In My Time - Dick Cheney [43]
Rockefeller let loose on me only once, later on at the 1976 Republican National Convention, after the sound system had mysteriously gone dead in the middle of his speech. Protocol issues earlier in the week—debates about whether it should be Rocky, the sitting vice president, or Bob Dole, the running mate, who joined Ford onstage after his acceptance speech—had left him feeling slighted one too many times. On the final night he spotted me in the corridor beneath the rostrum and saw a fitting target for all his frustrations. He leaned in close and really let me have it, even accusing me of sabotaging his speech. I took my verbal pounding, assured the vice president of my innocence, and got out of there as fast as I could.
A FEW DAYS BEFORE Christmas in 1974, the New York Times ran a front-page story reporting that the Central Intelligence Agency had engaged in illegal operations inside the United States, including placing wiretaps on American citizens and journalists. Within a matter of weeks, the Senate (the Church Committee) and the House (the Pike Committee) and the White House (the Rockefeller Commission) had all launched inquiries into the CIA’s activities.
Jack Marsh kept me apprised of the Rockefeller Commission’s progress and the work of the two committees on the Hill. The president was often irate about the congressional committees—and with good cause. At times their sensational proceedings seemed sure to cripple America’s intelligence capacity, if not destroy it. In the end, the result of the various CIA investigations was the disclosure of many unsavory activities that had taken place in the past, the correction of some very serious abuses that were still being committed, and a regularized procedure for congressional oversight that in ten years I would find myself a part of.
By the time President Ford came into office, the United States was unwinding its commitment in Vietnam. The Paris Peace Accords had been signed in January 1973 and American combat forces had been removed. The South Vietnamese government had been promised economic assistance to build up its defense forces, as well as renewed U.S. military action if the North Vietnamese violated the terms of the peace.
The violations began almost before the ink was dry and slowly continued, until at the beginning of 1975 the North Vietnamese had sent some three hundred thousand troops into South Vietnam and seized control of fourteen provinces. By the beginning of April, they were in a position to conduct a strike on Saigon. President Nixon had given his assurance that the U.S. would help the South Vietnamese resist a renewed enemy attack, but the antiwar forces in both houses of Congress were able to cut off funding that would have been necessary to support—or save—our South Vietnamese ally.
Faced with the lack of funds, President Ford could do nothing but evacuate, first from Cambodia, which fell on April 17, 1975, and then from Saigon. The night of April 28, when President Ford ordered the final evacuation of Saigon, I was at the White House. While the dramatic news footage kept the focus on the thousands of Americans and Vietnamese we were airlifting by helicopter off the roof of the American Embassy, I found it impossible to ignore the fact that we were leaving tens of thousands of Vietnamese who had cast their lot with us.
After that final unraveling, there was debate in the White House over what was left to be said about the conflict, and Ford’s instinct, as with the pardon after Watergate, was to let go of the past and find a way to bring the people and the country forward. In a speech at Tulane University in April, he declared the war “finished as far as America is concerned.” I was with him in New Orleans that night. I remember distinctly that when he spoke those words, some people in the audience wanted to cry and some wanted to cheer, but there was an unmistakable sense of relief for all of us that transcended one’s view of the war. Indeed, even for me, and I had supported the effort, hearing