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Another debate was shaping up behind closed doors. On the same day the Senate committee rejected Ford's proposal, Kissinger cabled Ambassador Martin. "We have just completed an interagency review of the State of Play in South Vietnam. You should know that at the emergency White House meeting today there was almost no support for the evacuation of Vietnamese or for the use of American force to help protect any evacuation. The sentiment of our military, DOD and CIA colleagues was to get out fast and now." But the newly declassified record also shows that the Commander in Chief insisted that the U.S. had a moral and humanitarian obligation to airlift out as many South Vietnamese as possible and bring them to America. At Ford's behest, Kissinger cabled Martin on April 24. "We are amazed at the small number of Vietnamese being evacuated, considering the substantial amount of aircraft available. I know you feel, as we do, a heavy moral obligation to evacuate as many deserving Vietnamese as possible, and I urge you to redouble your efforts in that regard. The President expects these instructions to be carried out fully and within the time schedule he has set out. For his part, he plans to call the NSC together this afternoon to lay down the law."
The results make for some of the most compelling reading in the Ford Library: more than 100 transcribed pages of authorized National Security Agency intercepts of helicopter radio messages sent during the frantic evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Saigon on April 29, 1975. Operation Frequent Wind, as the rescue mission was dubbed, takes on a dramatic new immediacy in the words of the pilots dodging mortar fire and gas bombs to save U.S. embassy staff members before attempting to rescue any South Vietnamese. "Reports are that there are 200 Americans left to evacuate," an intercept reads. "Gunners Six to GSF Commander. Bring personnel up through the building. Do not let them [the South Vietnamese] follow too closely. Use Mace if necessary, but do not fire on them." Despite fire fights around the building, Ambassador Martin, the other remaining Americans and the luckiest South Vietnamese nationals climbed the ladder and made it out safely to the U.S.
"I still grieve over those we were unable to rescue," Ford reflected last week from his library in Ann Arbor. "I still mourn for 2,500 American soldiers who to this day remain unaccounted for. Yet along with the pain there is pride. In the face of overwhelming pressure to shut our doors, we were able to resettle a first wave of more than 130,000 Vietnamese refugees. To have done anything less would in my opinion have only added moral shame to military humiliation." Today almost a million people born in Vietnam live in the U.S., making Vietnamese Americans the nation's fifth-largest immigrant group. Odds are they could help other visitors to the Ford Museum decide the debate over Fred and Hank Meijer's 18-step ladder.