Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [112]
After Kissinger completed his memoir of the Ford administration in 1999, he sent me a copy of his book. The inscription was a perfect summation of our relationship: “To Don Rumsfeld, an occasional adversary and a permanent friend.”
When I returned to government service in 2001, I invited Henry to join the Defense Policy Board. He was routinely involved in advising me on national security issues. I also arranged for him to be able to meet regularly and privately with President Bush.
But Kissinger and I had never worked as closely together as we did in the final year of President Ford’s administration as the secretaries of state and defense. Though our perspectives varied, sometimes sharply, together we helped the President manage a Cold War, hold a resolute stance against Communist aggression, and work to rebuild America’s defenses and standing after our country’s withdrawal from Vietnam.
CHAPTER 14
Unfinished Business
I was still serving as White House chief of staff on April 29, 1975, when America’s long and vexing involvement in Vietnam came to a close. A few weeks earlier President Ford had implored the Democratic-controlled Congress to authorize aid to our ally, the beleaguered South Vietnamese. He and Kissinger hoped the funds could bolster the South enough so it could arrange some sort of a truce with the North Vietnamese.
But the U.S. Congress had had enough of Vietnam.
When Ford heard that Congress had rejected his request, he was furious. “Those bastards,” he snapped.1 An evacuation of all of our forces was now inevitable.
Vietnam was the first war in our history that the American people were able to watch unfold on television. That fact made a big difference. As such, we were all witnesses to the heartbreaking scene of U.S. forces executing a humiliating exit while our Vietnamese allies of more than a decade of war faced an uncertain future at the hands of the triumphant Viet Cong and North Vietnamese.
Throughout that long, sad day, I was with President Ford at the White House as he monitored the withdrawal. The American ambassador to Vietnam, Graham Martin, updated us on the number of Americans still waiting to evacuate, as well as the number of Vietnamese clamoring to leave. The second number kept growing.
Many of the Vietnamese who had worked with our forces were understandably desperate to flee from the advancing Northern forces, making use of rafts, small boats, whatever they could find to escape. When our Marines temporarily opened the gates to the embassy in Saigon, thousands of local citizens tried to force their way in, only to be physically pushed back. Martin and his team understandably found it difficult to turn our Vietnamese allies away.2 As Martin’s wife departed by helicopter, she reportedly abandoned her suitcase so that space could be made for one more South Vietnamese woman to squeeze onboard.
Eventually it was decided that only American citizens could be airlifted in the short time remaining. The indelible image from that day is the heartbreaking photograph of desperate Vietnamese at a building across from the American embassy, trying to crowd aboard a helicopter departing from its roof. Those who had helped America during the war knew what was coming for them. It was an ignominious retreat for the world’s leading superpower.
David Kennerly, the White House photographer who had earned a Pulitzer Prize for his Vietnam War photography and understood the power of images as well as anyone, put it succinctly to those of us gathered in the Oval Office with the President that day. “The good news is the war is over,” he said. “The bad news is we lost.”3
Secretary of State Kissinger believed that Ambassador Martin would be the last American to leave the country.4 After word was received that Martin had been airlifted out of the South Vietnamese capital,