April 30, the date of this post is the anniversary of the fall of Saigon, signaling an end to the war in Vietnam. The picture you see above illustrates the panic that ensued as the North Vietnamese Army seized Saigon, now renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Various articles state that the helicopter perched on the building was operated by Air America, a CIA front company, but years later Evergreen Aviation, another CIA asset, claimed they flew the last helicopters out of Saigon.
Here’s a few snips from Wikipedia about the evacuation: (link)
“On April 3, President Gerald Ford announced “Operation Babylift”, which would evacuate about 2,000 orphans from the country. One of the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy planes involved in the operation crashed, killing 155 passengers and crew and seriously reducing the morale of the American staff.[32] In addition to the over 2,500 orphans evacuated by Babylift, Operation New Life resulted in the evacuation of over 110,000 Vietnamese refugees. The final evacuation was Operation Frequent Wind that resulted in 7,000 people evacuated by helicopter from Saigon.”
“Whether the evacuation had been successful or not has been questioned following the end of the war. Operation Frequent Wind was generally assessed as an impressive achievement—Van Tien Dung stated this in his memoirs and The New York Times described it as being carried out with “efficiency and bravery”.[70] On the other hand, the airlift was also criticized for being too slow and hesitant, and that it was inadequate in removing Vietnamese civilians and soldiers connected with the American presence.
The U.S. State Department estimated that the Vietnamese employees of the American Embassy in Vietnam, past and present, and their families totaled 90,000 people. In his testimony to Congress, Martin asserted that 22,294 such people were evacuated by the end of April.[71] Of the tens of thousands of former South Vietnamese collaborators with the State Department, Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. military, and countless armed forces officers and personnel in risk of reprisal, nothing of this subject matter is known. In 1977, National Review alleged that some 30,000 South Vietnamese had been systematically killed using a list of CIA informants left behind by the US embassy.[72]”
The North Vietnamese Army crashes into Saigon
I wonder how many of these killing machines were dumped into the sea?
An estimated 130,000 “Boat People” fled in the spring of 1975 alone. There were many more. One of the smartest young women I know was one of these refugees.
All for What?
So long Saigon
nice to have seen ya Khe Sanh or Sohn
had us a real good time in Da Nang
hot damn
and the good ‘ol boys told me
they said
the guys at one of the CIA’s Station Saigon offices
grabbed the bottles of bourbon and stacks of $ hundreds $
stacks and stacks of hundreds
from all those desk drawers
well, time to mosey on home
after all that whacky fun and destruction
what an adventure we had- till ’75
good job boys!
assholes…