Center for the Study of Intelligence

Central Intelligence Agency

Washington, DC 20505
April 2015

Voices from the Station: 

The Evacuation of the US Embassy 

in Saigon

Edited Craig R. Gralley
ii Voices from the Station (April 2015)

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Voice from the Station (April 2015) iii

Contents

Voices from the Station: The Evacuation of the US Embassy in Saigon ���������������������������������������������� 1

Working the Hill������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 5

Washington and the Field—Talking Past Each Other���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 9

The Polgar and Martin Relationship: A Commonality of Views �������������������������������������������������������� 11

Events Leading to the Embassy’s Final Evacuation������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 13

Those Who Were Left Behind������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 17

Cover photo is the US Embassy in Saigon in 1968. Photo by the US Army in public domain.
Voice from the Station (April 2015) 1

Voices from the Station: The Evacuation of the 

US Embassy in Saigon

Four decades ago, on 30 April 1975, the final chapter of US engagement in the Vietnam conflict came 

to a close when Saigon fell to the communists of 

North Vietnam. In recognition of the dedication 

and perseverance of Agency personnel who stayed 

to the very end, and for our Vietnamese friends 

who did not make it out in time, CSI has compiled 

the statements of key Saigon Station and Agency 

employees involved in the US Embassy evacuation, 

including Saigon Chief of Station (COS) Thomas 

Polgar and his deputy (DCOS) Conrad LaGueux, 

Directorate of Operations (DO) Far East Division 

Chief Theodore Shackley, and Chief of Vietnam 

Operations Joseph Lazarsky.

a

 Also included is an 

interview with a longtime DO careerist, who was 

on the ground during the evacuation.

1

 Polgar and 

LaGueux were among the last to be evacuated on 

30 April 1975.

CIA analysts were pessimistic about the likelihood 

of success in Vietnam—especially during 1964 and 

1965, the months leading up to and including the 

Johnson administration’s substantial escalation of 

US military forces in South Vietnam.

b

 But fears of 

spreading communism and concern over the loss of 

US prestige if South Vietnam fell

a. Shackley and Lazarsky had served previously as Saigon COS 

(November 1968 to January 1972) and Saigon DCOS (July 1969 

to May 1971), respectively, and were Polgar’s and LaGueux’s 

predecessors.

b. (U) Harold Ford, “(U) Why CIA Analysts Were So Doubtful About 

Vietnam,” Studies in Intelligence 40, no. 2 (1996).

We picked up the voice 

communications . . . the traffic

of panic, total panic. . . . It was 

just a nightmare, including the 

last 12 hours: destroying not only 

files but also the cords of the

commo gear. . . . I try to erase it 

from my memory.

I’ve discussed this with [COS] 

Tom [Polgar] right [there] at 

the station. . . .I said, “Your first

responsibility is your personnel.

This goddamn thing is over 

except for the crying.”

–Joseph Lazarsky
2 Voices from the Station (April 2015)

to the North provided impetus for both the war’s 

commencement and its continuance. Ultimately, 

2 million Americans served and more than 58,000 

American lives were lost in the Vietnam conflict.

c

The signing of the Paris Accords in 1973 signaled 

the end of US military involvement in South 

Vietnam, and CIA’s mission was confined specifically to providing intelligence support.

d

 Still, South 

Vietnam and the government of Nguyen Van Thieu 

remained dependent on US financial and material 

assistance.

A December 1974 National Intelligence Estimate 

highlighted an unprecedented buildup of Communist forces in the South.

e

 The estimate noted that 

c. Seventeen of 111 stars on the CIA Wall of Honor are for Agency 

personnel who lost their lives in the Vietnam conflict.

d. The Paris Peace Accords, signed 27 January 1973, ended 

direct US military involvement in Vietnam. Although the accord 

was not ratified by the US Senate, the United States abided by its 

terms, which called for a cease-fire beginning 28 January 1973, 

a US military withdrawal within 60 days, negotiations toward a 

political resolution, and a step-by-step process of reunification 

through peaceful means.

e.National Intelligence Estimates and estimative products covering virtually the entire period of US engagement in the conflict 

in Vietnam from 1948 to April 1975 can be found on CIA’s public 

website,www.cia.gov at http://www.foia.cia.gov/collection/vietnam-collection.

without an immediate increase in US assistance, 

South Vietnam’s military situation would become 

parlous, and it also raised the specter of an all-out 

Communist offensive.

f

 Weariness and popular 

disenchantment with the war—as well as the Watergate scandal that weakened the administration 

of President Richard Nixon—led Congress in the 

fall of 1974 and again in the spring of 1975 to rebuff 

the Ford administration’s requests for additional 

military appropriations to support the Thieu government.

Early in March 1975, the North’s final offensive 

began in earnest. Two major military setbacks—the 

inexplicable, voluntary withdrawal of South Vietnamese forces from the northern panhandle and 

the Central Highlands and the subsequent fall of Da 

Nang, South Vietnam’s second-largest city—offered 

an opening and an opportunity for the Commuf. (See conclusions to National Intelligence Council, “Short Term 

Prospects for Vietnam,” NIE 53/14.3-2-74, 23 December 1974. It 

said, “It is even possible—in response to a major opportunity—that 

the Communists would move to an all-out offensive. . . . But our 

best judgment now is that they would not do so.” South Vietnam’s 

military setbacks in Da Nang and the Central Highlands offered 

that opportunity.

The embassy evacuation plan included multiple contingencies, such as identifying possible helicopter landing zones at the embassy if 

the airport was not accessible—which is exactly what happened. Photo by the US Marine Corps in public domain.
Voice from the Station (April 2015) 3

nists to press the conflict to its logical conclusion: 

Saigon.

g

Much has been written about the fall of Saigon and 

the Agency’s general role in Vietnam;h

 this narrative gives special insight into the story of those 

who were directly involved in the evacuation of the 

embassy and Saigon Station, as they describe what 

happened.

Working the Hill

DO Far East Division Chief Shackley describes the 

mood in Congress, where the administration was 

struggling to gain support for funding the government 

of South Vietnam. Saigon DCOS LaGueux picks 

up the story, explaining how US Ambassador Graham Martin’s extended stay in Washington to lobby 

lawmakers led him to lose focus on rapidly evolving 

events taking place in South Vietnam.i

Shackley: It was clear to us [in spring 1975] that the 

North Vietnamese were going to win the military 

struggle unless the US government could get Congress to [change] its views on the critical aspect of 

funding, and . . . there had to be the will to deploy 

a very sizeable amount of airpower, without further 

delay, to stop this advance [of North Vietnamese 

troops]. [Funding was needed to] stabilize the 

military situation . . . free up spare parts, free up the 

flow of gasoline. And that was all money which we 

did not have appropriated [from Congress].

g. Thieu resigned 21 April 1975; he and his top government officers fled the country three days later. 

h. For example, David Butler, The Fall of Saigon (Simon & Schuster, 1985); Theodore Shackley and Rick Finney, Spymaster: My 

Life in the CIA (Potomac Books Inc, May 2005).

i. Graham Martin, a career foreign service officer, succeeded Ellsworth Bunker as Ambassador to South Vietnam in June 1973.

When I got back here [to the United States], much 

to our surprise, we met with Kissingerj

 and President Ford at Palm Springs. We gave our report [on 

the situation in South Vietnam] and, I think, to our 

surprise, we were ordered to go up and make this 

presentation to Congress. That was something we 

had never anticipated. We had anticipated that we 

would come back, having done all this staff work, 

prepare all the presentations and so forth, and be 

sitting in the back benches. . . . We had envisioned, 

I think, that [congressional briefings were] something that was going to be done by Schlesinger, 

Kissinger, [or] maybe the president. . . . To our surprise, we were thrown into this meat grinder. Well, 

it was clear to us after the first day that we weren’t 

going anywhere. . . . We did the whole circuit—both 

houses [and] all the committees; in the course of 

that we communicated the fact that Saigon did not 

seem to be a winner [without support].

While I was there, I talked to [COS] Polgar about 

the need for an evacuation plan and that clearly 

we needed to start thinning down ourselves—that 

is, with our staff personnel—and a little bit of that 

was done. We needed to, clearly, get all the dependents . . . out. We needed to start thinking about 

getting the Vietnamese out in some form and certainly their families. I think at that time, of course, 

the [fall of] Da Nang . . . was also very much in my 

mind.

LaGueux: Ambassador Graham Martin was a very, 

very engaged [and] dominant, if not domineering, 

chief of mission. [He was] a man who not only 

considered himself a commander in the full sense 

of that term, [including the] military sense, . . . [but 

was] an active player in the formulation of policy 

[at the] Washington level. If Martin thought . . . his 

words weren’t getting through, or that Kissinger 

was having a problem pushing his views into the 

j. At this time, Henry Kissinger was serving simultaneously as US 

Secretary of State and US National Security Advisor to President 

Gerald Ford. Kissinger, along with North Vietnamese Politburo 

member Le Duc Tho, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 

December 1973 for negotiating the Paris Peace Accords. Tho 

rejected the award, claiming that peace had not been restored to 

Vietnam.
4 Voices from the Station (April 2015)

proper policy channels, Martin would . . . get on an 

airplane and go to Washington for two days, three 

days, and then come back again.

[Early spring of 1975] he carried the ball [on the 

funding issue] with Congress on a day-to-day basis.

He left [South Vietnam] thinking he’d be back in a 

week or so. [He] ended up staying for two [or] three 

months.

DO Case Officer: When [Ambassador Martin] left 

in early February, the country was in good shape, 

and the South was winning, and everyone was happy. And when he came back, Da Nang had already 

fallen and he could never catch up. So, we’re at the 

end of March and he’s not letting the State Department destroy any paper. The station pretty much 

destroyed all their operations stuff, but Saigon was 

so big for so long that there was a wall—floor to 

ceiling . . . —of administrative stuff just for Saigon 

Station . . . and [we] didn’t destroy those until just 

before we left.

LaGueux: Martin [was] an avid reader . . . including all of our products; I mean, this man was insatiable in terms of reading anything and everything.

He said to me dozens of times—if he said it to me 

once—that it wasn’t much use talking to him; his 

mind was the type that he had to read it. If you said 

something to him, he would tell you that it might 

not register for more than a few minutes, but give 

him something on paper and he will study it and 

use it.

Now against that background—when [Martin] left 

on that trip [to Washington] and stayed away for 

the many weeks that he was away—with the increased pace of activity and the deteriorating activity upon his return, he never caught up. He literally 

never was able to catch up to the current situation.

He tried to read himself back into the situation but 

never succeeded.

Now the point of that is that from the time [Martin] 

returned, he remained in a time warp several weeks 

behind the situation. And while that strategically 

may not seem important, in a tactical situation it 

was very important. He never was able to understand that the situation was as serious as it was, to 

put it bluntly and flatly.I mean you can talk about 

In March 1975, Ambassador Martin met with President Ford, Secretary Kissinger, and Army Chief of Staff General Wyand. 

Official White House photograph by David Hume Kennerly in public domain courtesy of the Gerald R. Ford library. 
Voice from the Station (April 2015) 5

the fall of Da Nang, but the most critical part, the 

most critical single episode, was the debacle of the 

ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) evacuation of the Highlands.

k

 He never took that aboard.

He just didn’t seem to focus on it, and to him I’m 

sure the stories were exaggerated. [He probably thought] it wasn’t as serious as people said it 

was. . . . He would not have denied that it happened, 

[but] there’s always an interpretation of events that 

makes a difference between reality and something a 

little less than reality—that’s what I’m talking about.

If you’re trying to understand the role of the embassy in the final days of . . . Vietnam and the way the 

evacuation was handled and so on, [Ambassador 

Martin] was behind the curve. [He] never caught 

up, to the very end.

Washington and the Field—Talking 

Past Each Other

Despite Martin’s time on the Hill, a divide existed 

between Washington and the field on the likelihood 

that Congress would appropriate funds. The field 

didn’t recognize the political dynamics at work in 

Washington and focused primarily on its belief that 

the South could and would be saved.

LaGueux: I would say that you had here, in a 

rapidly deteriorating, rapidly moving situation, the 

differences that frequently exist between the field 

and Washington—with each saying that the other 

doesn’t understand what I am talking about. You 

have that element in a big way. Secondly, I would 

say that Polgar and the station—myself and others—felt that the situation was not as hopeless as we 

were beginning to know Washington viewed it to be 

[that the fall of South Vietnam was inevitable].

k. According to LaGueux, when the ARVN retreated from the 

Central Highlands, “the forces [were being] decimated; there was 

nothing left but stragglers.” By ARVN estimates, only 20,000 of 

the 60,000 troops that started from Pleiku reached their final 

destination on the coast. See LaGueux interview and Stephen 

T. Hosmer, Konrad Kellen, and Brian M. Jenkins, The Fall of 

Vietnam: Statements by Vietnamese Military and Civilian Leaders

(RAND Corporation, 1978), 96. 

I don’t think we could understand, even with all 

the contact we had with members of the Congress—and we had quite a lot of [contact] during 

that period—which advanced our knowledge of 

just what Washington’s situation was. We attended 

briefing, upon briefing, upon briefing of several 

of these delegations that came . . . so we were not 

entirely uneducated or uninformed. On the other 

hand, I don’t think we really appreciated the extent 

to which the presidency had lost its power, thanks 

to Watergate.

I don’t think we understood quite the predicament 

that Kissinger—under [Richard] Nixon . . . and under [Gerald] Ford later, with a different slant obviously, politically speaking—had in doing what they 

might want to do. . . . So with that deficiency and 

our understanding in the field, I think that . . . we 

were fighting the problem to some extent in saying, “Look Washington, it doesn’t have to be quite 

what we’re making it, what we’re headed for here. If 

you’re willing to muster some courage, this can be 

stopped. I mean this deterioration can be stopped.” 

[However,] I’m not saying that the situation would 

have been altogether reversed.

We weren’t going to win . . . but we could have 

altered the rapidly deteriorating situation leading 

to what, after all, has to be called an ignominious 

defeat on the part of the United States. That was 

inevitable . . . in my opinion, [but] we could have 

done that situation very differently.

The Polgar and Martin Relationship: 

A Commonality of Views

DCOS LaGueux describes Ambassador Martin as a 

dominant personality and tells how COS Polgar came 

to agree with the division of labor that the ambassador demanded. This included leaving the timing 

of embassy evacuation and other planning details in 

the hands of the ambassador—who didn’t tolerate 

any overt sign of a US intention to abandon South 

Vietnam.
6 Voices from the Station (April 2015)

LaGueux: Martin was a 

very suspicious fellow, 

and he’s the type of 

fellow that thrived on 

keeping you off-balance.

He could not deal with 

anybody without feeling 

that he had to put them 

off-balance. . . . He 

always . . . knew how to 

manipulate you. . . . He 

was very good at that.

Martin was not a very 

attractive person.

If Polgar and I had not 

been as careful as we 

were, he would have 

played one of us against 

the other, and he did attempt on more than one occasion to do that, particularly with me; but neither Polgar nor I were babes 

in the woods and, therefore, [it] didn’t go very far.

But all of that [is] under the heading of Martin’s 

basic inclination to keep people off-balance—[even] 

people he depended on. He liked to use people, 

he knew how to use people—but he also knew the 

dangers of trusting people too much, and that was 

one of his methods of trying to verify and authenticate what somebody might be doing, [specifically] 

Tom [Polgar].

[Martin would] criticize Polgar and see what kind 

of a reaction he would get from me. And I suppose 

he would do the same thing with Polgar, although 

the other way was more important because Polgar 

was the chief and I was the deputy. And . . . he’d also 

ask me what Polgar [was] up to when he was doing 

thus and so.

I’m not saying that Polgar and [I] were . . . under 

his thumb because, in fact, he let us carry out our 

business pretty much as we needed to, and in him 

we had an ambassador who was very much on 

our side. So it was never a matter of defending our 

activities with him, but anything that went beyond 

what he knew to be the strict role of CIA was his 

business and we then were his agent—we were then 

his instrumentality.

And he knew we had pretty good contacts here 

and there. He knew what they were; he insisted 

on knowing all about them. I think Polgar would 

[agree that] it was never a difficulty. Except the 

amount of time it took. . . . It was nothing for us to 

be—separately, not together—in the ambassador’s 

office an hour, two hours, sometimes longer per 

day. It’s an awful long time out of your schedule to 

be sitting in the ambassador’s office—either listening to him, or talking to him, or some of both, or 

being in a meeting that he wanted to hold where he 

wanted us present.

In the end [Martin] had very few friends, and I 

think that is too bad. Martin’s part in the whole 

Vietnam history—I’m talking now about the very 

broad history, not CIA’s but the broad history—I 

think will take a lot of time before it gets the proper 

treatment. Martin above all, above all, was a patriot. Now . . . anyone might have [a] difference [of 

opinion] as to how his patriotism was expressed 

and put into effect. Martin was a diplomat who was 

a pragmatic patriot. His motivation was always 100 

percent what is good for the United States, and he 

never deviated from that. . . . He gets undue critiWhile officers in Saigon still believed that the South could be saved, President Ford deliberated with 

Secretary Kissinger and Vice President Rockefeller in the Oval Office over America’s next move. 

Official White House photograph by David Hume Kennerly in public domain courtesy of the Gerald 

R. Ford library. 
Voice from the Station (April 2015) 7

cism—I guess that’s a better way to put it—[he] gets 

undue criticism for a lot of things.

Events Leading to the Embassy’s 

Final Evacuation

US plans to evacuate embassy personnel in the 

closing days suffered a setback at 4:00 a.m. on 29 

April 1975, when the main location for departures, 

Tan Son Nhut International Airport, was attacked 

by rockets and mortar fire. By 7:00 a.m., US military 

forces declared the runway unusable for fixed-wing 

aircraft. Ambassador Martin did not accept this 

judgment and traveled to the airfield himself to inspect the damage. After consulting with Washington, 

the ambassador relayed the decision four-and-a-half 

hours later: the evacuation would proceed using 

helicopters only. 

With the runway at Tan Son Nhut closed, helicopters 

were called in from the USS Blue Ridge and other 

ships off the coast, and the evacuation of US embassy 

personnel shifted to the embassy’s grounds: the courtyard of the ambassador’s residence and the roof of the 

embassy itself.l

Helicopters landed and took off throughout the day 

and night of 29 April. At 4:00 a.m. the next morning, 

President Ford ordered Ambassador Martin to leave 

the Saigon Embassy, effectively ending the evacuation. 

Polgar: There is a famous interchange [between 

Kissinger and Martin] in mid-April 1975. In midApril, Kissinger sends Martin a cable in which he 

sort of gives a schedule for the evacuation. Martin 

[responds] and says, “That cable serves no useful 

purpose except to cover your asses, because you 

have given evacuation goals but you haven’t given 

me evacuation means. I understand people’s need to 

protect their asses, and now I’m the only one whose 

ass isn’t covered.” Kissinger comes back and says, 

“You are wrong. My ass isn’t covered either. One 

l. The USS Blue Ridge was—and remains—the command ship for 

the US Seventh Fleet.

day when all of us are going to hang, I will hang 

several yards higher than you.” Well, that didn’t turn 

out to be true.

DO Case Officer: There was an evacuation plan 

developed by the end of March. Everybody had 

a number. The Agency and State both had a 

list. . . . [Before the bombing of Tan Son Nhut,] 

there were still planes flying [and] they got the families out. . . . The military at Clark Air Base [in the 

Philippines] was sending in planes and they were 

taking refugees out at the same time, and that went 

on for several weeks. And so every day the number 

of Americans would be reduced.

And the plan was that Clark Field was going to send 

in either C-130s or -141s to Tan Son Nhut Airport 

and take everybody out; [it was] very organized 

[and] peaceful. Everybody had an ID card with a 

number on it. The week before we evacuated [24 

April], they ran a special Air China flight for the 

Agency’s senior agents—all former [South Vietnamese government] ministers and legislators, all 

the former presidents, and their families.

But the [United States], I think, had 3,000 or 4,000 

[Americans] in country in March. We still had [US]

AID and the State Department people out there, 

plus the orphanage people and the NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and all of the rest of the 

Americans. [Continuing the evacuation] was a huge 

thing.

LaGueux: Tan Son Nhut was being rocketed as the 

sun began to come up [on 29 April]. I could begin 

to see the air activity that was going on, with the 

Communists shooting at anything and everything 

in the way of airplanes that the ARVN was trying to 

put up.

I said, “This has got to be it. The next thing, they’re 

going to be rocketing is the embassy.” 

DO Case Officer: You could see the tanks at the 

edge of town from the roof of some of the buildings.

LaGueux: More and more in my mind I began to 

think about evacuation problems. I went to Da 
8 Voices from the Station (April 2015)

Nang about the time that the evacuation of Da 

Nang began and saw how unmanageable a situation 

could very quickly develop—overwhelming every 

means of evacuation transportation. And it didn’t 

take much imagination to figure that if that could 

happen in Da Nang, what the situation in Saigon 

could potentially be, especially if the Communists 

wanted to rub our noses in it.

Polgar: [Beginning at] 4:00 a.m., the station [used] 

emergency alert procedures. The way it worked was 

you called four people, and they called four people, 

and then they called four people . . . so I would say 

that by 7:00 a.m. almost everybody in the station 

was in the embassy.

[Ambassador Martin] didn’t believe [the airport] 

was unusable. Martin, deep in his heart, still had 

hope that the C-130, being a very short takeoff 

plane, could sort of maneuver between the bomb 

craters. Having been a colonel in the Air Force, I 

think he fancied himself as an expert.

Shortly before 12:00 p.m., the decision comes: we 

all [must] go. [Actually] I was told by the ambassador around 11:30 a.m. that the signal from Washington [was] that we were going to phase four [the 

use of only helicopters for the evacuation].

[Considering the timing of the evacuation and the 

more than four-hour delay,] the way I felt [about 

my role in planning the evacuation] is that there 

was Martin; there was Jacobson,m who had spent 

months planning evacuation; [and] there was Rear 

Admiral Benton,n

 who was solely concerned with 

the logistics of the evacuation. I didn’t feel they 

needed my advice about helicopters . . . or anything 

else. My job was to read intelligence.

I cannot call Kissinger and say, “Hey, Henry, disregard what the ambassador is telling you.” [And] I 

couldn’t [communicate with Shackley or Colby to 

disagree with Martin] because I had to assume that 

m. George Jacobson, Department of State, was an advisor to 

Ambassador Martin and coordinated the embassy’s evacuation.

n. Rear Adm. Hugh Arthur Benton was director of logistics and 

security for the Pacific commander-in-chief.

Martin and Kissinger were working with more information than I had. It wasn’t my role. As we used 

to say, “It was above my pay grade.”

My attitude was that there were people at work 

there who had more expertise on that particular 

subject than I did. Also, of course, it was a fundamental policy decision.

LaGueux: It was no longer a matter of designating 

people to leave as it was designating the people that 

shouldn’t leave, and they were a minimum of people . . . commo, maybe the final security detail for 

the destruction of papers, and finance people who 

were still counting money and trying to arrange for 

the evacuation of monetary assets. It had distressed 

me that we had let that go to the very end. . . . If 

I had focused on it earlier, [it] never would have 

happened because I found out that we still had 

millions, gold—all kinds of things—until the very 

last day.

Lazarsky: The only answer I can give you [about 

why we didn’t start the evacuation earlier], and this 

is quoting Tom Polgar when he got to Manila, he 

says, “Well, I didn’t draw back earlier, Joe, because 

Graham told me if we, the station, who everyone feels knows what’s happening, starts cutting 

down”—and this is cutting down the last six [or] 

eight months prior to the final fall—“that it would 

have created panic among State Department [officials], others, and the Vietnamese.” No question 

about that.

Shackley: We pressed Polgar to do more on evacuation. My guess is that probably started in about 

the second week of April. The problem that we soon 

ran into was that Kissinger had sort of given Martin 

the authority to set the timetable for pulling the 

plug as to when one would have a formal evacuation, and obviously Martin was hanging in there.

DO Case Officer: [After the artillery and rocket attack at Tan Son Nhut on 29 April,] at daylight . . . everybody started going to the embassy.

The plan had been for the Air America helicopters 

to go to the apartment buildings where the Americans were because they could land on the roof and 
Voice from the Station (April 2015) 9

they would evacuate them to the airport, where 

they would get on airplanes or big helicopters or 

whatever. But that was no longer an option. Most 

of the helicopters had been blown up on the airport 

[runway]. The helicopters started coming [from 

ships offshore], and they picked up the people at the 

airport and then they started coming to the embassy.

The helicopters that could land on the embassy roof 

had to be the small helicopters, not the big Hueys.

So, somebody had [a] bright idea: they found the 

embassy fire truck and knocked down a tree that 

was in the courtyard and dragged it away so that 

the bigger helicopters could land in the courtyard.

As soon as the helicopters started coming to the 

embassy, the embassy was surrounded [by] Vietnamese. I mean, you’ve seen some of the pictures.

They were trying to crawl over the wall. They had 

not yet delivered the first batch of combat Marines 

to the embassy to protect us.

LaGueux: We’re talking about big helicopters . . . we’re talking about [Marine Corps and Air 

Force CH-53s] that can hold . . . I don’t know . . . a 

hundred people, and we’re operating them every 

few minutes. I mean, there was one right after the 

other.

DO Case Officer: And so, all the Agency people 

were on the wall, pushing people down and pulling 

our people in, because . . . to get close enough to get 

in, they would drive their cars through the crowd 

and push up to the gate and climb on the roof to get 

pulled over into the embassy. And that was sort of 

on three sides of the embassy.

Polgar: It was late in the evening of the 29th when 

we had the howling mobs outside the fence.

o

 We 

had a dangerous situation because we, as Americans, were up on the fence. Anybody could have 

taken a potshot or overrun us for that matter.

I spotted a [US] colonel outside the fence. . . . I 

said, [let’s] organize a little shock troop, a little 

human wedge that could bring people up to the 

fence, . . . then we’ll lift you across.

LaGueux: [After the decision to pull out was made, 

Ambassador Martin] was talking to CINCPAC 

[commander-in-chief, Pacific] and others . . . trying to get more helicopters, to get more of what he 

said were Americans that were coming out of the 

woodwork . . . and indeed he was probably right to 

some extent. In fact, I know that in a couple of cases . . . some of the expatriates were coming forward 

on the very last day with their hoard of dependents, 

saying to the embassy, “Here I am, Joe Brown, and 

here is my Vietnamese family of 25 people; we want 

to leave now.” There were these people, and they 

did assemble in the courtyard of the embassy, and 

as Martin looked out on that courtyard, he wanted 

to get all of them out, not recognizing at first that it 

was an impossibility because as soon as you reduce 

the numbers in the courtyard, more would somehow or another come in.

This gets to be even more hectic during the night 

[of the 29th] because at that point CINCPAC is 

saying, “This is your last batch of helicopters that 

you are going to get.”

Martin was buying time, and he made no bones 

about it; I mean, he was . . . [pushing back the 

time that the president wanted him to evacuate 

o An estimated 10,000 people gathered outside the US Embassy 

seeking asylum and safe passage, with 2,500 in the embassy 

and on the consular compound. 

The tree pictured here in the embassy courtyard was felled in 

order to make room for the helicopters to land. Photo by the US 

Marine Corps in public domain.
10 Voices from the Station (April 2015)

so he could] evacuate as many people as he possibly could. That’s not a delay in the evacuation so 

[much] as it’s a delay in the cessation of the evacuation. It’s the ending of the evacuation—that’s what 

he delayed. That’s what he bought time on.

On the 30th . . . [at] 4:00 [in the morning] or thereabouts, a helicopter comes in, and this time it’s got a 

passenger . . . a Navy officer . . . a lieutenant . . . and 

we finally get him into the ambassador’s office on 

the third floor. . . . [He said,] “I have a message 

for Ambassador Martin from the president.” And, 

indeed, he had a personal message from President 

Ford to Ambassador Martin.

Polgar: [The message] said, “Mr. Ambassador, I’m 

instructed to put you on the next helicopter, and if 

you are not going to go willingly, I have to put you 

on by force.”

LaGueux: It was soon thereafter that we left, although I daresay I’m not sure that it [was] on that 

[next] helicopter.

Those Who Were Left Behind

Some thought there would be an interval to allow US 

personnel to withdraw, but this was by no means a 

certainty, and the Vietnamese who arrived at the embassy harbored no similar hope. In this final section, 

station personnel speculate on the final day of the 

evacuation and who was left behind.

LaGueux: [The] evacuation mainly of Americans, 

first and foremost—that’s what I was focused on.

[The] station and the ambassador had us involved 

in evacuating some people through Air America 

facilities; I was involved in making those arrangements. The destruction of documents was pretty 

well in hand, but it was almost all evacuation.

Shackley: [Colby] took [the position], basically, 

[that] the Americans could withdraw. [The North 

would take Saigon,] but Hanoi would leave us this 

small window of opportunity that we could leave, 

but be humiliated—leave under humiliating circumstances. But then they wouldn’t be stuck with 

all the prisoners and everything else that went.

Evacuees boarded military helicopters, such as this one on the USS Midway, in nearly nonstop waves. The goal was to get as many 

people out as possible. Photo by the US Navy in public domain.
Voice from the Station (April 2015) 11

And, you know, we’d get some Vietnamese out, but 

it certainly wasn’t going to be every Vietnamese 

who worked for us.

Polgar: I can sum [our evacuation plan] up by 

telling you that there was never an agreement on 

how many Vietnamese [we would take]. [We tried 

to take] as many as we could get hold of. Many of 

them we couldn’t get hold of.

When Tan Son Nhut [was] bombed [on 29 

April] . . . the new Minh government declared a total curfew prohibiting all movements on the street.

Vietnamese didn’t dare move out of their homes, 

and that made the problem of concentrating people 

for evacuation earlier just that much more difficult, 

because the people didn’t dare leave their homes.

Did I have a number that I thought could be or 

should be gotten out? I had no such number . . . no 

numbers have ever been assembled or agreed to.

DO Case Officer: We did not get out a lot of the 

agents that the Agency had scattered around the 

country. One of the agents that actually saved my 

husband’s life in 1968 when he was hit by a handgrenade was too far upcountry, and I had no way to 

get him down.

LaGueux: In terms of the blocks of people that 

worked for us . . . the radio people were, as far as I 

know to this day, . . . properly evacuated. They were 

favorites of the Saigon Base, and I think they saw to 

it that those people were evacuated.

Now, the translators came under the supervision 

of the operations staff in the station headquarters, 

in the station office. I think somebody just walked 

away from that problem frankly. If I had had a 

checklist and gone over it, I think it would have 

been pointed out to me, but frankly in that kind of 

a fast-moving situation, I didn’t have a checklist.

That’s one group that I never had that much contact 

with, but I nevertheless knew they existed, and I 

think we left them behind entirely.

Polgar: Originally we had the so-called KIP [key 

indigenous personnel] list. We developed a system 

by which they were issued a special identity card, 

and that identity card was supposed to be your ticket to get through whatever US defensive lines that 

may be established in Saigon. That would be your 

ticket to get on the plane.

But that was completely overtaken by the events, 

and we had far more people to evacuate than we 

ever considered likely before. For example, we 

never considered, say, a clerical employee of the 

base in MR [military region] 2 as a key indigenous 

person. . . . And in the Delta, we sort of completely 

lost control of the situation; the Delta went off on its 

own. [We] got an awful lot of people out, but [the 

Delta] wasn’t part of the Saigon evacuation process.

Those left behind in the frantic final withdrawal faced an uncertain fate.

They included groups for whom the Agency bore some responsibility.

–Roberta S. Knapp, CIA Historian

In their desperation, local Vietnamese used any means of transportation available to leave the country—including riverboats 

and barges. Photo by the US Marine Corps in public domain.
12 Voices from the Station (April 2015)

[As] many had gotten out as circumstances permitted, and more could have been gotten out if the 

president hadn’t arbitrarily terminated the evacuation process around 4:00 a.m. We had thousands of 

people in the embassy compound at that time that 

could not be evacuated.

The barges that were utilized on the afternoon of 

the 29th were an ad hoc arrangement that nobody 

had ever planned. It was an act of desperation 

that miraculously worked. They floated down the 

Mekong River, and they floated out to sea, and the 

Navy picked them up. It was not a planned move.

Very shortly after, Brezhnev met with President 

Ford, and they signed the agreement in Vladivostok, and detente—or reapproachment, whatever 

you want to call it—was in full swing. In the event, 

of course, the North Vietnamese did not interfere 

with the evacuation. They never shot at any of our 

helicopters. They did not shell Saigon, as some 

[information] indicated they had an intention of 

doing. It didn’t happen . . . who knows why?

DO Case Officer: They didn’t mess with us. They 

wanted us to leave.

www

It was still dark when we boarded the helicopter . . . it was probably a halfhour or so before the sun would rise. With the advantage of a little bit of

altitude, I could begin to see the sun coming over the horizon. That’s how it

finally ended.

–Conrad LaGueux