Tom Glenn's Blog, page 180

April 1975 in Vietnam (19)

As the North Vietnamese assault on Saigon continued, Bob, Gary, and I hunkered down in our comms center. Shelling of the compound made the room lurch from side to side. I telephoned the embassy. “The evacuation has been declared. Get us out of here!”

The lady I talked to was polite, even gracious. She explained to me, as one does to child, that the embassy could do nothing for us. We were too far away—four miles—and, although I probably didn’t know it, the people in the streets were rioting. Of course I knew it; I could see them. I uttered an unprintable curse. She responded, “You’re welcome.”

By that time, the Marines from the 7th Fleet had landed. I tracked down Al Gray and asked if he could evacuate us with his guys when he withdrew. He reassured me he would.

We got word that armed South Vietnamese air force officers had forced their way into the building and were on the loose, demanding evacuation at gun point. Offices were to be emptied and locked. We were to proceed at once to the evacuation staging area, an office the Marines had secured. We sent our last message announcing we were closing down. It was a personal message from me to my boss, General Lew Allen, Director of NSA:

HAVE JUST RECEIVED WORD TO EVACUATE. AM NOW DESTROYING REMAINING CLASSIFIED MATERIAL. WILL CEASE TRANSMISSIONS IMMEDIATELY AFTER THIS MESSAGE.
WE’RE TIRED BUT OTHERWISE ALL RIGHT. LOOKS LIKE THE BATTLE FOR SAIGON IS ON FOR REAL.
FROM GLENN: I COMMEND TO YOU MY PEOPLE WHO DESERVE THE BEST NSA CAN GIVE THEM FOR WHAT THEY HAVE BEEN THROUGH BUT ESPECIALLY FOR WHAT THEY HAVE ACHIEVED.

Even though the it was a by-name personal message, I still began the third paragraph with the words “FROM GLENN.” I wanted to be sure General Allen knew it was me speaking.

More tomorrow.

April 1975 in Vietnam (18)

Continuing my iteration of events during the fall of Saigon 43 years ago in April 1975:

The air attacks on the runways of Tan Son Nhat the evening of 28 April were just the beginning. We were bombarded throughout the night and much of the following day—first rockets, then beginning around 0430 hours local on 29 April, the artillery shelling started. One C-130 on the runway next to us was hit before it could airlift out refugees; two others took off empty. Fixed-wing airlifts were at an end. Rounds landed inside the DAO compound; the General’s Quarters next door blew up. Worst of all, two of the Marines I had been talking to at our gate were killed. Their names were McMahon and Judge. They were the last American fighting men killed on the ground in Vietnam.

One image I’ll never forget: sometime during the night I was on my cot taking my two-hour rest break when the next bombardments started. I sat straight up and watched the room lurch. Bob was typing a message telling the world we were under attack at a machine that rose a foot in the air, then slammed back into place. Bob never stopped typing.

Just after that, we got word that FREQUENT WIND PHASE IV had been declared. That was the code name for the evacuation. It had finally been ordered from Washington, countermanding the ambassador.

We gave up trying to rest. The air in the comms center, the only room we were still using, was faintly misty and smelled of smoke, as if a gasoline fire was raging nearby. After daylight, I got a call from the Vietnamese officer I’d visited a few days before. He wanted to know where his boss, the general, was. He’d tried to telephone the general but got no answer. I dialed the general’s number with the same result. I found out much later that the general had somehow made it from his office to the embassy and got over the wall. He was evacuated safely while his men stayed at their posts awaiting orders from him. They were still there waiting when the North Vietnamese attacked them.

More tomorrow.

April 1975 in Vietnam (17)

Continuing the story of what happened when Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese in April 1975:

As I reported earlier, I’d gotten 41 of my subordinates and their families out of the country by lying, cheating, and faking, despite the ambassador’s edict forbidding evacuations. By 27 April, only three of us were left. We knew we had to stay to the end. We had almost nothing to eat, and we didn’t dare sleep.

Partly to stay awake, I maintained my schedule of recon runs, checking out the parking lot and the perimeter of the DAO building where Bob and Gary and I were holed up. I wanted to know ahead of time before the North Vietnamese broke through the fence. I got chummy with the snuffs at the gate closest to the building exit I used. Unlike most of the Marines, these guys were willing to fill me in on any new scuttlebutt. Among other things, they told me that people in the mobs outside the fence were tossing babies into the compound, hoping they’d survive and escape the Communists. The babies that made it over the top of the compound fence fell to the pavement inside and were killed because there was no one there to catch them. Most of the infants didn’t make it over the top—the fence was something like two stories high with barbed wire and an outward tilt at the top to prevent scalers. Many of the babies bounced on the fence, fell to the ground, and were killed.

Not long before sunset on 28 April, I made a head run. The mammoth DAO building—“Pentagon East,” as we called it—was in shambles. Light bulbs were burned out, trash and broken furniture littered the halls, and the latrines were filthy and smelled disgusting. I came across men on stepladders running cables through the ceiling. They told me they were wiring the building for complete destruction. “Last man out lights the fuse and runs like hell,” they joked.

I went into the men’s room. I was standing at the urinal when the wall in front of me lunged toward me as if to swat me down, then slapped back into place. The sound of repeated explosions deafened me, and the jolts nearly knocked me off my feet. Instead of sensibly taking cover, I left the men’s room and went to the closest exit at the end of a hall, unbolted the door, and stepped into the shallow area between the western wall of the building and the security fence, a space of maybe ten to fifteen feet, now piled high with sandbags to protect us from shrapnel.

The first thing I noticed was that the throngs of refugees had dispersed—no one was clamoring outside the barrier—presumably frightened away by the explosions. My ears picked up the whine of turbojets. I shaded my eyes from the setting sun and spotted five A-37 Dragonfly fighters circling above the Tan Son Nhat runways. They dove, dropped bombs, and pulled up. The resulting concussions slammed me to the pavement, but I was on my feet and running before the planes went into their next approach. Back in the office, we got in a dispatch telling us that renegade South Vietnamese Air Force pilots who had defected to the Communists were bombing Tan Son Nhat.

More tomorrow.

April 1975 in Vietnam (16)

More about the last days in Saigon in April 1975:

Despite the ambassador’s prohibition on evacuation, I managed to get 41 of my subordinates and their families out by dint of lying, cheating, and faking. I had what was left of my personnel shop determine where they could get airline tickets to immediately, then book flights out for my people and their families. I justified government funds for the travel as annual leave, home leave, or business travel—what we called “TDY,” meaning “temporary duty. At first my personnel guys balked. They pointed out to me that sending someone out for annual leave, then not charging them for annual leave violated regulations. They said that dispatching someone to New Delhi, for example, on business travel was illegal—we had no business connections in India. I ordered them to do it anyway. As they came to understand that Saigon was unquestionably about to fall, they became as adept at faking the justifications as I was. Finally, they booked themselves out. After the last of them had left, I bought an airline ticket with money from my own pocket, and with no orders or justification, put one of my guys on the plane and told him to go. That turned out to be the last Pan Am flight out of Saigon.

By 27 April we were down to just the three of us, me and my two communicators, Bob and Gary. We locked all the offices in our suite, and I moved my cot and .38 revolver into the comms center. We hadn’t slept through the night for longer than we could remember. Our diet consisted of bar snacks we’d scrounged from a hotel before the mobs surrounding our compound made it impossible to get out. I found out that Vienna sausages were edible cold straight from the can and that mustard on pickle relish, if eaten in quantity, could stave off severe hunger. Granted, I developed bowel problems, but my guess at the time was that it was due less to the food than to stress. I was later diagnosed with amoebic dysentery.

Coffee we had aplenty—Bob and Gary had seen to that—and I’d made sure I wouldn’t run out if cigarettes. From then on it was coffee by the gallon, chain smoking, almost nothing to eat, and no sleep. We established a regimen: one guy took a two-hour rest break while the other two worked.

Then a series of messages I’ll never forget flowed in. They asked me to get children out of the country. The requests were from American men who had fathered kids with Vietnamese women and wanted to save them. I shuddered to think what might happen to Amerasian youngsters when the Communists took over. But it was too late. I had no vehicle and couldn’t even get out of the compound—now surrounded by panicky crowds ten to fifteen people deep anxious for escape—much less to the addresses the children’s fathers gave me. To this day, I don’t know how the senders managed to get messages to me.

More tomorrow.

April 1975 in Vietnam (15)

More on the happenings 43 years ago, in April 1975, during the fall of Saigon:

The Ambassador was doing everything he could to throw roadblocks in the way of Colonel Al Gray and his Marines flying in daily from ships of the U.S. 7th Fleet cruising in the South China Sea to prepare for the evacuation of Saigon. He wouldn’t allow Al’s Marines to dress in uniform, fly their own helicopters into the country, or stay overnight. So Al and his troops, in civilian clothes, had to fly in and out each day on Air America slicks, the little Hueys, the UH-1 choppers that could only carry eight to fourteen people. Al’s form of protest against the Ambassador’s restrictions were his wild Hawaiian shirt—colors so bright they hurt my eyes—shorts, and flip-flops

It didn’t matter. Ambassador or no Ambassador, the Marines had landed. They’d be ready for the evacuation the instant it was ordered.

During my next daylight recon of the compound, I saw 55-gallon drums ranged along the perimeter fence. I asked one of Al’s buzzcuts why they were there. He said the drums were filled with combustible material, probably gasoline, and wired: if the North Vietnamese penetrated the perimeter, the barrels would be detonated to wipe them out.

Another tour of the parking lot took me into a surreal world. Marines and civilians were cramming cars, my small white sedan among them, onto the side of the building by driving them into one another so that they formed a compacted mass. That done, the drivers turned their attention to the half-dozen cars still in the parking lot, large black sedans (including mine) and one jeep. These they used as ramming devices, crushing the heap of cars more tightly together. Then they turned the now-mangled sedans on the tennis courts. Again and again, they backed their vehicles to the perimeter and burned rubber to smash into the poles holding the fence around the courts until they tore out of the pavement. Next they used the cars as battering rams, flattening the nets and court fencing against the building. Lastly, they ground the vehicles they were driving into the jumble of mashed automobiles. The area between the fence and the wall of the building was now clear.

It dawned on me what was going on. The small Air America slicks, bringing the Marines in from the 7th Fleet, had been able to get into and out of the compound one at a time, without hitting parked cars or the tennis courts, but the much larger Marine CH-53’s—each could carry 55 troops loaded for combat—needed more unobstructed space, especially if two or three were in the compound at the same time. One more obstacle to our escape had been removed.

April 1975 in Vietnam (14)

Continuing my narrative about what happened in Saigon in April 1975:

During the night of 26 April, I was trying unsuccessfully to get some sleep in my office at Tan Son Nhat, on the northern edge of Saigon, when a blast threw me from my cot and slammed me to the floor. I ran to the comms center. The guys looked dazed, but everything was working and nobody was hurt. A bulletin arrived within minutes telling us that North Vietnamese sappers had blown up the ammo dump at Bien Hoa, just north of us. That meant, among other things, that panic in the streets would ramp up a couple of notches.

I started doing regular physical recons of the DAO building, that huge structure we called “Pentagon East” where our offices were located and where we were now sleeping. Sometimes I took out a load of burnbags to the incinerator in the parking lot and burned them; other times I just wandered around. I wanted to be sure I knew beforehand if the North Vietnamese were going to breach the perimeter fence. As I walked the halls and crisscrossed the compound, I saw brawny young American men with skinhead haircuts who had appeared out of nowhere. They were dressed in tank tops or tee-shirts, shorts, and tennis shoes. When two or three walked together, they fell into step, as if marching.

Marines in mufti! I knew all the Marines in country, and I didn’t recognize any of these guys. What the hell was going on?

I found out the next day. I was again trying to grab a little much-needed sleep in my office. The door chime sounded. I grasped my .38 and went to the door. Through the peephole I saw a middle-aged American man in a neon Hawaiian shirt, shorts, and rubber flip-flops. He gave me a flat-handed wave and a silly grin. It was Colonel Al Gray, a Marine officer I’d worked with over the years in Vietnam. I’d never before seen Al out of uniform—I didn’t think he owned any civies—and I knew he made it an iron-clad rule never to spend more than 24 hours in Saigon—his work was with his troops in the field and he disliked bureaucracy. I lowered the .38 and opened the door. “Hi,” he said. “Can I come in?”

In my office, I told him everything I knew about the military situation, but he knew more than I did. What he didn’t know in detail was what was going on with the friendlies. I told him about the unruly, desperate crowds jamming the streets and now ten to fifteen people deep outside the perimeter fence of our compound and my worry that the fence might not hold. He explained to me that he’d been named the Ground Security Officer—the man in charge—for the evacuation of Saigon once it was ordered.

More tomorrow.

April 1975 in Vietnam (13)

More on what happened 43 years ago, in April 1975, in Saigon:

I reported earlier on my attempts to help families to escape. I also tried and failed to evacuate a South Vietnamese officer and his family. Each of those efforts required me to drive through the streets of the city, now overwhelmed by mobs of refugees.

I had ahead of me one more foray through the throngs in the streets. I got through the hordes to the embassy and pleaded with the Ambassador to evacuate everybody as soon as possible, citing signals intelligence evidence that a North Vietnamese assault on the city was imminent. I repeated what I’d been reporting to him hourly, that Saigon was surrounded by sixteen to eighteen North Vietnamese divisions, poised to strike. Communist troops less than two kilometers north of my office at the airport were awaiting the command to attack.

The Ambassador put his arm around my shoulder and guided me to the door. “Young man, when you’re older, you’ll understand these things better.” He showed me out.

Frantic, I went down the hall to the office of the CIA Chief of Station, Tom Polgar. He laughed at my frenzy and showed me a cable to Washington the Ambassador had released that morning. It stated that forecasts of a forthcoming assault on Saigon could be disregarded. It was all due to the Communists’ skillful use of “communications deception.” Stunned, I asked Tom what evidence the ambassador had of communications deception. He waved my question away and bet me a bottle of champagne, chateau and vintage of my choice, that he and I would both still be in Saigon a year hence, still at our desks, still doing business as usual.

Even though I ran into him months later in the Washington, Tom Polgar never made good on that bet.

I finally understood what was going on. The embassy was a victim of what sociologists now call Groupthink Syndrome—firm ideology, immune to fact, shared by all members of a coterie. The Ambassador, and therefore his subordinates, could not countenance the prospect of a Communist South Vietnam and therefore dismissed evidence of the coming disaster. Graham Martin later told Congress he had been advised by the Hungarian member of the International Commission of Control and Supervision, the ICCS, that the North Vietnamese had no intention of conquering Saigon; they wished to form a coalition government with “all patriotic forces in the south.” This from a representative of a Communist government allied to North Vietnam. And the Ambassador believed him in the face of overwhelming signals intelligence that the attack was at hand.

On 24 April, the wire services, which we monitored, reported a speech that President Ford had given the previous day at Tulane. He referred to Vietnam as “a war that is finished.” My cynicism overcame my dread. If the war was finished, what was I, a civilian signals intelligence officer and potential prisoner of singular value to the Communists—in short, a spy—doing in a combat zone with nothing better than a .38 revolver to defend myself against eighteen North Vietnamese divisions?

More tomorrow.

April 1975 in Vietnam (12)

Continuing my narrative of events 43 years ago in Saigon: So much happened that to report most of it (there was too much to report it all) before the end April 2018, I need jump ahead a couple of days to 21 April 1975. The following is adapted from my article, “Bitter Memories: The Fall of Saigon”:

On 21 April 1975, Xuan Loc, 40 miles northeast of us, fell ending a heroic defense by the South Vietnamese 18th Infantry Division. Communist forces proceeded to encircle us. The same day, the president of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), Nguyen van Thieu, resigned and fled the country.

I instructed my comms center to reduce to the minimum the number of copies it made of each new incoming message. We bagged documents as soon as we read them and burned them in the incinerator in the DAO parking lot, then stirred the ashes to assure that nothing was left legible. I turned my full attention to persuading the Ambassador that the remaining Americans and the Vietnamese who had worked with us had to leave the country before we were captured or killed. In that task, to my undying regret, I failed.

On 22 April, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the Republic of Vietnam wouldn’t last more than a week. It was comforting to see that the Department of Defense and Commander-in-Chief, Pacific harbored no delusions about what was happening in Vietnam. But the Ambassador was not in their chain of command. He reported to the Secretary of State and the President. Unless they overruled him, he still had the power to keep us all in Saigon. He convinced them no evacuation was necessary.

Despite that, outgoing commercial airlines were choked with passengers, and U.S. Air Force C-130 and C-141 transports daily carted hundreds of Vietnamese and Americans out of the country. The embassy made a point of explaining that their departure was not an evacuation. It was a reduction in force to free up resources to help the Republic of Vietnam.

I didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to get out and about. As the North Vietnamese came closer, refugees fled them and jammed in Saigon. The crowds in the streets were becoming larger and more menacing. Some of the men, in ragged Republic of Vietnam military uniforms, were armed. I knew the danger, but several trips were crucial. I told my Vietnamese driver, who usually ferried me around town, to use his U.S. pass to drive his family onto the military side of Tan Son Nhat in the black sedan assigned to me, a Ford Galaxy with diplomatic plates and American flags, and escape while they still could. Then I took over the sedan. Armed with my .38, I drove it rather than my small Japanese car, foolishly believing that the impressive official vehicle would ward off the massed refugees.

I had it exactly backwards.

The sedan attracted the most desperate of those seeking evacuation. I was mobbed once, but when I bared my teeth and leveled the .38, the crowd pulled back just enough for me to force my way through.

More tomorrow.

April 1975 in Vietnam (11)

Continuing the story of my struggle to get people safely out of South Vietnam as the fall of Saigon loomed:

I made it my business to save two Vietnamese families.

One was well-to-do, living in an exclusive neighborhood. I went to their house, explained that I’d help them leave the country. They were insulted. They assured me that there was no danger and Saigon would not fall to the communists and sent me away. Months later, I ran into them in the U.S. They had escaped at the end and now upbraided me for not helping them.

The other was a poor family related to one of the servants in our villa. I hid them in my sedan—some in the trunk, others on the floor by the back seat, covered with a blanket—and drove onto the air base at Tan Son Nhat, on the northern edge of Saigon, using my U.S.-issued pass to get through the gate manned by South Vietnamese police who would not have admitted them. I drove to the airstrip and let them out, telling them to get on any aircraft they could to escape the country. Months later, back in the U.S., they contacted me to thank me for saving their lives.

More tomorrow.

April 1975 in Vietnam (10)

On 17 April 1975, as I went on living in my office at Tan Son Nhat on the northern edge of Saigon, I got word that Phnom Penh, the capitol of Cambodia, had fallen to the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian communists, allied to North Vietnam. That was another signature event heralding the collapse of anti-communist forces in Southeast Asia.

Meanwhile, I pushed on in getting as many people out of the country as I could. I couldn’t tolerate the prospect that any of my subordinates or their families would be killed when the North Vietnamese attacked Saigon, and all the signs were that the attack was coming soon.

The ambassador has refused to allow me to evacuate my people. So I cheated. I sent my employees and their families on any ruse I could think of. One I had to order out—he was unwilling to leave me behind. Some went on trumped-up early home leave, some on contrived vacations. Others I sent out on phony business travel. One day toward the end, I bought a guy a ticket with my own money and, with no authorization and no orders, I put him in a Pan Am flight out of the country. It was the last Pan Am flight from Saigon.

I knew I’d have to stay until the end. The Ambassador wouldn’t allow me to go, but, more important, I had to be sure all my subordinates and their families escaped. Besides, there were some 2700 South Vietnamese soldiers who had worked with NSA for years. I was determined to do everything possible to get them out of the country before the North Vietnamese took Saigon. I knew how cruel the North Vietnamese would be to them if they could get their hands on them.

Since I couldn’t leave, I asked for two volunteers to stay with me. I needed a communicator and a communications maintenance technician to keep comms open to the U.S. Some of the 16 men in my communications center pleaded that they owed it to their wives and children not to risk their lives. I found that eminently reasonable. Then two brave men stepped forward. Their names are now declassified, so I can tell you who they were: Bob Hartley, the communicator, and Gary Hickman, the maintenance man. I warned them of the danger and told them that they’d have to keep the equipment going through unforeseen emergencies that might include electrical outages, shelling, and direct attack.

They understood.

Even today I admire, no, love, those two men for their raw courage. They risked their lives because I asked them to.

More tomorrow.