Kissinger was so moved by Matak’s letter that he included it at the conclusion of his April 15 statement to the Senate Appropriations Committee. On April 21 the Khmer Rouge shot or beheaded Matak, and four days later CIA director William Colby told the WSAG that the CIA had “good evidence that the [Cambodian] Communists” had ordered their cadres “to ‘secretly eliminate all senior enemy commanders and those who owe us a blood debt.’ ” Kissinger was probably thinking of Matak, and of himself, when he told his staff, “I think people are going to feel badly when it’s over. I don’t think there would be many heroes left in this.”
By the third week of April, Kissinger was beginning to recognize that it was not enough to “make a show” of trying to save at-risk Vietnamese, as he had told Ben Bradlee on April 9, and that his peace of mind and place in history might depend on whether he avoided a bloodbath in South Vietnam, and if not, how many Vietnamese he saved from it. His ability to accomplish that might rest on how adeptly he handled the prickly Graham Martin and how successfully he resisted pressure from Capitol Hill and the Pentagon to evacuate only Americans. And so throughout the second half of April he pushed Martin to comply with the Pentagon’s evacuation targets for Americans, but did not push him too hard. He pushed back against General Brown and Schlesinger, who were demanding an immediate evacuation of the remaining Americans, but not too much. He sent tough-sounding cables to Martin demanding that he meet various evacuation targets for American evacuees, but then accepted Martin’s repeated failure to meet these targets with a surprising degree of tolerance and equanimity. Several times during these final weeks he said or wrote that he hoped for what he called a “controlled situation” in South Vietnam. By this he meant a slow-motion negotiated surrender by South Vietnam that would avoid an American humiliation, provide time to evacuate South Vietnamese allies wishing to leave, and avoid the kind of bloodbath that had claimed the lives of Matak and other Cambodian political and military leaders. If Kissinger’s “controlled situation” occurred, it would be his second decent interval and would require a skeleton staff of Americans at the embassy and other U.S. agencies who could participate in negotiations and facilitate a final and orderly evacuation.
Schlesinger pushed back against Kissinger’s endgame strategy by planting an article in The New York Times designed to increase the pressure on him for an immediate and total evacuation of Americans. It began, “Defense Department officials concluded today that the situation in South Vietnam was deteriorating so rapidly that the United States must plan on the immediate evacuation of all Americans and their dependents,” and reported that in “urgent” White House discussions Secretary of State Kissinger was “opposing proposals for complete evacuation of the 2800 Americans and 1200 Vietnamese dependents [of Americans] still in Saigon.” It added that President Ford had said that no plans had been developed for the large-scale evacuation of Vietnamese.
Kissinger complained about the article to Deputy Secretary of Defense William Clements, remarking sarcastically that the gist of it had been that “Defense wishes total evacuation, but that son of a bitch Kissinger, who is thinking of national honor and dignity of the United States, won’t permit it.” He added, “You guys over there really ought to be ashamed of yourselves. I’m trying to leave [us] a little self-respect.” He asked Clements if he did not think they all had a duty to “honor the sacrifice” of Americans killed in the war and avoid “the disgrace of the United States of packing up and leaving everybody.” Clements said that he agreed with him, and Kissinger conceded that his anger was really directed at Schlesinger.
As the April 14 meeting between the president and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was ending, Senator Javits had voiced a suspicion shared by other senators that Ambassador Martin had become a loose cannon, telling Kissinger, “We think you should be sure through someone other than Martin that your orders are being carried out.”
Kissinger cabled Martin afterward, “It was apparent from that meeting that their full concern is with the evacuation of Americans….In light of the situation we are facing here, I simply must have by the close of business Washington time on Tuesday [April 15], a detailed plan for reduction [of the Americans] in as expeditious manner as possible.” Martin failed to execute this order, as he would future ones from Kissinger and Scowcroft directing him to reduce the number of Americans.
The timing and urgency of evacuating Americans dominated many of the communications between Martin and Kissinger. On April 10, Kissinger had ordered him to reduce the number of Americans to those who could be evacuated in a single lift. After acknowledging Martin’s “strong views” against reducing U.S. personnel, he said, “But I want you to know that the order for the immediate reduction comes personally from the President.” He added, “He [Ford] feels very strongly about this” and “on this one there is now no more flexibility.”
Martin replied the next day that he had “strong views” that a rapid drawdown of Americans would be “detrimental to U.S. policy” and would guarantee “that some of our Americans were killed in the wholly unnecessary panic which would have ensued.” A day after that, he cabled Scowcroft that because he was confident that he could “anticipate events with sufficient precision to at least stay ahead of the point where there would be serious danger to American lives…in order to keep the Mission going, I will not reduce to exactly 1250….I shall not rpt [repeat] not so inform [State] in order to keep pressure on to get some decisions out of Potomac Debating Society Department [that is, the State Department].”
Following the meeting with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 14, Kissinger informed Martin that “the U.S. political situation will not permit withdrawals at the rates you propose” and that because the issue of the number of U.S. citizens and dependents in South Vietnam was “rapidly becoming the focal point of congressional debate on the President’s request for military and economic assistance to Viet-Nam,” he must accelerate his schedule for the evacuation of American citizens and submit a proposal to reduce their number to two thousand by close of business (COB) on April 18, Washington, D.C., time.
Martin ignored Kissinger’s request. The next day Kissinger pushed back the deadline, demanding that he reduce the Americans to eleven hundred by COB on Tuesday, April 22. Martin ignored him again, leading Ford to complain about Martin’s practice of constantly increasing the number of Americans remaining in South Vietnam and to tell Kissinger, “He always ends up higher. I don’t like that.”
Kissinger replied, “I agree. He has not carried out orders.” Even so, Kissinger did not push him very hard to obey those orders.
In a back-channel cable to Kissinger, Martin complained about being “hounded” to reduce the number of U.S. citizens, writing, “My situation reminds me of the chap who has his staff progressively removed, yet his national HQ supervisor demanded more and more. Then he got a cable saying his supervisor had been informed the office was dirty. The local man called back, and asked how the hell he could do all that and keep his office clean too. Back came a cable suggesting that he stick a broom up his ass so he could sweep up the office as he went about the rest of his duties.”
After recounting this fable, he asked permission to ignore Kissinger’s cables concerning the number of remaining Americans so he could “work on reporting the substantive issues which are of vastly more importance.” He concluded by criticizing Kissinger for failing to make preparations to receive the increasingly large numbers of Vietnamese refugees who were reaching the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island, suggesting that “it would be helpful if a bit more of your attention was focused on that end.” Several hours later he cabled, “I have an exhausted staff and I am not repeat not going to reduce the U.S. government side, either direct hire or contractors, any more as long as you want us to continue the airlift.” He ended, “I think we have really come to the end of the road on any further pressure on us here about the American community.”
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To read Martin’s insubordinate cables to Kissinger is to understand why Secretary of State Dean Rusk recalled him from Bangkok in 1967. He had defied Rusk then for some of the same reasons that he was defying Kissinger and Schlesinger now: because he believed that his experience as an intelligence officer gave him a superior understanding of military affairs and that he had a duty to resist orders that he considered inimical to U.S. interests and the safety of his staff. He expressed this in an April 15 cable to Kissinger, telling him, “There are only two important considerations I keep in mind, the safety of the people under my charge and the integrity of U.S. policy.” He added, “The relatively few people about whose opinions I really care will not change their opinions of me. Even the sly, anonymous insertion of the perfumed icepick into the kidneys in the form of quotes from my colleagues in the [State] Department are only a peculiar form of acupuncture indigenous to Foggy Bottom [the State Department] against which I was immunized long ago.”
He reassured Kissinger that he was “leaning over backward” to be “a dispassionate observer viewing Vietnam as from a seat on the moon.” He reminded him that while some in the U.S. mission were sending out their dependents and shipping their possessions home, he was not, adding that “the most calming influence in Saigon is my wife who goes about her regular way, making appointments for weeks in advance, and who has refused to pack anything at all although we would hate like hell to lose our most valued possessions.”
His defiance of Kissinger’s orders complicated their already tricky relationship. Martin was a decade older and considered himself more knowledgeable and experienced in military and diplomatic affairs. Kissinger claimed to admire Martin’s intellect and toughness but told Ford and Scowcroft that he worried he was becoming unhinged and sometimes referred to him as “the Madman,” saying, for example, “I talked to the Madman.”
Kissinger pursued a strategy of flattering Martin in cables and meetings while in private questioning his stability. During a conversation with Scowcroft and Ford on April 8, he said, “We have two nutty ambassadors. Dean [John Gunther Dean, U.S. ambassador to Cambodia] wants to bug out. Martin wants a new version of the Easter Rebellion [the Irish Republicans’ revolt against British rule]. He is supporting Thieu too strongly.” He praised Martin as “a gutsy guy” but said he was “heading for a debacle” and criticized him for failing to plan for an evacuation. As the end neared, he feared that Martin might emulate “Chinese Gordon,” the British military officer and adventurer whose courageous but foolhardy defiance of orders to evacuate the last group of British officers and civilians from Khartoum during the Mahdist revolt in 1885 had led to a yearlong siege culminating in their massacre and his heroic death. Kissinger compared Martin to Gordon several times in April, telling Senator Ted Kennedy, “Our problem is to prevent panic at the other end [South Vietnam] and we have an Ambassador there who might like to go out like Chinese Gordon but I cannot say that publicly.”
Among Martin’s contributions to the impression that he was becoming “nutty” was his April 9 cable proposing a campaign to persuade American businessmen to invest in South Vietnam. It was said to “jar” Ford, according to an article in The New Republic, and prompt others in his administration “to wonder if Martin was in possession of his faculties.” Also contributing to the impression that Martin had lost touch with reality was the cable he sent to James Akins, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, asking him to use his “finesse” to persuade the Saudi government to extend a billion-dollar loan to South Vietnam. He called the loan “a good bet” for the Saudis and argued that the lost provinces in the North had been “an economic drain” on South Vietnam and that what remained was “the economic heartland,” a region that could be “economically viable in a very short time.”
It was too late to recall Martin, so Kissinger defended him, particularly when Schlesinger was on the attack. During a conversation with Ford on April 18, Kissinger praised him as “a noble American” for “trying to hold things together and get people out.” He came to his defense again at a meeting the next day, telling Schlesinger, General Brown, and others that Martin was getting as much flack in Washington as he was, adding, “I told him that the only difference between us is that they will hang him a little lower than they hang me.” When Schlesinger criticized one of Martin’s insubordinate cables as “a rather obnoxious, flamboyant telegram” and asked Kissinger to respond with “a stern cable,” Kissinger shot back, “Look, Graham gets lots of abuse. He doesn’t need any more from here….I think he’s doing a good job under the circumstances.”
He reported this exchange back to Martin, telling him, “You may think I am perpetually harassing you. However, when you get back here you will find that the record shows that I defended you and your approach without exception. I continue to believe you are playing a heroic and patriotic role.”
Martin responded, “I don’t think you are perpetually harassing me,” adding, “I think we can keep under control both the Washington mattress mice and the situation here. Sometimes, it is a bit like an Algerian egg dance, but so far I haven’t broken any yet.”
During Kissinger’s congressional testimony on April 18, Representative Don Fraser (D-Minn.) told him that many on Capitol Hill lacked confidence in Martin “based on our experiences with him.” Although Martin had spent the previous week refusing Kissinger’s orders to reduce the American community in South Vietnam, Kissinger loyally praised him as “a disciplined Foreign Service officer who will carry out his instructions with great competence.” He also argued, more truthfully, that for the United States to recall its ambassador at the same time that President Thieu was replaced, as many people were recommending, “is not the best way to maintain a controlled situation.”
Instead of threatening Martin, Kissinger suggested to him they were allies, both battling the State Department mattress mice while trying to honor America’s responsibility to the South Vietnamese. He praised Martin for handling the tumult in Saigon as admirably as a “field commander” and “playing a heroic and patriotic role.”
Meanwhile, Martin was bombarding Kissinger, Scowcroft, and the State Department with a stream of assessments and predictions that would prove to be spectacularly wrong.
He reminded Kissinger’s deputy Brent Scowcroft that he had been “watching our friends in Hanoi with a certain intensity since 1936” and argued that because “for three decades they have tried to avoid the image of naked military power,” it was “not in their character to make an immediate smash at Saigon.”
He insisted that the South Vietnamese Army was “eager for revenge” and could “surprise the hell” out of the pessimists in Congress who had voted against additional military aid.
He told Kissinger in mid-April that “panic in Saigon arising from our actions in Washington…is a far greater worry to me than North Vietnamese capabilities.” And on April 25, five days before South Vietnam’s unconditional surrender, he cabled Kissinger, “We will have the appearance of a legal transfer [of power]” resulting in “the preservation of stability in Saigon,” and boasted that “events have validated what I have felt all along—that…we could really count on the DRV [Democratic Republic of Vietnam—that is, the North] desire for a peaceful evolution…to avoid [a] massive attack on Saigon.”
CHAPTER 10
“No Guarantees!”
The circuitous journey bringing CBS Saigon bureau chief Brian Ellis from England to Saigon was not that unusual for a restless young man during the 1960s. After serving in the Royal Air Force he had roamed through Africa, the Middle East, and North and South America before following his English girlfriend to Florida and marrying her. He began as a cub reporter in West Palm Beach, started a newspaper in the Bahamas, joined the staff of the CBS Miami affiliate, and was promoted to the network’s Atlanta bureau chief before being transferred to Saigon as bureau chief in 1972.
He was the kind of matey and gregarious
Englishman who makes friends easily, and he quickly became devoted to his twenty Vietnamese translators, cameramen, reporters, and fixers, and they to him. They invited him to their homes, fussed over him, and risked their lives for him. When he was racked with pain from a kidney stone after spending weeks behind Vietcong lines, soundman Mai Van Duc tracked him down to a remote coastal town and chartered a plane to evacuate him to Saigon. Soundman Doan Van Hai mothered him, insisting that he fortify himself with a large bowl of pho, the popular Vietnamese noodle soup, before heading to a battlefield. His secretary, Miss Pham Thi Yen, was so intelligent and hardworking that he trusted her to speak for him and make decisions in his absence. The softhearted Nguyen T. Nguyen persuaded him to film stories in Saigon’s orphanages, leading him and his wife to adopt a malnourished girl.
He woke in his room at the Hotel Continental on March 31 to hear an account on the radio of Da Nang’s horrific last hours. He promised himself that he would evacuate Duc, Hai, Yen, Nguyen, and the others before a similar anarchy gripped Saigon, sparing them whatever punishment the Communists were planning for class enemies who had worked for an American news agency and from what he had experienced during the Blitz. His father had been overseas with the British army, and his mother had raised him and his brother while serving as an air raid warden in Canterbury, England. When the sirens wailed, she dashed to work, and Ellis and his brother ran to a bomb shelter.
He asked his contacts at the embassy if they could include his employees and their families in the official U.S. evacuation; they replied that Ambassador Martin was discouraging evacuation planning. He asked if his American personnel should consider leaving; they said, “That’s something you yourself need to decide.” He asked how he should evacuate his high-risk Vietnamese; they said, “Legally.”
Honorable Exit Page 18
