the compound I stripped to the waist, wringing buckets of sweat out of my shirt. I threw away a filthy gray-striped seer- sucker jacket that had covered the revolver tucked in the small of my back. Suddenly, a platoon of some 40 Marines charged out from the main door of the chancery building, crossed the front lawn and flung their backs against the compound wall. Soon DCMLehmann appeared, gesturing firmly, and called themback. The Marines recoiled back from the wall and into the chancery building. What was going on, I wondered? Lehmann, a former infan- try officer, came over and cleared up my confusion. “Nobody, nobody else gets into this compound,” he barked to all present. “Understand? And that goes for you, too, McBride!” Half naked, I managed a “Yes, sir.” It turned out that the CIA station had assembled a bunch of “assets” in a building across the boulevard from the embassy and then arranged for the Marine fleet detachment to mount an assault over the wall and push the crowd back to open a corridor for these chosen few to get to the gates. Given the thousands of people in the street, it’s hard to imagine how this scheme could have worked out, unless the Marines provoked panic by also fir- ing into the air. But once the front office got word of it, the DCM promptly stomped on it. The DCM’s intervention, however, seems to have been one of a kind. It was the only case that I know of where the front office exercised effective management control over any part of the street-level evacuation. On the contrary, the mission leadership was overwhelmed dealing with Washington and, by all accounts, out of contact with what was going on outside. Those Vietnam- ese trying to escape either lucked out by having an American protector to provide access to evacuation points—embassy, airport or barge dock—or they were left behind. Most were left behind—including one agency’s full comple- ment of 200 staffers and their families. Their American supervi- sors clearly were isolated and out of the loop until the balloon went up. When it did, they were ignored—allegedly misled— and ultimately helpless to save their people. They had gullibly accepted generic assurances that their people would be wrapped up in the overall mission evacuation. No other agency, to my knowledge, was similarly naïve. I entered the chancery as tropical darkness fell suddenly. The political section was totally empty. Nobody could be found on any working-level floor that I could access. All offices were thor- oughly trashed, with IBM Selectric typewriters getting special attention. An odor of alcohol wafted through from time to time. Only when I got to the outer office of the executive suite on the third floor did I find a gaggle of people. The ambassador’s extraordinary secretary, Eva Kim, and her newsman beau, come to mind. The rest seemed to be largely superannuated hangers-on, serving no purpose at the wake. I saw nobody drinking, but painkiller had clearly been applied The place we once knew to be 80-percent secure was now reduced to a hollow eggshell, waiting to be cracked.