The Foreign Service Journal, September 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2015 9 AFSA and Vietnam Congratulations on the recent “Viet- nam” issue of the Journal (April). The articles, taken together, brilliantly evoke the drama and anguish of the times with a coherence that few of us could per- ceive as we dealt with our pieces of the mosaic. The issue did not cover AFSA’s role in the final days and, indeed, our actions were limited compared to the heroics of our fellow FSOs and AFSA members. We had challenges. Use- ful information was hard to come by; obviously our status as the recently elected exclusive employee representative was not officially relevant, and there was a certain chaos up and down the chain of command. However, we did contribute to the out- come, as I recount here. Our actions were all verbal and part of the inevitable “back story” that gives oral history its value. As the crisis evolved, corridor rumor became fact. We learned that not a few AFSA members were returning to Viet- nam on personal missions (one of our own small AFSA staff left for Vietnam for the same purpose). The question was, how will the Sec- retary and “the system” deal with this phenomenon? Emotions were running high, and we feared the worst. Our conduit to the Secretary was Larry Eagleburger, then the under secretary for management and Henry the K’s alter ego on many issues. AFSA’s small, informal Executive Committee decided that I, as AFSA president, would call Larry and inform him that any action against Craig Johnstone or Lionel Rosenblatt (the two FSOs we were sure had traveled), or any others, would elicit a strong and public reaction from AFSA. I called. “What the hell do you want?” That was Eaglespeak for “good morning.” I said that in the event the Secretary or Director General took any adverse action against Johnstone, Rosenblatt or anyone else, AFSA would throw the employee-management book at them. Public demonstra- tions could not be excluded. “Are you threatening me?” I responded that I wanted him and the Secretary to have all necessary informa- tion before making any decisions in what was a very difficult matter. We considered the returnees to be heroes and so should the Secretary. “I’ll get back to you.” Larry did, and said that there would probably be a pri- vate scolding, but no adverse actions. I do not know how important our intervention was in the Secretary’s deci- sion. What I do know is that the outcome was what we hoped for, and that AFSA, like our heroic colleagues, had acted honorably. Tom Boyatt Ambassador, retired AFSA Vice President for Retirees AFSA President, 1973-75 McLean, Virginia Vietnam Lessons Learned A comparative reading of two substantively differ- ent memos describing “The Lessons of Vietnam” (July- August FSJ ) made for much thought-provoking reflec- tion, especially for those of us who lived through that painfully divisive era. Neither memo alluded to the post– World War II history of U.S.-North Vietnamese contacts, which included several messages from Ho Chi Minh to at least three American presidents and other high-ranking officials. Historians point out that the North Vietnamese leader had modeled his country’s declaration of independence closely on that of the United States and had proclaimed his desire for peaceful relations with our country. Moreover, in the immediate post-war years he appealed directly to President Harry Truman to help his country cast off the yoke of French colonialism at a time when the United States was grant- ing independence to the Philippines and the British were preparing to do the same in India. Sadly, Ho Chi Minh’s appeals were ignored and his political philosophy and allegiances—whether he was a true communist aligned with Moscow at the time or merely a committed Vietnamese nationalist—remained unknown. Two decades later, when President Lyndon Johnson directly proposed negotiations to end the widening con- flict in Indochina, Ho Chi Minh replied with grim determination that the Ameri- cans should first end their bombing campaign and withdraw the hundreds of thousands of troops that had been sent to Vietnam to prevent the country’s unification and to prop up what ultimately turned out to be a corrupt and unpopu- lar regime. A feeler by President Rich- ard Nixon a few years later was met with a similarly blunt response that mirrored the dis- ciplined, implacable advance of North Vietnamese forces. The lessons to be learned LETTERS