THE END OF THE GAME

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000200970002-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: April 28, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000200970002-5
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BOSTON GLOBE
28 April, 1985
SHE END OF THE GAME
he collapse of South Viet-,
nam, so often discussed, pre-
dicted, yet always averted,
arrived unexpectedly in late
April 1975.
North Vietnamese regulars struck
hard in the Central Highlands during ear-
Iv March. Banmethout fell easily on the
10th, and President. Nguyen Van Thieu
ordered a complete withdrawal to the
coast: Saigon mattered, not the north.
But nothing had been prepared; neither
key officers nor the Americans were con-
sulted: some commanders abandoned
their men; soldiers deserted to save their
families; refugees clogged the roads: and
the Communists attacked from the
flanks.
In 1972, American advisers and air-
power had helped repel a Communist of-
fensive; now they were gone. Discipline
and cohesion vanished in 1975, with the
stampeding army disintegrating into a
mob, as had the Italians in 1917 and the
French in 1940. The ARVN troopers
spread panic around them. brawling and
pillaging, infecting fresh units, and fight-
ing only to board planes for Saigon. Hue
fell on the March 25, Danang on the 30th,
and Camranh Bay on April 4, as the
country was rolled up from the north.
Only during mid-April did ARVN units
fight well northeast of Saigon, but they
were too few.
Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital,
fell on April 17, the Americans having
fled by helicopter. Cambodia had been
sucked into the war since 1970 by outsid-
ers - the United States included - to
whom it meant little. Now the Khmer
Rouge took over, eager to smash the old
i order.
Saigon itself was panicking by mid-
April. The Americans had been in South
Vietnam politically for 21 years. militari-
lv for 10; now they were leaving within
days. Power, the ultimate aphrodisiac in,
an autocracy, had gained them thou-
sands of friends, admirers, agents, politi-
cal proteges, female camp followers, em-
plovees past and present. Historians
write of "the great fear" that swept
France in 1789: fear also terrified these
Americanized Vietnamese (though the
predicted Communist bloodbath - as op-
posed to systematic repression - never
materialized).
Cash and contacts became decisive, as
deals were struck everywhere. Many offi-
cials made a killing selling documents,
and some Americans joined in to sponsor
refugees - for a price. After resigning,
Thieu was unobtrusively escorted to Tan
Son Nhut airport by armed CIA men and
by aides bearing huge suitcases from
which, Frank Snepp has written, "the
clink of metal on metal broke through the
stillness like muffled wind chimes." The
flamboyant airman, Nguyen Cao Ky.
spent the month plotting against Thieu
before helicoptering away at the end. The
bloated machinery of American power,
only partially dismantled since 1973,
was crumbling overnight, with the incin-
erators working incessantly and lines of
people snaking toward the planes.
Still, for Saigon to leave the Western
orbit, as Shanghai had in 1949 and Ha-
noi in 1954, and as Tehran and Beirut
were eventually to do, seemed unthink-
able. Ambassador Graham Martin, argu-
ing that Vietnamese morale depended on
the American presence, dragged his feet:
his wife stayed until the end. The CIA sta-
tion chief. Thomas Polgar. trained in the
Agency tradition of deals. fixes and bar-
gains. could not realize that Hanoi held
all the cards. In Washington, Henry Kis-
singer and Gerald Ford were more con-
cerned with shifting the blame to Con-
gress (whose cuts in aid to Saigon still left
very large military stockpiles), than in
stirring a public outcry by sending the
B52s against Hanoi.
With Kissinger's stratagems rendered
irrelevant, the helicopters were sent in to
pluck frightened people from Saigon roof-
tops while the unlucky raged in the
streets below.
- LEONARD BUSHKOFF
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000200970002-5