Bitter Debate on Who Got Out

While the Communists embarked on a new phase of Vietnamese history, the Americans who left Viet Nam were carrying on a bitter debate about their final hours in Saigon. At issue was Operation Frequent Wind, the massive effort to get U.S. diplomats, businessmen and journalists, along with many of their Vietnamese employees, out of the country in the days and hours before the Communist tanks moved into Saigon.

Luckily, the entire program resulted in very few casualties. Two Marines were killed in the Communist rocket attack on Tan Son Nhut Airport, and last week it was learned that their bodies had been left behind at the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital in Saigon. Nonetheless, it was becoming embarrassingly clear that the hastily conceived operation had failed in its objective of evacuating all those Vietnamese whose lives might be endangered after the Communists came to power. U.S. officials conceded that many people had been left behind whose close connections to the Americans made them likely targets of Communist wrath. Others who had far less to fear from the new regime, including a number of prostitutes, were safely ferried to U.S. ships waiting off the Vietnamese coast.

Pet Poodle. The main problems were panic and haste. General contingency plans for the emergency departure of the Americans had been drawn up months in advance, but no definite lists of Vietnamese whose lives might have been endangered by the Communists were drawn up until practically the last minute. Many officers and officials on the evacuation flagship U.S.S. Blue Ridge were openly bitter about Ambassador Graham Martin's failure to make firm, clear decisions on how the plan would actually be carried out --feelings that were hardly helped by the sight of Nitnoi, Martin's pet poodle, being given its daily turn about the deck. On evacuation day the emergency plan fell apart, leaving stranded hundreds of Vietnamese employees of the U.S. embassy, USAID and USIS. Some were never called, and buses were too crowded or failed to make their way to designated pickup points. In one shocking instance, a senior member of the embassy's Mission Council fled his post for the embassy hours before he should have, leaving his agency's evacuation program a shambles.

"Saigon didn't give a damn for us," a Foreign Service officer stationed at the U.S. consulate in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho told TIME Correspondent William Stewart aboard the Blue Ridge. "We were promised Navy choppers, but the only thing we got was a phone call telling us there was an evacuation. Not just Vietnamese were abandoned but Americans too. The embassy was exercising no initiative, no control. We were told, 'We can't worry about Delta employees.'"

In the end, no Americans who wanted to get out were left behind in Viet Nam. Many escaped through their own efforts when it became clear that the official program was failing. In Can Tho, for example, notice of the evacuation only came at the very last minute. Since helicopters had been flown to Saigon or commandeered by the CIA, the consulate's American employees and a small proportion of its Vietnamese staff went by boat down the Mekong River to the coast. After six hours of futile searching for the ship that was to have met them there, they luckily chanced upon another U.S. vessel, the Pioneer Contender, which brought them to safety.

Thousands of Vietnamese employees of U.S. agencies did not escape. "Why did we promise evacuation to so many Vietnamese when there was no hope of carrying it out?" asked one senior U.S. diplomat. "The signal didn't get to everybody," recounted another. "All of a sudden some people got phone calls and were told, 'Get on the helicopters and go.' 'What about our [Vietnamese] people?' 'Forget about your people. Just go.'"

"I made decisions that were wrong because I didn't know what was going on, where to turn," added a USIS official based in Saigon. "My employees' lives depended on me. Even 24-hours notice could have saved hundreds. You can feel satisfied that you got all the Americans and many Vietnamese out. But others will have nightmares for the rest of their lives for promises made and broken."

It's Criminal. In all, 115,000 Vietnamese got out of Viet Nam. The problem is that perhaps only half were those whom the U.S. really wanted. One angry Foreign Service officer from the Delta told Stewart: "It's criminal. All these politicians and VIPS who have no goddam right to get out have got out, while people who have worked for us for ten years were left behind."

Still, given the lack of casualties and the tumultuous conditions of the evacuation, the operation was not a total failure. To the extent that it was a success, some credit goes to the Communists, who did not interfere with what they obviously knew was going on. No refugee chopper was shot out of the sky, no overloaded barge sunk in the Saigon or Mekong rivers. Nonetheless, for those thousands of Vietnamese with close U.S. connections left in Saigon, the only hope was that the leniency shown by the Communists during their first week in power would become a permanent feature of their rule.

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