ANN ARBOR—Twenty-five years ago this month, a Secret/Sensitive memo “Ominous Developments in Vietnam” went to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Over the next few weeks, edgy cables shot between Washington and its embassies in Cambodia and South Vietnam. Initially concerned about diplomacy and combat, the cables eventually gave way to arguments over when, how and whom to evacuate from South Vietnam’s encircled capital.

In time, Kissinger ordered Ambassador John Gunther Dean in Phnom Penh “to evacuate without delay?You should not—repeat not—call for Eagle Pull Phase III [the most drastic evacuation option] unless in your judgement there is no other way to protect American lives.” Within hours, Dean did in fact call for Eagle Pull III “at first light Saturday, April 12.”

A facsimile of the original and last memo to the U.S. Embassy in Saigon is available from News and Information Services.

Two weeks later, on
A quarter century later, the Ford Presidential Library will release these cables and nearly 30,000 other pages of newly declassified material on
Most of the documents to be made available
The declassified documents carry the Indochina story forward, too. Within months of war’s end, a memo to Kissinger noted a surprising regional stability: “What is most noteworthy is that countries like Malaysia, Australia, and Singapore seem to be turning to us more than before?I suppose one might term it the ‘reverse domino’ effect as countries that felt safe now begin to wonder.”

On the other hand, by no means all the news from Southeast Asia was positive. A full year after the evacuations, President Ford receive a chilling 28-page report on “Life Inside Cambodia” based on refugee interviews and intelligence sources.

The document release comes as a boon to scholars, journalists and others interested in America’s Indochina policies. It would not have been possible without new rules on declassification and major assistance from agencies including the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency (which controls the classification of an estimated 30 percent of the Library’s Vietnam documents), and the National Security Agency. The NSA has declassified radio messages from helicopter pilots shuttling to and from the Saigon embassy.

“Twenty-five years after the fact, I still regard April 1975 as the cruelest month indeed,” says President Ford. “Painful as this chapter in our history may be, we must never forget it, or its long range meaning for future policymakers. I am delighted that the Ford Library has made such a concerted effort to share its documentary treasures with the public, and I am grateful to all those in Washington and elsewhere who have expedited the release of this vital historical information.”

The Gerald R. Ford Library is part of the presidential libraries system administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. It is located at 1000 Beal Ave. on the U-M’s North Campus. Hours are 8:45 a.m.-4:45 p.m., Monday-Friday. Closed weekends and federal holidays. Web: www.ford.utexas.edu

EDITORS: Contact Richard Norton Smith, director, Gerald R. Ford Library (Ann Arbor) and Museum (Grand Rapids), in Grand Rapids at (616) 451-9236, ext. 24, and David Horrocks, supervisory archivist, in Ann Arbor, at (734) 741-2218, ext. 222

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