The documentary Last Days in Vietnam begins by setting the stage with the summary of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973. This treaty called for the cease-fire of North and South and the removal of American troops. After the cease-fire, there were somewhere between five to seven thousand Americans left and between 150,000 to 200,000 South Vietnamese who had worked with the Americans. The Ambassador was Graham Martin. On March 10, 1975, the North Vietnamese launched a massive invasion into South Vietnam. As the North moved south a flood of refugees pushed further south when Da Nang fell there were 500,000 refugees rolling to Saigon and 160,000 North V Vietnamese solders right behind them. Many of the Military and CIA at the embassy thought …show more content…
While there is a Plan for how to do evacuations in all embassies around the world, The plan only covered the Americans and no South Vietnamese. Because the ambassador would not allow them to even plan an evacuation, a handful of the military personal and CIA agents carried out black ops to get high risk south Vietnamese out of the country. Present Ford asked Congress to appropriate $722 million for the emergency military in South Vietnam; at least allow the evacuation of the Americans and the endangered South Vietnamese to places of safety. Even though Ford knew Congress would not approve the request, he felt he owed it to the Vietnam to ask. By this point, half of the South Vietnamese had disintegrated. The Embassy team wanted to at the least put a team together and the ambassador kept telling them no, he would not have that kind of talk. One of the major cities to fall was Can Tho. Even after that attack, the ambassador would not allow the evacuation of Saigon. The Four plans of evacuation; the first option was you take commercial ships right up the Saigon River to about a few bocks of the embassy to the docks to get them loaded. The second option was to use the continental and commercial aircraft out of Tan San Nhut Air Force Base to bring anyone you