Planning for the Last Exodus

There are about 5,000 American diplomatic personnel, businessmen and journalists (plus their dependents) who will have to leave Saigon if and when the city falls to the Communists. In addition, U.S. officials think that perhaps as many as 200,000 Vietnamese might be killed or imprisoned by the Communists because of their connection with the Americans or the Thieu regime. In his speech to Congress, President Ford last week promised to try to evacuate as many of these Americans and Vietnamese as possible. Contingency planners at the White House, the Pentagon and the U.S. embassy in Saigon are busy trying to figure out how so massive an exodus can be carried out.

Every U.S. embassy in the world, as a matter of course, has an emergency evacuation plan should "situations arise which might endanger American citizens." The program to evacuate U.S. citizens from Saigon is being rapidly updated; details are classified top secret. For potential Vietnamese evacuees, serious contingency planning began only last week. So far no final decisions have been made, and the names of those chosen to go remain secret, lest they be marked for execution by the enemy.

In the past three weeks, 1,000 Americans, including businessmen and diplomats, have fled Saigon. Some left on commercial flights, which are booked solid through the end of April; others went as aides on chartered orphan flights. But for those who must stay until the last possible moment--probably around 1,000 key personnel and journalists--the exit may be dangerous.

For one thing, there is the logistic problem of how to get the Americans from downtown Saigon to either Tan Son Nhut Airbase (five miles distant) or another possible evacuation site, Newport, a cargo area near the port of Saigon. During the rush last week to get home before the special 24-hour curfew was imposed, traffic in Saigon was her-ringboned at every intersection. What then might happen in the midst of the real hysteria that will almost surely come in the capital's final hours?

There is the danger that the Communists will shell the airports. There is also the grim possibility that South Vietnamese forces will turn their guns on Tan Son Nhut, Newport, or even the American embassy's small rooftop heli copter pad if the Americans make a move to evacuate. Given the anti-Americanism that flared in Danang and Nha Trang before they fell, it is hard to say who might pose the greater threat--Communist enemy or South Vietnamese friend.

Contingency plans for evacuating the Vietnamese involve even more staggering problems. Just assembling ahead of time and deciding who should go and who must stay behind poses excruciating difficulties, as does making arrangements for where the evacuees will go: presumably the U.S. will try to persuade some of its allies in Asia and the Pacific to accept refugees as immigrants. Worst of all, there will be the nightmarish problem of ferrying huge numbers of people from Saigon to evacuation vessels waiting offshore to receive them.

The U.S. is assembling a considerable evacuation armada in the South China Sea off Viet Nam. In various ports along the Vietnamese coast, there are nine amphibious vessels, which were called in earlier to evacuate Vietnamese refugees to the south. Four aircraft carriers are in the area: the Hancock, the Coral Sea and the Midway are in the South China Sea; the Enterprise is at Subic Bay in the Philippines. Last week 2,200 Marines were deployed to the four carriers and their escort ships.

If necessary, U.S. forces could be flown into Saigon, shoot their way to a secure position and ferry evacuees out by helicopter to ships. Pentagon experts estimate that this would require at least three divisions (of 18,000 men each), and more if the situation got worse than anticipated--in addition to air cover, seapower and dozens, if not hundreds, of airlift helicopters.

A far better solution would be to arrange an evacuation through negotiations with the Communists. The pressure to extricate the Americans would ease considerably if the two sides worked out a political settlement, though that would almost surely require Thieu's resignation as a first step. For Vietnamese refugees, matters would still be difficult. The Communists might well balk at the departure of South Vietnamese nationals and could try to prevent it. But there is also a hope that Hanoi, sensitive to world opinion, would allow some Vietnamese to escape as part of a final political settlement of the war.

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