From Comrades in Arms: How the Americong Won the War in Vietnam Against the Common Enemy—America
Indochina 1975: Liberation, Celebrations and Con-sequences for South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
By Dr. Roger Canfield
Adopted from Comrades in Arms: How the Americong Won the War in Vietnam Against the Common Enemy—America
available at http://americong.com
Cut, Run and Conquer
The year 1975 marks the end of the Vietnam War, peace on Hanoi’s terms and the communist conquest of Indochina. 1975 also culminates decades of political warfare waged by Hanoi inside the USA. Hanoi skillfully uses the antiwar groups and coalitions of such groups within the peace movement to successfully influence the Congress to cut aid to America’s non-communist allies. In the end it is the cut and run Congress of 1972-1976 that abandons its South Vietnamese allies, betrays and demoralizes the South Vietnamese people, and strips their troops of weapons, ammunition, and even clean bandages and figuratively spits in the faces of Vietnam Veterans. Soldier and scholar Robert F. Turner says, “Partisan liberal politicians like J. William Fulbright, Frank Church, Edward Kennedy, Robert Packwood, Claiborne Pell and Clifford Case deserve a good share of the blame… [for losing the propaganda war] as did a remarkably ignorant and irresponsible press.”[1]The final battlefield conquests are all but inevitable with decimating cuts in aid to Saigon and Phnom Penn.
This continuesthe story of how the Communist victory occurred, the celebratory responses of the peace movement, the terrible consequences that follow for the vanquished and the continuing solidarity of the American left to Hanoi.
The Consequences
Peace brings not the Communist promised national salvation of reconciliation, democracy, and prosperity, but
- executions of tens of thousands of South Vietnamese military and anticommunists,
- expulsion of all wounded ARVN from hospitals so that many died on the streets,
- suppression of the formerly free press,
- seizure of all businesses and much private property with no compensation to owners,
- forced migration of 1.3 million Southerners to re-education camps,
- forced relocations of hundreds of thousands to barren ‘New Economic Zones,’
- systematic discrimination of all former RVN military, civil servants, and employees for three generations,
- oppression of most of the organized religions,
- strict rationing of food and widespread malnutrition,
- control of many aspects of everyday life, including movement within the country,
Overall there is a great descent of the country into poverty, want, and endemic corruption far greater than ever seen during the worst days of RVN.
The American peace movement and its allies in the U.S. Congress celebrate the conquests and deny the human consequences. Our public schools and universities tell the tale of an ignoble imperial America and an Indochina liberated from corrupt, colonial regimes. In short the enemy also wins the propaganda war in American classrooms to this day.
How and why did this happen?
Liberation of South Vietnam, January-April 30, 1975
“The armed struggle [dau tranh vu trang] must be simultaneously conducted with the political one [dau tranh chinh tri]. …”[2] Le Duan, Party Secretary
“Our victory also springs from many causes [including] the help of the fraternal socialist countries and our friends around the world,”[3]says Van Tien Dung, the North Vietnamese Army chief of staff who criticizes those “who advocate purely military and technical actions…and reduce the importance of the political factor, the morale factor and the masses.”[4]
Hanoi’s Agents of Political Influence in the USA
During decades of political warfare Hanoi successfully conducts “political action against the enemy (dich van) abroad.” Hanoi and its fraternal communist bloc nations nurture the peace movement in the United States to influence American leaders. In turn, the peace movement persuades a majority of the US Congress to cut humanitarian USAID as well as military aid to US allies in Cambodia and South Vietnam. Given political cover in the U.S. Congress in 1973-1975 and Moscow’s and Beijing’s arms, Hanoi has a greenlight in early 1975 to move conquering military forces fast forward into South Vietnam and Hanoi unleashes the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
The American peace movement supports Hanoi’s invasion of 1975 seeking not peace in Indochina, but Hanoi’s military victory, and the defeat of American allies. As we shall see, during the northern invasion of early 1975, the antiwar movement celebrates day by day each and every communist battlefield victory on the roads to Saigon and to Phnom Penn. Before, during, and after, most of the antiwar movement denies the horrific consequences of conquest to the peoples of Indochina.
Hanoi’s Soviet and Chinese Patrons
The political ground well-prepared in the USA and well-armed by the Soviet Union and Communist China, in late 1974 and January 1975 Hanoi implements its military plans. It proceeds to “liberate” South Vietnam and ultimately to “liberate” and unify all of Indochina: Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Assisted by Hanoi’s loyal American partisans in the “peace” movement, Hanoi is confident that a new veto-proof, post-Watergate U.S. Congress will block any last minute emergency aid from reaching American allies in Cambodia and South Vietnam. With US military aid cut, President Gerald Ford cannot intervene. South Vietnam’s military forces can no longer count on last minute American military advisors, supplies, or air strikes on massed enemy forces as they had in Hanoi’s prior invasions in late 1964,[5]Tet 1968, and Easter 1972. Hanoi’s confidence is based on strategic preparations of arms and politics.
The common strategic goals of Hanoi and the peace movement are not coincidental. They are well-planned, long-practiced and coordinated. The events of 1975 are the culmination of decades of common strategic planning and political warfare.
Lenin’s Successors Bless Hanoi’s Planned Conquests
During two meetings[6]in Hanoi in December 1974 and in January 1975, Le Duan, successor to Ho Chi Minh and Communist Party leader, persuades the North Vietnamese Politburo to make another full-scale invasion of South Vietnam. Mass offensives in 1968 and 1972 failed very badly. This time a post-Watergate Congress supported by a national antiwar movement apparatus is emasculating a weak President Gerald Ford. Le Duan expects Congress to reduce and halt U.S. arms deliveries and air support to America’s South Vietnamese allies.
Rested and ready in their Cambodia sanctuary, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong main forces march into South Vietnam. The initial assault consists of two divisions of infantry, a battalion of Soviet T-54 tanks, an artillery regiment, an anti-aircraft artillery regiment, and Viet Cong sappers and infantry. Attacking on December 13, 1974, the NVA forces rapidly knock off South Vietnamese outposts one after another and then zero in on the airfield at Song Be.
ARVN’s Heroism and Hanoi’s Barbarism:
Shelling of Song Be City (Phuoc Binh),
Capital of Phuoc Long Province
History says next to nothing about both ARVN’s heroic defense of Phuoc Binh and the communist’s barbaric slaughter of the defenseless civilian population. Ranking with the heroic, if futile, last stands at the Alamo and at Thermopylae Pass, ARVN, suffers 84 percent troop casualties and loses 20,000 innocent civilians.
Defending ARVN troops, fighting back with grenades, howitzers, and helicopters, destroy 16 enemy tanks, but the ARVN succumb to superior long range artillery of 3,000 rounds per day.
The “Liberation” of South Vietnam:
American Will Lacking, Slaughter Begins
The January 1, 1975 North Vietnamese regular military forces attack on Phuoc Binh, the capital of Phuoc Long province, only seventy-five miles from Saigon is a last litmus test of American will. There is no military reaction from the dithering U.S. Government. Col. Harry G. Summers writes that the North Vietnamese invasion of Phuoc Long province is a “flagrant violation of the Paris Accords… to clearly test U.S. resolve. …President Gerald Ford pusillanimously limited his response to diplomatic notes. North Vietnam had received the green light for the conquest of South Vietnam.”[7]And, we add, North Vietnam received three cheers from its American agents in The Coalition to Stop Funding the War.
Liberation Turns to Slaughter of Innocents
On 6 January, under attack from four Soviet T-54 tanks, the fatally wounded province chief and his staff withdraw abandoning Song Be, Phuoc Binh, the first provincial capital to fall. Most of the defending South Vietnamese ARVN, Regional and Popular Forces, had battled to the death—only 850 of 5,400 survived, 16 percent. Tens of thousands of civilians are slaughtered. Only 3,000 women and children out of 20,000 to 30,000 civilians or about 15% escape Hanoi’s merciless and indiscriminate use of artillery and tanks.
On January 7th, Phuoc Binh falls. “The few province, village and hamlet officials who were captured were summarily executed.”[8]The battle for Phuoc Long province is far from “humane and lenient” policies that the communists always claim and the “peace” movement defends–its brutality is final.
Stories of a cowardly South Vietnamese retreat are false, but American political will is immediately proven feckless.
On January 8, Ambassador Graham Martin pleads with Washington to take a “stronger, better organized diplomatic and public response than in the past.” Martin wants the whole truth to “overcome the deliberate organized campaign of lies and distortions,” particularly from “Don Luce, Fred Branfman…in the Indochina Resources Center.”[9]
Congress Denies Nixon Promised Late Aid to South Vietnam
The Paris Peace Accord in January 1973 allows “unlimited military replacement aid,” essential supplies such as medicine, bandages, ammunition, spare parts, and tactical weapons to the South Vietnamese. Moreover, President Nixon promises South Vietnamese President Thieu that U.S. forces will come to Saigon’s rescue as it did in 1972 (and to Israel in Yom Kippur in 1973). Nixon resigned, is now gone. The moral and legal obligation of the peace treaty and presidential promises notwithstanding, the Congress has other ideas.
The new “Watergate” Congress convenes on January 14, 1975.
Senators Edward Kennedy and John Tunney offer amendments to the Defense budget to radically further reduce military aid to South Vietnam. A Ted Kennedy amendment cuts $266 million from a supplemental spending bill for Vietnam. “The anti-war Democrats and the running dog Republicans cut off the oxygen of our allies,” says Andy Messing, an Army officer in Congressional Affairs.[10]
In a few months Kissinger tells John Connolly, former Texas Governor and friend of President Nixon, “We started the panic, that’s the hell of it. There would have been no (North Vietnamese) offensive if it wasn’t for Congressional debates on help to our allies.”[11]
Emboldened North Vietnam sends some 250,000 additional regular troops to South Vietnam. In all, 418,000 troops move south, 17 combat divisions and roughly equivalent numbers serving in support roles.
Peace Movement Defends Hanoi’s Invasion
On January 14, Hanoi’s experienced comrades in arms in the U.S. spring into action.
The American Coalition to Stop Funding the War blames not the heavily armed battalions and divisions of invading communist forces, but South Vietnamese troops for disturbing the peace in Phuoc Long province by “continually attacking the P.R.G. administered areas” including Phuoc Long province.[12]The American Coalition condemns the Thieu regime of South Vietnam for violating freedom of the press and jailing tens of thousands of political prisoners. Unmentioned is that Hanoi has no free press and does not bother with prison. It executes its political dissenters.
On January 15, the Coalition to Stop Funding the War claims Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (President Ford is not mentioned) is insidiously attempting to “manipulate opinion by distorting and over dramatizing the fighting.” The Washington Postwrites, “They are displaying Phuocbinh as a grim example of the fate that awaits more important South Vietnamese towns, cities and provinces….”[13]Neither the peace movement nor the press finds credible either communist atrocities or ARVN heroics. Both are true.
A Few Hundred Protesters
Claim to Speak for Millions of Americans
To all outward appearances, The Coalition to Stop Funding the War seems to the great mass of the uninformed to be a mighty consolidation of organizations representing a broad cross section of American public opinion. Yet the Coalition is composed of small groups of collaborating activists claiming to speak for all of the members of many front groups. They are the same groups and individuals we see in Bratislava, Germantown and Moscow.[14]
The organizations typically share members, offices and printing presses. Tax exempted Board of Social Concern of the United Methodist Church, United Church of Christ, and the United Presbyterian Church fund the tax-exempt Indochina Resource Center, which produces massive amounts of pro-Hanoi propaganda materials for the Coalition, lobbies Congress and refuses to provide documents to Congress about its tax-exempt status.
The Coalition to Stop Funding enthusiastically provides effective cover and legitimacy to the Communist invasion of South Vietnam in 1975.
Normally, Communist Atrocities Go Unreported
The late December 1974 and early 1975 shelling of the civilians of Song Be City,[15]is but another communist slaughter under reported in the long history of the war. Such poor reporting is the norm. Song Be City is no exception.
Militarymagazine publisher Armond Noble credits Viet Cong scholar Douglas Pike with saying communist atrocities are so commonplace that the press corps does not consider them “news.”[16]Indeed, as early as 1966 the Joint United States Public Affairs Office, JUSPAO, in Saigon has a helicopter on standby every day to transport American reporters to scenes of Viet Cong atrocities. Reporters virtually never take the helicopter[17]and write very few stories about communist atrocities.
There is no lack of opportunity to report atrocities. Apparently many in the press corps and in the peace movement do not believe or do not care about communist atrocities.
The failure to report communist atrocities fits perfectly with Hanoi’s strategy of political struggle as essential to the success of the military struggle.
“Combined military struggle with political struggle”
The conquest of South Vietnam takes only four months, concluding years ahead of Hanoi’s original schedule. Hanoi’s well-equipped troops confront South Vietnamese troops everywhere equipped with severely depleted armaments and no hope of further American aid. North Vietnam’s key strategist and Minister of Defense,
General Vo Nguyen Giap, says, How We Won the War,
[Our party] combined military struggle (dau tranh vu trang) with political struggle (dau tranh chinh tri) and at certain stages … also with diplomatic struggle, in order to completely defeat the U.S.-Thieu neo-colonialist war of aggression.[18]Pierre Asselin writes that “quite possibly” the diplomatic struggle was more important to Hanoi’s eventual victory than the military struggle. Hanoi always uses “diplomacy in conjunction with military and political struggle.” By diplomatic struggle Hanoi means “manipulating world opinion, coaxing allies and progressive forces worldwide, propagandizing Vietnam’s role as vanguard of the world revolution…”[19]The outcome is “not determined on the battlefield but at the negotiating table.”[20]
Of course on the ground, the best negotiators are gun barrels, artillery, and tanks.
General Giap, according to Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, “was very clear. They always knew they had to win it here [in the United States] and the Jane Fondas of this world were of great use to them.”[21]The “political struggle,” using the antiwar movement (dich van) plays an integral, indeed the critical, role in Hanoi’s military successes in 1975.
“Smell of Freedom” and Gun Powder
On January 28, the Weatherman Underground, protesting the renewal of fighting by Saigon and Washington in Vietnam and retaliating to the President Ford request for $522 million to aid Indochina, bombs the U.S. Department of State in Washington. The bombing damages 20 rooms on three floors, threatens four other Washington locations, but fails its attempt to bomb the Federal Building in Oakland.[22]
Gareth Porter, George Kahin and Tom Hayden testify before Congress as part of the Coalition to Stop Funding the War.
National Assembly to Save the Peace-January 25-29, 1975.
Northern tanks, not southern resistance, threaten the peace. So while North Vietnam begins its final offensive to defeat South Vietnam in war, Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda join I. F. Stone, Bella Abzug, Joan Baez, Rabbi Balfour Brickner, Daniel Ellsberg, George McGovern, Holly Near, Pete Seeger, and thousands of others in a National Assembly to Save the Peace. From Saturday January 25 through Tuesday January 29, 1975 they hold meets at Georgetown University, the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, U.S. Capitol and Lutheran Church of the Reformation.
The Assembly program workshops at Georgetown most notably include Bishop James Armstrong, Nguyen Huu An (Union of Vietnamese), Fred Branfman (Indochina Resource Center), Thich Thien Chau (Viet-Nam Resource Center), Bob Chenoweth (IPC POW), Tom Cornell (Fellowship of Reconciliation), Rep. Ron Dellums, Rep. Robert Drinan, Ngo Cong Duc (Indochina Resource Center), Daniel Ellsberg, Jim Forest (AFSC), Morton Halpern (Center for National Security Studies). Also Rep. Tom Harkin, Sokhom Hing (Group of Khmer Residents), Ngo Vinh Long (Indochina Resource Center), Don Luce (CALC), Doug Hostetter (United Methodists), Ed Miller (IPC, former POW), Gary Porter (Indochina Resource Center), Le Anh Tu (NARMIC/AFSC), Cora Weiss (Bill Zimmerman’s Medical Aid to Indochina) and Ron Young (AFSC).
American Evil, Communist Utopia
Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda present their April 1974 Haskell Wexler film “Introduction to the Enemy.” The documentary shows the lives of Vietnam’s happy warriors, women, children, workers for utopian socialism. The Peter Davis and Bert Schneider film, “Hearts and Minds,” is perfect war propaganda portraying America culture as uniquely racist and militarist. The story told is not of America the beautiful, but of America the ugly, immoral, illegal and evil.
The particularly grim stories of South Vietnam are largely fairy tales, told to this day.
The workshops cover all the major delusions and deceits about the war in Vietnam including the fondest utopian hopes of leftist imagination; a third independent political force in Vietnam, reconciliation, neutralization, medical aid and reparations. There are the now usual and useful distortions of reality: high prospect of peace in Cambodian after the war, international law replaces evil South Vietnamese and CIA torture, political prisoners, tiger cages.[23]
Meanwhile U.S. churches pledge $1.5 million in humanitarian aid to the Geneva based Fund for Reconciliation and Reconstruction in Indochina, 80% of the funds are allocated to the communist side of the regional conflict.[24]
The Coalition demands, “Congress reject ANY attempt to increase military aid to South Vietnam OR Cambodia.”[25]
American Betrayal and Paralysis of Will
In February President Ford sends a Congressional Delegation, half dove, half hawk, to Indochina hoping to persuade them to support aid. Tran Van Son, former RVN Lower House Representative, remembers, upon arrival in Saigon
“Representatives Bella Abzug and Paul McCloskey…,the two most vocal opponents to the war….contacted Vietnamese Congressman Ho Ngoc Nhuan, a National Liberation Front, Viet Cong sympathizer, and told him that Congress wasn’t going to appropriate the funds to continue the struggle.”[26]
Secret American Communist Bella Abzug and Rep. Pete McCloskey tell the enemy in war what they need to hear to continue their offensive.
Kissinger and Walt Rostow, adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, talk on February 22, 1975.
Kissinger: “It is one of the great tragedies of our time what we are doing in Vietnam.”
Rostow: “The most sordid act of policy in [the] history [of] this great country.”[27]
The Subcommittee on Internal Security of the Judiciary Committee of the Senate shelves an investigation of the tax status of Hayden and Fonda’s Indochina Peace Campaign.[28]
The Soviets quadrupling aid to North Vietnam further magnifies the negative impact of Congress’s two-thirds aid cut to South Vietnam. Indeed from 1973 to 1975 aid was cut 80%, hardly the “myth” of Congressional cuts later “discovered” by Ken Hughes.[29]
Cambodian Sideshow Looks Grim
Cuts of $220 million for Cambodia soon follow.
On February 24, 1975 Kissinger tells Defense Secretary James Schlesinger that the failure to “deal with Khmer Rouge [in Cambodia] …deliberately sells people down the drain.” Sec. Kissinger has grim conversations about the U.S. failure to aid its ally. On February 9, 1975 Kissinger calls Silvio Conte (R-Mass) to discuss $377 million in emergency aid to Cambodia. Rep. Conte says the “public mood” is against it. Kissinger asks what the public mood will be “if they see Communist troops marching into Phnom Penn—that is guaranteed to happen by April 15 if they don’t get the money.”[30]Kissinger misses the Khmer Rouge’s timetable by three days.
Blame U.S. Bombing for Communist Atrocities
On March 2, 1975 Sydney H. Schanberg of the New York Times,reporting from Phnom Penn, Cambodia, asks why the U.S. should continue to support its ally the Government of Lon Nol. An embassy official responds, “If the other side took over, they would kill all the educated people, the teachers, the artists, the intellectuals, and that would be a step backward toward barbarism.” A delusional Schanberg does not find this story credible. Therefore, he writes his own view from the relative safety of the Cambodian capital.
Bodies were only “sometimes mutilated.”
Schanberg downplays the Khmer Rouge’s proven policy and practice of systematic barbarism in the countryside. Schanberg writes the “insurgents” just might be burning whole villages, murdering and mutilating unarmed peasants. He concludes what he cannot know from his Phnom Penn location. “This behavior has not been monolithic or countrywide.” Schanberg diminishes the brutality saying that bodies were only “sometimes mutilated.”
Communists Are Divided
Schanberg obfuscates grim military realities saying the contending Stalinist, Maoist and nationalist political factions have divided the Khmer movement. His readers must think it’s sort of like Democrats and Republicans.
Further Khmer independence from Hanoi is fictional. The KPRP (Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party) is “created by the Vietnamese to occupy Cambodia and Lao Lands.” In exchange for Hanoi’s troops inside Cambodia and modern Chinese arms (automatic rifles, grenade launches, 82 mm. mortars), Pol Pot and Saloth Saraccept the status of “younger brother” and swear allegiance to Hanoi Communists until later in 1975.[31]
Saloth Sâr aka Pol Pot, brutal leader of the Khmer Krahom is on the payrolls of Vietnamese and Chinese Communists and Paris trained. Sar is a fan of utopian socialism, “part of Jean Paul Sartre’s entourage in Paris.”[32]Yet Pol Pot took his practical political instructions, terror and deceit, from reading Lenin, Stalin and Mao in Paris cafes.
Schanberg notices that the divided “insurgents” did have “the common goal of toppling the American-backed Lon Nol government,” implying that such anti-imperialism is not so bad.
“For the People, War Itself is the Enemy”
A sub headline reads, “For the People, War Itself is the Enemy,”[33]Schanberg somehow does not notice the masses of Cambodians are fleeing in one direction from the Communists and toward America’s ally.
Always knowing who is at fault, Sydney Schanberg soon blames U. S. bombing for the Cambodian genocide that follows. The U.S. bombing makes Pol Pot mad. Peter Berger observes this is “morally analogous to blaming Winston Churchill for the Holocaust” for resisting the Nazis.[34]Michael Lind writes, “If any Americans deserve a share of the blame for the Khmer Rouge massacres and famine, it is anti-war members of Congress … [who denied] military aid and air support for America’s Cambodian allies.”[35]
On March 5, Rep. Otto Passman tells Kissinger that his committee is one vote short of giving aid to Cambodia. Kissinger tells Phil Habib, “It’s not going to work and yet we owe it to our conscience to go down with our head up.”[36]
In South Vietnam: Blame the Crazy Ambassador
U.S. Ambassador to Saigon Graham Martin desperately seeks aid for South Vietnam. CIA officer Frank Snepp writes in Decent Intervalthat Martin’s approach to Washington is to point to American conspirators and propagandists for Hanoi: “Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Fred Branfman and Don Luce of the … Indochina Resource Center were the names he mentioned most often.” The FBI and the CIA do not or cannot provide Ambassador Martin with the information he needs to prove his case against Hanoi’s American agents of influence — where they get their money. Ambassador Graham Martin says the antiwar movement is coordinating its actions with the KGB-controlled Stockholm Conference and Hanoi’s agents of influence in Paris.[37]The International Department, CPUSSR, funds the Stockholm Conference on Vietnam at $15 million a year.[38]
According to CIA officer Frank Snepp, no one listens to Ambassador Martin, even when he describes the identical North Vietnamese propaganda campaign decades before against France.[39]Even former South Vietnamese President Nguyen Cao Ky believes that widespread dislike of Ambassador Martin dooms Saigon’s last desperate requests for assistance. Martin blasts away at those he thinks obstruct the way. In the last days of a desperate war, Ambassador Martin gives up on diplomacy. Of course, Hanoi has done the same since the Paris Peace Accords and their political agents have covered their military preparations and actions.
New York Times Uses Hanoi Propaganda:
Ambassador Graham Martin Responds
On February 25, New York Timesman David Shipler writes an incomplete article about the northern invasion. Shipler does not report Viet Cong violations of the Paris Accords. Despite a North Vietnamese invasion, Shipler, like the pro-communist antiwar lobby, reports that only one side is waging war, the South Vietnamese. Thieu had refused elections, but Shipler fails to mention Thieu’s reasons. Hanoi refuses to accept international observers. Shipler excuses Hanoi’s use of heavy long-range artillery without mentioning artillery firing upon masses of fleeing civilians. Some 10 million refugees, 95-97%, flee communist controlled areas. Again, civilians run in one direction — away from their “liberators” the Communists.
On March 6, 1974 Ambassador Graham Martin writes a nearly 20-page telegram about Shipler calling his February 25 article “propaganda under the guise of investigative journalism.” Ambassador Martin describes Hanoi’s campaign in the U.S. Congress coordinated through the Soviet controlled Stockholm Conference on Vietnam and Vietnamese Communists in Paris. Reed Irvine writes, “Mr. Shipler is clearly advocating precisely what Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda are advocating—terminating American aid to South Vietnam.”[40]
Senator Ted Kennedy Claims Graham Martin Cover up
On April 2, 1974 Senator Edward M. Kennedy releases a confidential Martin telegram to the State Department advising the Department to refuse answers to Kennedy questions until the Department testifies in full before Congress. The New York Times takes Martin out of context saying the ambassador is refusing to answer questions hence questioning Martin’s integrity.[41]Martin is delaying private answers to Kennedy alone, not refusing answers to the entire Congress in a scheduled upcoming hearing.
Ambassador Martin: Stop Killing the Children
Ambassador Martin asks George Webber, president of the New York Theological Seminary to tell Communists in Saigon to stop terrorism. Webber refuses. Martin mails Webber a box of photos of mutilated children. “…But for your decision… these children might still be alive.” Someone leaks both the Shipler and Webber communications to the press.[42]
Martin’s bad manners are news, not Communist atrocities. Martin’s impoliteness is morally worse, not even equivalent, to the communists butchering fleeing women and children. Surely everyone knows from years of Hanoi propaganda delivered by the American antiwar activists that the U.S. routinely kills children in Vietnam. Graham thoroughly and universally condemned, the Viet Cong gets its final pass to victory.
| Photo: Would you burn a child? When Necessary. Hanoi Poster N.D |
By March 1975, the communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and Hanoi’s troops in South Vietnam are only weeks away from total victory and their final solutions.
Saigon’s Strategic Retreat
North Vietnamese regulars attack Ban Me Thuot, a mountain city of 90,000, in the heart of South Vietnam. On March 11, 1975 Ban Me Thuot falls. South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu has few choices. By March 14th, he withdraws the ARVN (South Vietnam’s army) from the Central Highlands (Pleiku) to re-mass at a more defensible line anchored at the coastal city of Tuy Hoa.
President Thieu hopes this strategic retreat will allow the South Vietnamese to dig in and stop the Northern onslaught at this new line. To implement the massing on the Tuy Hoa line, Thieu also makes a 300-mile phased withdrawal southward down the coast of the South China Sea from just north of Hue through Da Nang, Chu Lai, and Binh Dinh. The long retreat is a disaster.
March Madness: Collaborators, Appeasers
The Collaborators: Lake, Fonda, Kolko
Anthony Lake in Washington Post
In March 1975 Anthony Lake, former aide to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, writes in the Washington Post, “At Stake in Cambodia: Extending Aid Will Only Prolong the Killing.”
Jane Fonda in Moscow
In March 1975 Jane Fonda is in Moscow sniffing out that “smell of freedom” of Communists on the march that had first wafted her way during a Soviet military parade on May Day 1964 with her French lover and first husband, Roger Vadim. Jane is now married to Tom Hayden, top leader of the Indochina Peace Campaign and organizer of the lobbying of Congress after the Germantown conference.
While in the USSR, Fonda continues her diatribe against South Vietnam and America. “It’s not in the Soviet Union where civil liberties are most infringed,” she declares, “but in South Vietnam.” She tells the Soviet Literaturnaya Gazeta, that she “would like to use this opportunity to thank the Soviet people for the assistance they’re rendering to Vietnam.” Tom and Jane have worked for years to ensure that America (the “common enemy”) would render no such assistance to South Vietnam or Cambodia.
Gabriel Kolko in “Liberated” South Vietnam
In March 1975 Hanoi invites Professor Gabriel Kolko to come to Hanoi “immediately” for consultations on the economy of South Vietnam. Perhaps riding along with the conquering North Vietnamese Army, Kolko spends the last four days of the war (April 26-30, 1975) in South Vietnam in “liberated” Hue and Danang. Thereafter Kolko gives economic advice to Hanoi from Paris. His wife and he make return trips to Vietnam in 1976, 1981, 1983 and 1987, increasingly disillusioned with yet another communist country failing to establish the promised socialist utopia.[43]
Venceremos: Future Liberation Cadre
On March 13, 1975 the Eighth Contingent of the Venceremos Brigade departs for Cuba with 125-135 new American members,[44]building cadre for a future American Revolution for socialism and for Communist led liberation movements worldwide
President Ford Pleadings…
“Children lying stricken on the streets”
On March 7, 1975 President Ford gives a last ditch news conference pleading for $222 million in aid to Cambodia and Vietnam. “I would like to say that the killing would cease if we were to stop our aid. …If we abandon our allies, we will be saying to all the world that war pays.” Asked about public apathy, Ford said, “…We have seen the horror stories. The wanton use of rockets in…Phnom Penh, children lying stricken on the streets….” Asked if U.S. aid will just continue the bloodshed, Ford notes the Khmer Rouge targets innocents, not only school teachers, not only officials, but schoolteachers, children. Ford wants to avoid a massacre.
Politically polite in war, President Ford refuses to say who lost Indochina. “The facts will speak for themselves.”[45]The who is Congress. The why is effective “peace” movement lobbying to cut aid and assistance to anyone fighting Hanoi in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos.
Cambodian Bloodbaths: the Evidence and the Denials
At a meeting at the Whitehouse on March 6, 1975, seeking a vote in Congress for aid to Cambodia, Sen. Clifford Case (R-New Jersey) suggests President Ford say something “about Communist atrocities” in Cambodia – those stories of putting heads on pikes. The press doesn’t cover this sort of thing—only American imperialism.” President Ford says “Even Bella (Abzug) was shaken by the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge.” Yet Abzug still opposes military aid to the Lon Nol government of Cambodia and informs the enemy that no aid is on the way. Bella Azbug, having a secret record as a CPUSA member, could surely be suspected of defending Hanoi, a fraternal friend of the communist USSR. Presidents Ford and Thieu continue to plead with Congress for emergency military aid to South Vietnam. In March the House Democratic Caucus votes 189-49 against aid to Vietnam or Cambodia, a resolution sponsored by Bella Abzug[46]a secret Communist.
The Appeasers and Bloodbath Deniers:
Sihanouk, Mansfield, Humphrey, Hing, Burchett, Quang
On March 15 and 18, 1975, the master appeaser of Indochina, Cambodia’s former leader Sihanouk in exile in Beijing, China telegrams Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden. Sihanouk advises cutting all aid and removing Lon Nol government to prevent a bloodbath in Cambodia. Sihanouk tells a Canadian reporter that the Khmer Rouge promise no blood bath unless “the anti-communists resist with weapons.”[47]These statements are a complete reversal of what the prince tells German reporter Uwe Siemon-Netto and his wife Gillian in the spring of 1968 in Phnom Penh, “The Khmers Rouges want to kill all my little Buddhas,” his people. At the time Sihanouk invites a group of foreign correspondents upon a trip to the Parrot’s Beak area to purportedly observe evidence of ARVN and American violations of the neutrality of Cambodia. Instead some see hints of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong violations near their base sanctuaries and at the terminus of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.[48]
Senator Mike Mansfield declares that his good friend Prince Sihanouk has also told him that a Khmer Rouge victory will bring no harsh retribution.[49]
Sen. Hubert Humphrey (D-Minnesota) recommends “We…find a way to let it down easily and make it not look like a cop out.”[50]He seems to say appease the public as well as the enemy.
Sokhom Hing, an agent of the Khmer Rouge and a participant in Hayden-Fonda Indochina Peace Campaign, like NY Times reporter Sidney Schanberg blames massacres in Cambodia on the government of Lon Nol and B-52 strikes on advancing Khmer Rouge forces. Yet refugees flee not into the arms of their “liberators,” but to Lon Nol government and to the Americans.[51]
Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett, an agent of the Soviet KGB long trusted by the American media and the peace movement says, “One of the gentlest and peace-loving people in the world (Cambodians) have been used as guinea-pigs in experiments with the latest weapons in the US arsenal.”
The Khmer Rouge are far less merciful, using mere rocks, bamboo poles, machetes. On March 17, the ChicagoTribunereports Father Robert Gehring’s story of a Khmer Rouge attack upon a refugee camp of the Catholic Relief Services. “They stuck bamboo poles thru the length of …baby’s bodies and nailed them to the walls of buildings. …Many mothers went instantly insane.”[52]
Doing Too Little, Too Late
In a letter of March 24, 1975, Rep. Pete McCloskey (R-CA) a long-time opponent of the war after a visit to Cambodia comes home believing the “bloodbath theory.” The congressman now supports supplemental military aid to the Cambodian government of Lon Nol. With few such exceptions, past and current blood baths revealed do not move Congress.[53]
On March 25, President Ford meets Bui Diem, South Vietnamese Ambassador Tran Van Phuong, and Dinh Van De, a member of the Lower House and a Communist spy. De’s secret mission in Washington is to describe the futility of aid, “Mountains of money …would not …rescue a regime that is falling apart.”[54]On March 31, 1975, as the South Vietnamese face invading North Vietnamese tank and artillery divisions, world acclaimed Buddhist leader Thich Tri Quang, behaving like the Viet Cong agent/dupe or communist he might be, demands that President Nguyen Van Thieu resign.
Hanoi’s Slaughter of Fleeing Civilians
With the political high ground occupied by pro-Hanoi Americans in the peace movement and Congress, Hanoi’s military machine grinds out territory and masses of human bodies without fear of US reprisal.
The Thieu-ordered massive 300-mile retreat from the coastal northern cities and central highlands turns into a disorderly flight. Hundreds of thousands of fleeing and demoralized troops and terrified civilian refugees are intermingled.
Convoy of Tears
The North Vietnamese take deadly aim with long range artillery, mortars, rifles, and hundreds of Russian Molotova trucks and tanks upon civilians and troops alike. Route 7 to Tuy Hoa is lined with piles of corpses on a “Convoy of Tears.”[55]Kissinger tells Schlesinger, “This collapse has really been caused by us …a panic” and reporter David Binder, “We triggered it.”[56]
Trail of Tears
North Vietnam’s artillery turns on ARVN soldiers and fleeing women and children. In the north, hundreds of thousands escape from Quang Tri and Hue to Danang where 50,000 or so die. In the Central Highlands, the PAVN fire upon and “chopped to pieces” 200,000, slaughtering women and children in stalled columns fleeing down Highway 21, a “Trail of Tears” as many as half die.[57]
The mother of North Vietnamese Premier, Pham Van Dong escapes the tender mercies of her own charming son.[58]For over a decade he greeted scores of American anti-war protestors, calling them “comrades in arms,” but she too flees from her son’s troops.
On March 25, President Thieu bows to pressure and offers a coalition government. Many respond, but missing are An Quang Buddhists and the left wing Catholics.[59]They are arguably third force, but they are not anti-communists. In effect by refusing the coalition government they had long publicly advocated they now reveal their real support is for a Communist conquest.
The Retreat Continues
By the end of March, the South Vietnamese are fighting resolutely, but the ARVN is low on firepower, replacement parts, blood, bandages and morale. Finally, the whole of the defensive withdrawal to the coastal cities collapses before the North Vietnamese onslaught. Within five days, on March 25th, both Hue and Chu Lai on the northern coast south of the DMZ fall. Still further south on March 30th, coastal Danang falls.
President Thieu plans a new east-west line of defense (coastal Nha Trang to Tay Ninh) 100 miles north of Saigon. That too is for naught. Within another five days, on April 2nd, Qui Nhon capital of Binh Dinh province falls. 2 April, Secretary of Defense Schlesinger falsely declares, “relatively little major fighting.” On April 6, “What we have had here is a partial collapse of South Vietnamese Forces….” On April 3rd, the coastal cities of Tuy Hoa, Nha Trang, and Cam Ranh Bay fall. Only Saigon and the Delta south remain to be conquered.
Evacuations from Vietnam Begin, Declared a Hoax
In late March 1975 with refugees fleeing Cambodia and millions massing in Danang, South Vietnam, Ambassador Martin still pleads for combat forces, men and machines to help with evacuations. Yet following the edicts of Congress, Secretary Schlesinger and Kissinger refuse. Ambassador Martin makes do using World Airlines, military sealift, and civilian vessels for evacuations. U.S. combat vessels are kept off shore[60]by order of Congress.
Hayden-Fonda Envoy in Hanoi: Larry Levin
Visiting Hanoi, Larry Levin, the Tom Hayden appointed staff director of the U.S. Coalition to Stop Funding the War, interviews Paris negotiator Xuan Thuy—broadcast on April 16. Objecting too many South Vietnamese choosing to flee their homeland, Xuan Thuy condemns
“the forcible evacuation… (the U.S. Government) …refers to as rescue of ‘evacuees.’ This is a mere U.S. hoax aimed at upsetting world public opinion and providing itself with a pretext to intervene in Vietnam.”[61]
On April 20, Viet Cong Liberation Radio repeats Hanoi’s propaganda theme: “The U. S. ruling circles have dispatched the aircraft carriers Enterpriseand Coral Sea…under the label evacuation.” These steps “gravely violate the Paris agreement…with a view to supporting the Nguyen Van Thieu clique…”[62]In fact, the Paris treaty of January 1973 does not require the overthrow of Thieu and assumes the people of South Vietnam do not resolve their fate with bullets. Indeed, the South Vietnamese have a right to one to one replacement of military supplies to defend themselves from North Vietnam’s invasion.
CIA: Wrong Again—Saigon Safe from Invasion
A Special National Intelligence Estimate, SNIE, of March 27, 1975 opines, “Logistic factors…would probably bar a quick assault on Saigon since the communists now lack supply stocks in forward positions.”[63]Henry Kissinger sees the situation developing more rapidly and urgently, “We don’t want [our] exit from Vietnam [to be our] shooting its fleeing refugees.”
The pro-Hanoi antiwar movement and the press provide political cover for Congress.
The End Appears Inevitable
Despondent, President Thieu reads and rereads his secret letters from ex-President Richard Nixon promising military aid, no matter what happens. Indeed, the 1973 Paris Peace Accords promises “unlimited military replacement aid” for South Vietnam.[64]Nixon has resigned and Gerald Ford is indecisive.
President Ford plays golf in the sun in Palm Springs; the CIA offers advice on improving South Vietnam’s propaganda; Kissinger wonders why the Vietnamese do not “die fast … [and not] linger on;” and the South Vietnamese futilely beg for B-52 strikes. Objecting to B-52 strikes, and confusing leftist organized angry crowds with American public opinion, Kissinger says, “The American people will take to the streets again.”[65]
Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda gaze over a “large map filled with push pins and inked-in lines to indicate troop movements.”[66]The North Vietnamese gives Tom Hayden battlefield information since his December 1965 visit to Hanoi.
Peace Forces Meet in Chicago and Paris to Cut Aid,
including Homeless Orphans.
At the LaSalle Hotel in Chicago April 5-6, 1975 Sylvia Kushner of the communist front organization the Chicago Peace Council convenes a National Conference for a Drastic Cutback in Military Spending.
On April 7 in Paris POW exploiter and Hanoi agent Cora Weiss, Hue 1968 massacre denier Gareth Porter and others meet Ambassador Dinh Ba Thi, the PRG/RSV representative to the La Celle Saint Cloud consultative conference and a key member of Hanoi’s intelligence network in the US and France. Intelligence official Thi is “applauded.” Thi “thank[s]…the American antiwar movement for contributing positively to the struggle…. in particular, in working ‘to completely end U.S. aid to the Thieu clique.”
Rep. Ron Dellums, who has provided taxpayer-funded staff and office space to Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda’s Indochina Peace Campaign to cut off U.S. aid to Indochina, says, “The… [Paris] Conference… will speak to the hundreds of thousands [of Americans] who were part of the inspiring resistance to the war in Indochina.” Reps Ralph Metcalfe, Bella Azbug, Les Aspin, and Abner Mikva join Dellums.[67]
No Aid to Refugees, Including Orphans
In Paris Hanoi’s agents thank the peace movement for opposing “all acts designed to deceive and stir up public opinion, such as organizing the evacuation of people and evacuating orphans from South Vietnam.”[68]
Final Victory of Armed and Political Struggle Close at Hand
On April 7th, a gray haired, little old man, a diplomat and joint nominee for a Nobel Peace Prize with Henry Kissinger, personally delivers Hanoi’s military orders to the Viet Cong’s COSVN command headquarters. Hanoi creates COSVN in October 1961.[69]COSVN is a wholly owned entity of Hanoi. Hanoi provides “the leadership [for COSVN] to organize the resistance movement for all of South Viet Nam.”[70]COSVN is still a place the “peace” movement and many subsequent Vietnam and intelligence historians insist does not exist.
Le Duc Tho, who refuses his piece of the Nobel Peace Prize for signing the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973, now rallies NVA Corps Commanders and troops for the final military assault on Saigon. Tho is likely unaware that the CIA says Saigon is safe.
The enemy has 5 divisions against our 15. Thus we cannot fail to win victory.… All official U.S. statements have ruled out…renewing U.S. intervention. …We must…quickly and firmly do our job.”[71]
Does the Abzug-McCloskey congressional delegation constitute an official go ahead statement? In short, a top communist party official orders Hanoi’s military to press on to Saigon. Hence, Le Duc Tho, Hanoi’s top negotiator, ordering the invasion demonstrates for the final time the complete harmony of the political, diplomatic, and armed struggle in a winning grand strategy for revolutionary war.
Winning Hearts and Minds
Hollywood’s Happiness over Hearts and Minds Echo Hanoi
The next day, April 8, 1975 Bert Schneider receives the Academy Award for best Feature Documentary, “Hearts and Minds,” a film saying America is uniquely racist and militarist. Bert Schneider says, “It is ironic we are here at a time just before Vietnam is about to be liberated.” Schneider reads a congratulatory telegram from Ambassador Dinh Ba Thi of the Provisional Revolutionary Government, PRG, Vietnamese Communists in Paris. Thi is a key member of Hanoi’s intelligence network in the US and France. In “friendship” Thi thanks the American antiwar movement “for all they have done on behalf of peace.”[72]They are, as Pham Van Dong says, “Comrades in Arms.”
Francis Ford Coppola creator of Apocalypse Nowshowing Vietnam to be hopeless, unwinnable and destructive appreciates this “positive, human optimistic ‘message’ from the Communists in Paris. It is “beautiful.”[73]The Hollywood audience gives a standing ovation[74]honoring Schneider, the liberators, the enemy and their American agents, Schneider and Coppola. Hollywood dishonors American and South Vietnamese fighting and dying for freedom from the conquering Communists.
The Crucial Hearts and Minds are in USA
General Westmoreland says the greatest irony is the U.S. demanding that Saigon win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people while Hanoi wins the hearts and minds of “those most responsible for getting us involved in the first place [U. S. political leaders.] [75]Angelo Codevilla says the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese are won. They always flee south, while the battle for hearts and minds of the American elite is “in faculty lounges… [and]… in carpeted rooms not jungles.”[76]
Northern Tanks Crush Southern Hearts and Minds
In the end, Mark Moyar, author of the definitive work on the Phoenix counterintelligence pacification program, writes, “The Government of Vietnam had won the struggle for control over rural South Vietnam and the allegiance of its inhabitants, but it lost the war.”[77]After all, the political war inside South Vietnam is only one pincer of the Vietnamese strategy. The People’s War is won with Soviet tanks and American agents of influence. The hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese people are in the end irrelevant.
It has taken approximately 17-22 main force divisions and massive logistics to defeat the South Vietnamese defenders. “Like us, Hanoi failed to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the South Vietnamese peasantry. Unlike us, Hanoi…play[ed] their trump card…a twenty-two division force,”[78]says Stuart Herrington, a successful Phoenix advisor who helps win the hearts and minds of many South Vietnamese.
Ironically, it is the American and South Vietnamese decades of military victories, which are irrelevant against the hearts, minds, press and politicians on the Second Front in America. General Davidson writes, “The antiwar elements in Congress became the most powerful ally of the North Vietnamese Politburo. …The United States Government never clearly realized that the hearts and minds of the American people had become the critical battlefield.”[79]
The Last Days—
ARVN’s Gallant Last Stands and American Betrayals
History is indifferent to the honorable last days of the ARVN. Indeed it falsely reports mostly dishonor and cowardice.
At the end after its initial heroic defense to the death at Phuoc Binh, the northern catastrophic collapse, and the chaos on the coastal roads leading south, the remnant South Vietnamese forces ultimately stand up and fight gallantly. On April 9, at Xuan Loc Brig. Gen. Le Minh Dao leads one ARVN 18thDivision against parts of four PAVN divisions, 5th, 6th, 7thand 341 divisions. Until April 13, ARVN advances against communist forces in the Delta just outside Saigon.[80]The near supply-less 18thARVN Division fights heroically north of Saigon at Go Dau Ha and Xuan Loc, but by April 15 flees 35 miles south toward Saigon. On April 16th, a coastal city fifty miles south of Thieu’s second (Nha Trang-Tay Ninh) defense line, Phan Rang falls.
In the End ARVN Courage Counts for Nothing
On April 10 Ambassador Graham Martin urges the President to put into his speech the next day that “ARVN is fighting…with extreme tenacity and courage.”[81]On April 16, 1975 speaking to House Appropriations Chairman George H. Mahon, Kissinger says, “The South Vietnamese are fighting very well. I think some Senators are more afraid of a South Vietnamese victory than defeat because they have to vote for another appropriation.”[82]
On April 14 at a meeting of Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator Jacob Javits tells Kissinger, “I will give you large sums for evacuation [of Americans] but not one nickel for military aid to Thieu.”[83]
Civilian Refugee Plight, “…just a pittance,’” Jane Fonda
New York Timesreporter Robert Reinhold is interviewing antiwar leaders Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda while hundreds of thousands of refugees, clogging the roads, flee, not into the arms of their northern liberators, but into Saigon. Hayden and Fonda watch “… scenes of refugee flight and death with dismay, but not surprise.”
About the South Vietnamese refugees, Jane Fonda says, “The suffering and turmoil have been going on for decades — this is just a pittance.”[84]She is right only with respect to the true human sacrifices. The untold horror is the true body count–Hanoi’s 1.1 million to 1.4 million dead over the course of the war, far greater than the most infamous phony body counts.
Making a Show of Saving a Few Allies.
Editor of the WashingtonPost,Ben Bradlee calls Kissinger, “I’ve got three guys in Saigon…the evacuation of whom is obviously important to me. …
Kissinger: …Americans or Vietnamese?
Bradlee: …Now, I’m talking exclusively about Americans. …Do you feel the evacuation plans are okay?
Kissinger: Our problem with evacuation is to do it in such a way that we don’t trigger one, total panic, and two, anti-American riots. …I’m not so worried about getting Americans out….
Bradlee: Yeah.
Kissinger: …There are hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese…we must make at least a show of trying to save their lives.[85]
The mere show of saving allies is the true pittance of no interest to Jane Fonda.
Lying Betrayals
In Nha Trang Consulate General Moncrieff Spear tells loyal U. S. allies, the Montagnards, fleeing from Ban Me Thuot and Phu Bon that U.S. Navy ships will evacuate them, but the ships never appear. A Saigon Foreign Service Officer, Walter Martindale, III,[86]allegedly sells Montagnard places on ships to rich Vietnamese.[87]On April 26, airlift organizer Dean Brown briefs Kissinger on the evacuations. “Americans are walking down to the planes with their Vietnamese friends and saying let [them] on. …The people have no papers and there is no proof they are high risk at all. …”
By April 28, som