Graham Martin: Our Man in Saigon

"I've always been controversial. Not that I seek it, only that I've had a distaste for anything but the truth."

--Ambassador Graham Martin

Even within the white, fortress-like mass of concrete that serves as the U.S. embassy in Saigon, Ambassador Martin is controversial these days. Some of his bright young Foreign Service subordinates bristle at the old man's intransigency. They complain that he squelches the normal give and take of policy discussion, refuses to pass along to Washington any political reporting that does not conform to his own, and limits distribution of State Department messages to a few hand-picked aides.

In Washington, Martin is still highly regarded by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. But even old colleagues who once admired him as the very model of a professional diplomat now express their worry that he has become a testy, overzealous apologist for President Thieu.

Martin, who succeeded Ellsworth Bunker as Ambassador to South Viet Nam in 1973, has provided his enemies with ample ammunition. Distrustful of the press, which he blames for "distortions about Viet Nam that turned America inward," he has had some notable battles with U.S. correspondents in Saigon, whom he has shunned.* After Senator Edward Kennedy, in a letter to Kissinger, raised a series of questions about U.S. policy in Viet Nam, Ambassador Martin--in an undiplomatic cable to the State Department, that was predictably leaked from Washington to the press --replied: "I think it would be the height of folly to permit Kennedy . . . the tactical advantage of an honest and detailed answer to the questions raised . . ."

Recent events in Indochina have raised questions about the accuracy of Martin's perceptions. "Politically, the South Vietnamese government is stronger than ever," he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last July, while arguing for greater aid to Saigon. "Militarily, the South Vietnamese armed forces have demonstrated their ability to defend the country without U.S. ground support." As it happens, Martin, who normally sees President Thieu at least once a month, could not be directly blamed for failing to inform Washington of Saigon's decision to withdraw from the Central Highlands; the ambassador was on home leave in North Carolina, recovering from dental surgery.

The North Carolina-born son of a Baptist minister, Martin, 62, has been a Foreign Service officer for 28 years. Far from being an Indochina hawk, he actually opposed American military involvement in Viet Nam in 1963, when he was serving as Ambassador to Thailand. "In fact," he insists, "my known opposition to using U.S. troops turned Thieu off when I first arrived." Says one former colleague: "In Bangkok, he was a real professional. He was one of the few ambassadors in that part of the world who could keep the U.S. military in their country under control. In Saigon, he has got crotchety and cranky." Some friends point out that Martin and his wife Dorothy lost a son, Glenn, in action in Viet Nam in 1966, and that this has affected his attitude. "He has a kind of messianic complex," says one State Department official. "I am sure he has said to himself, 'I don't care if I'm vilified, I'm going to save Viet Nam, if anybody can.'"

As the cautious Martin says of himself: "I'm still the only guy around who's not emotionally involved in Viet Nam." After nearly three decades in the Foreign Service, he dreams of being able to retire to some property he owns in Italy. "I told Henry [Kissinger] I'd come out here for a year, and it's been almost two," he says. "In Italy, I would do some writing, and I'd experiment with grafting an olive to a juniper to produce an instant Martini--one that needed no gin."

Martin is not much given to levity these days. Soft-spoken and articulate, he argues: "Certain people back home are trying to sweep things under the rug. The way I read history, it is determined by what people did or didn't do." The theme is echoed by one of Martin's admirers in the embassy, who says: "The ambassador has been hit so much that he no longer cares whom he annoys. He is only thinking of historical results, and he wants to be on the right side."

Last week in an interview with TIME Correspondents Roy Rowan and William Stewart, Martin made these additional comments:

ON THIEU. Has the mandate of heaven been withdrawn? I don't know; Thieu is a Vietnamese problem. There has been no advice from Washington for Thieu to step down. I think it is a mistake to intervene; you take the responsibility for what comes after. I don't know what the U.S. did or didn't do in Chile, but those who are so vocal condemning our actions toward [Marxist President Salvador] Allende [now] want us to do something about Thieu. I think it would be immoral.

ON THE CURRENT FIGHTING. The [South Vietnamese] pullback is now being interpreted as a great North Vietnamese victory. The North Vietnamese did not take Military Region I and II by force of arms, but by a government decision to evacuate. That does not make the North Vietnamese army ten feet tall. A year ago, Hanoi had put the war on the back burner. The level of violence would have got down to the endemic level. Then came the traumatic period: the Nixon resignation, appropriation cuts, a new Congress, and the Soviets quadrupled their aid to the North Vietnamese army in the past year. They want to get credit for the victory.

ON THE U.S. COMMITMENT. One great myth is that we had a little aid program that grew and grew and grew. You have a nation here that we encouraged to resist, gave assurances to, not in treaty form, but quite precisely. There was no question that we would replace arms one for one. For all sorts of specious reasons we have reneged on every one of these agreements. My only regret is that I did not speak out more openly, to the distaste of the Department of State. The Executive Branch has fallen flat on its face presenting the truth.

ON U.S. STAKES IN VIET NAM. I Still get a twinge from that piece of Japanese shrapnel in my back, and have yet to be persuaded that a hot war is better than a cold war. There's no way we can get into next year's Bicentennial without Viet Nam. It will not go away, as Voltaire said, "to be obscurely hung."

* For a while during the early 1930s, Martin wrote a Washington-based column for a number of newspapers in the South.

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