The last American out of Saigon

April 29, 2015

Forty years after Saigon fell, the CIA’s former chief strategist in Vietnam is haunted that more lives weren't saved

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The last American out of Saigon

“I should have grabbed the ambassador by the neck and said, ‘Will you start an evacuation? Will you start the planning at least for one?’” Frank Snepp, the CIA’s former chief strategist in Vietnam, says of the chaotic final days of the war there 40 years ago. “But I was good Southern boy. I had good manners and I sat on my anger. And I think about that all the bloody time … If only I had the guts to say to the ambassador, ‘Get going, sir! We've got all the information we need.’ I didn't do that I'm haunted by my failure to do that to this day.” Michael Okwu reports.


 

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