Deep Politics Timeline

[Tracy Riddle]

• 4/1975 The Rockefeller Commission examines JFK X-rays and autopsy photographs.
  
• 4/1975 Frank McCulloch, managing editor of the Sacramento Bee, told Robert Sam Anson that RFK had wanted to make Las Vegas his next organized crime target, and that Nevada would be a test case for the nation on how to handle the mob. (They've Killed the President 11)
  
• 4/1/1975 Cambodia: The strategic riverport city of Neak Luong fell to the Khmer Rouge. Lon Nol fled to exile in Hawaii, leaving govt in hands of PM Long Boret. It became clear that the war was lost, and foreign embassies began packing up to leave.
  
• 4/1/1975 Americans were ordered to evacuate from Nha Trang. More than a 100 Vietnamese consulate employees were left behind, though they had been promised they wouldn't be abandoned. ARVN troops began looting and sacking the city. Today the communists captured the city. They first defeated the forces at Duc My, where the camp commander fled with the entire payroll for Ranger force; he made it to Saigon and bribed his way aboard a US Air Force flight. The men he left behind fought bravely until 4/2. When Nha Trang fell, the South Vietnamese currency, the piaster, lost 80% of its value. Qui Nhon, the capital of Binh Dinh province, was simply abandoned to the Communists. About half of the 10,000 man division, fully equipped for a fight, fled by sea.
  
• 4/1/1975 Another provincial capital, Tuy Hoa, also fell today. Giap tells a meeting in Hanoi that victory against Saigon is possible. The Viet Cong issued a ten-point Policy of Treatment for the People, assuring the "liberated" populace that the military would protect them. Saigon: PM Tran Thien Khiem tells Thieu he intends to resign. The US Embassy has still not helped Americans or their dependents obtain visas to leave, warn businessmen in any way about their investments in South Vietnam, cut back its staff, or prepare contingency plans for evacuation. A rosy picture of the situation was still being painted for those who asked.
  
• 4/2/1975 A three-day National Conference on Indian Water Rights is convened today in Washington,D.C. Representatives from almost 200 tribes will attend the meeting.
  
• 4/2/1975 South Vietnamese PM Khiem resigns. First refugees reach Saigon, but the government bars entrance to the city.
  
• 4/2/1975 Cam Ranh Bay falls to the communists. Thieu met with Weyand, Martin and Gen. Cao Van Vien. Thieu was angry at the Americans, and pulled out a letter that Nixon had sent him just before the Paris Peace Accords were signed. It promised US retaliation if the Communists broke the truce. Weyand argued that Nixon was no longer president, and he could not expect to get US air raids. Thieu raged that Kissinger had sold his country down the river.
  
• 4/3/1975 PM Khiem made a last public appeal over the radio for soldiers to keep fighting. Dalat abandoned by Saigon army before the communists were even near the city. Saigon archbishop calls for Thieu's ouster. Polish ambassador says that North Vietnam still favors negotiating an end to the war. The docks of Cam Ranh Bay are stacked with the bodies of children who died in the ocean, floating south trying to flee the fighting. Troops and civilians were already panickly evacuating the city.
  
• 4/3/1975 Reporters asked Ford whether he still had faith in the conclusions of the Warren Commission; he replied, "We said that the commission had found no evidence of a conspiracy...Those words were very carefully drafted. And so far I have seen no evidence that would dispute the conclusions to which we came."
  
• 4/4/1975 US unemployment rate at 8.7% (8 million out of work), the highest point since 1941. Ford will recommend extension of unemployment compensation benefits.
  
• 4/4/1975 Saigon: tonight, Thieu made another crackdown on his political opponents anyone suspected of plotting his overthrow. Before leaving, Weyand told Thieu that his army had to stand and fight somewhere, or Congress would not supply any more aid. Also tonight, Thieu went on TV and radio to accept PM Khiem's resignation; he also blamed the Americans and the press for the dire situation.
  
• 4/5/1975 (Saturday) AP reported that Washington was studying plans for evacuating as many as a million people from South Vietnam. US bankers leave Vietnam. Gen. Weyand arrived back in the US. He told Ford that if Congress approved a large military aid package, South Vietnam might hold.
  
• 4/5/1975 Chiang Kai-shek died.
  
• 4/6/1975 (Sunday) Ford was shown photos of the evacuations and chaos in South Vietnam, and was greatly disturbed by them. At the same time, Kissinger told press spokesman Ron Nessen, "Why don't these people [the South Vietnamese] die fast? The worst thing that could happen would be for them to linger on."
  
• 4/7/1975 Le Duc Tho arrives at Communist HQ in Locninh to head final offensive.
  
• 4/7/1975 McGeorge Bundy, in his first day of Rockefeller Commission testimony, categorically denies any knowledge of "an actual decision" to assassinate a foreign leader. He also testifies that he has "no recollection" of an executive action program. Bundy will have a secret meeting with David W. Belin, the executive director of the Rockefeller Commission, tomorrow in order to make some private additions to the record. Bundy must be aware that he has committed perjury and now tries to backtrack. Belin is angered by Bundy's testimony before the Commission.
  
• 4/8/1975 Saigon is nearly surrounded by approx. ten full-strength Communist divisions. First Lt. Nguyen Thanh Trung of the South Vietnamese Air Force took off from Bien Hoa in his F-5E fighter-bomber and headed for Saigon. He dropped two bombs on the presidential palace and strafed some fuel dumps. He then defected to the Communists, where he was put in charge of a squadron of captured US jets. Thieu was not in the palace at the time of the attack. The senior US publicity man in Saigon, Alan Carter, chief of the US Information Service station, would later say he didn't realize Saigon was in trouble until today. Ambassador Martin would continue to act as though nothing was amiss, though, and today a correspondent referred to him as "madman Martin." An embassy staffer said he believed Martin wanted to "go down with the ship. If Vietnam falls, Martin wants to go with it."
  
• 4/9/1975 Time-LIFE sells the Zapruder film to the family for $1; the media is still reporting that Zapruder got only $25,000 for the film; his heirs have complained of dozens of copyright violations; the heirs would not let Time Inc. give the original film to the National Archives, although copies will go there; the heirs' lawyer said the family would "create a liberal policy of making the film available to scholars or the public in a manner consistent with their copyright interest." (Detroit Free Press) Time Inc. assigned the film's copyright to the Zapruder family, for $1. It donated a first generation copy, a second generation copy, and a set of transparencies to the National Archives the same day. It is restricted to viewing on the premises. The original film is stored as a courtesy by the National Archives, without public access to it. An archivist notes that the LIFE first generation copy was of poor quality. The archives now have an FBI second-generation print, the original, one first generation and one second-generation copy from LIFE. The whereabouts of the two Secret Service first generation copies are unknown.
  
• 4/9/1975 Panic begins to spread in Saigon as people realize the reality of the situation. Battle of Xuon Loc (aka Kuon Loc, pronounced "Shuan lawp"), a province capital 36 miles east of Saigon, begins. A heavy North Vietnamese artillery attack began early in the morning. The defenders included a regiment of the 18th Division, once considered the worst in the entire army. Under a new commander, Gen. Le Minh Dao, the 18th began to shape up and fought harder and longer than any other in the defense of South Vietnam.
  
• 4/10/1975 Defenders in Xuan Loc hold out valiantly against the North Vietnamese. Lt. Gen. Nguyen Vinh Nghi arrives at Phan Rang, after scraping together whatever men he could find, to defend the city (which was Thieu's hometown). Ford asked Congress for $722 million to aid the collapsing South Vietnamese government, plus $250 in economic aid. The first US jet carrying increased military aid arrives in Saigon.
  
• 4/11/1975 Elite paratroopers are helicoptered into Xuan Loc from Saigon, but are quickly ambushed and scattered by the North Vietnamese. Today, Ambassador Martin told a TV interviewer that South Vietnam was becoming a self-sufficient country.
  
• 4/11-13/1975 embassy personnel in Cambodia are removed; the ambassador, John Gunther Dean, left 4/12, as did acting president Saukham Khoy. They were removed by helicopter, along with a handful of Cambodians. 40 journalists were also evacuated; 3 chose to remain behind.
  
• 4/12/1975 The Communists again tried to enter Xuan Loc, but failed to do so. Saigon proclaimed this as a victory and set up a press visit.
  
• 4/12/1975 Foreigners are evacuated from Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, including Reader's Digest roving reporter Anthony Paul.
  
• 4/13/1975 Correspondents and photographers went into Xuan Loc, a shattered city, though its defenders were still stubbornly holding out.
  
• 4/14/1975 Clyde Tolson, J. Edgar Hoover's lifelong companion, dies today. He is seventy-four years old.
  
• 4/14/1975 During his trial, John Connally denied ever asking for or receiving money for urging Nixon to raise milk-price supports. Lady Bird Johnson and Billy Graham were called as character witnesses by the defense.
  
• 4/14/1975 Thieu swears in his "fighting administration" in Saigon. Xuan Loc continues to beat back Communist attacks. US completes airlift of homeless children from South Vietnam to the US; about 14,000 were evacuated. Tonight, A lucky artillery shot hit the ammo dump at Bien Hoa, destroying it with a blast heard and felt in Saigon.
  
• 4/15/1975 Department of Defense, Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA) Expands Operations and Facilities, April 15, 1975: This heavily excised Intelligence Report from the Defense Attache in Santiago Chile, describes the growth of DINA, the national intelligence arm of the Chilean government and "the sole responsible agency for internal subversive matters." Many of the excised portions provide details about the strained relations between DINA and the Chilean Armed Forces because of DINA's exclusive power. The report states that the head of DINA, Colonel Manuel Contreras, "has reported exclusively to, and received orders only from, President Pinochet."
  
• 4/15/1975 Robert Groden shows the Zapruder film and other evidence at the Capitol to the Virginia Congressional Delegation. This is the first time any Congressional group has ever seen the film, or any of the other assassination film footage or slides. Two days from now, Representative Thomas Downing will introduce a resolution to reopen the case. This resolution is then coupled with that of Congressman Gonzales and leads to the eventual creation of the Committee.
  
• 4/15/1975 Cyril Wecht was also instrumental in eliciting evidence that the panelists had had a predisposition. On April 15, 1975, Robert Olsen wrote a memo to file concerning his own telephone conversation with Wecht on that date. In it, he noted that Wecht had asked, "whether the Commission would be getting access to the following items which have not been to date made available for examination since the autopsy." Namely, (1) JFK's brain, (2) Kodachrome slides of the interior of the President's chest, and (3) Microscopic slides of tissue taken from various parts of the President's body, especially those related to wound areas. Three days later, the Warren Commission counsel who had "removed himself" from the Kennedy aspect of the probe, David Belin, and Senior Counsel Robert Olsen sat down with their experts for what an internal memo called a "Panel of Consultants Meeting." The purpose was to review the evidence: JFK's autopsy photographs and X-rays, relevant Zapruder film frames, JFK's clothing, the bullet fragments, etc. Belin/Olsen asked the panelists to respond to a list of 14 written questions. Among them, whether examining the missing evidence that Wecht had specified JFK's brain, tissue slides, and chest photographs was "necessary to arrive at a reliable judgement concerning the number of shots which hit the President or the angles from which they were fired." What was left unasked in the Commission's 14 questions is only slightly more instructive than the panelists' responses. By way of background, in a 1972 New York Times interview Cyril Wecht had first made public the fact that JFK's brain, tissue slides and chest photographs were missing. Never were the medical authorities ever asked whether there was any value in solving the mystery of the missing material. Belin and Olsen only wanted to know whether the experts could get along without it. The panelists' responses gave Wecht's suspicions about their impartiality a boost. Typical of all the responses was that of Werner U. Spitz: "I do not believe that an examination of the President's brain would contribute significantly to a clarification of the circumstances [of the murder];" and, "Microscopic examination of skin slides from the bullet wounds would not, in my opinion, have added pertinent data." Though highly respected for his expertise in these matters, was Spitz really right there was no significant value, or pertinent data, to be found in JFK's brain or skin slides? Wecht has persuasively argued otherwise.
  
• 4/15/1975 Vietnam: Communist artillery began pounding Bien Hoa, making one of the runways unusable. Much of the Saigon air force was at the base, and now found itself grounded. About 8000 North Vietnamese attacked a regiment outside Xuan Loc and destroyed it. Gen. Le Minh Dao and his remaining men in the city fought on, now surrounded by four Communist divisions. Ambassador Martin wrote a candid cable to Kissinger on the situation in Vietnam.
  
• 4/15/1975 Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge overran Phonm Penh's last defense, at Takhmau. The mood in the city was relatively calm; there was no panic, as most citizens expected a Khmer Rouge victory to be no worse than Lon Nol's regime.
  
• 4/16/1975 Ford invokes the Railway Labor Act to avert a nationwide railroad strike.
  
• 4/16/1975 Ford said: "I am absolutely convinced if Congress made available $722 million in military assistance...the South Vietnamese could stabilize the military situation in Vietnam today." Ambassador Martin, under heavy criticism, ordered his security chief to update the contingency plans for evacuation. Thieu is in deep depression as his regime began to collapse around him. Phan Rang falls to the Communists. One of those taken prisoner is a CIA officer, James Lewis. Gen. Nguyen Vinh Nghi is also captured. Tonight, Ford told newsmen that he was ordering Martin to speed up evacuation immediately.
  
• 4/16/1975 Khmer Rouge captures the airport at Phnom Penh. The Cambodian government cabled an offer to Sihanouk in Peking for an immediate ceasefire, offering to turn power over to him. He rejected the offer the next day.
  
• 4/17/1975 John Connally was acquitted of bribery charges by a federal jury.
  
• 4/17/1975 Congressman Downing introduced a resolution calling for a new investigation into JFK's death.
  
• 4/17/1975 US Senate rejected Ford's request for $722 million emergency aid for Saigon.
  
• 4/17/1975 President Thieu is told that his family ancestral graves outside Phan Rang had been bulldozed by Marines and Rangers as they fled the city. Thieu was shattered by the news, and became even more withdrawn and irrational than before.
  
• 4/17/1975 6am The communist rocket attacks on Phnom Penh cease. 7am Khmer Rouge troops enter Phnom Penh. They were surprised to find the city so low on food and military supplies; this was primarily because US aid to Phnom Penh was never very extensive. There was less than one week's supply of rice for the city's 3 million or so people. Most of the population, swelled by refugees from the countryside, greets the victorious troops enthusiastically. This is the beginning of the "Year Zero," as the Communists being emptying the cities of people and forcing them to work in the fields. The people of Phnom Penh had never been sympathetic to the rebels during the war, and now they were to be punished. Police and military figures, as well as the political and bureaucratic elite, were quickly executed. They collected all weapons owned by citizens. Hospitals were emptied, the wounded and sick forced out into the streets. Khmer Rouge units fanned out into the neighborhoods and told people to evacuate because the Americans would soon be bombing the city. Immediately, all trade and private enterprise were abolished; all markets were closed, every shop and restaurant; money was abolished. There were only three occupations: soldier, worker, peasant. The state claimed absolute control over every facet of life; the people's lives were to be filled with work and little else no recreation or entertainment, religion, travel, reading, writing, etc. The work day would last 14 to 16 hours. Sex and romance outside of marriage were outlawed. The new regime cut itself off from the world, with only minimal contacts maintained with Peking and Hanoi. The first stories about the secretive new regime came from refugees who fled to Thailand; these stories seemed to fantastic to be true. They told of people being killed because they wore eyeglassess, and therefore must be intellectuals.
  
• 4/17/1975 Kissinger cabled Ambassador Martin, "We have just completed an interagency review of the state of play in South Vietnam. You should know that at the WSAG meeting today there was almost no support for the evacuation of Vietnamese, and for the use of American force to help protect any evacuation. The sentiment of our military, DOD and CIA colleagues was to get out fast and now…" Americans at the Saigon embassy are now working quickly on evacuation plans, though Ambassador Martin is not being cooperative. The Chief of the US Information Service, Alan Carter, appeared on South Vietnamese television in an interview to assure the Vietnamese that the US wasn't abandoning them.
  
• 4/18/1975 The remaining charges against Connally were dropped by Judge George L. Hart Jr.
  
• 4/18/1975 The first probe in the final battle for Saigon occurred as a small group of communist guerillas attacked the Phu Lam signal site on the western edge of the capital. Martin urges Thieu to remain in office, while the French urge him to resign.
  
• 4/19/1975 Bicentennial reenactments of the battles of Lexington and Concord; Ford appeared and was booed by 20,000 demonstrators when he announced that the US "stands in the front lines of the free world."
  
• 4/19/1975 The Viet Cong announced it would negotiate with a regime in Saigon that did not include President Thieu. Five Saigon generals are arrested for failure to fight.
  
• 4/20/1975 Thieu is in his bomb shelter under Independence Palace, avoiding everyone. "Although he had thought the previous week he might head out to the luxurious riverside weekend retreat he had built just north of Saigon, other things had intruded." (55 Days p283)
  
• 4/21/1975 It is revealed that Nixon has nearly recovered from his phlebitis and surgery.
  
• 4/21/1975 The defenders of Xuan Loc are forced to withdraw. 8pm President Thieu resigned in a long, rambling, emotional television address. "Kissinger did not see that the Paris Peace Accords led the South Vietnamese people to death. Everyone sees it and Kissinger does not see it." He urged his people to fight on. The huge communist army surrounding Saigon sat and waited for the next several days. Vice-president Huong takes over.
  
• 4/22/1975 US evacuation of South Vietnam slows as Embassy claims shortage of aircraft. Hanoi Radio announces it will not negotiate with Huong.
  
• 4/23/1975 Ford declares that the war in Vietnam is "finished as far as America is concerned." The Saigon air force pulled out of Bien Hoa. US abandons its consulate at Bien Hoa, leaving the US flag flying.
  
• 4/23/1975 Pol Pot arrives in Phnom Penh without parade or fanfare, not even a public announcement.
  
• 4/24/1975 Financier C. Arnholt Smith was fined $10,000 for his conviction on two counts of making illegal contributions to Sen. George Murphy's 1970 campaign.
  
• 4/24/1975 Columnist Marianne Means wrote that LBJ told her a year before he died that he thought Oswald had acted alone, but was "either under the influence or the orders" of Castro. He had sworn Means to secrecy, but she was now telling her story "because Johnson's opinion appears to debunk the current speculation that the Central Intelligence Agency might somehow have been involved in the Kennedy assassination."
  
• 4/24/1975 Former Warren Commission staffer Burt Griffin was quoted in Rolling Stone: "I don't think some agences were candid with us. I never thought the Dallas police were telling us the entire truth. Neither was the FBI."
  
• 4/25/1975 Ford urges Congress to extend the General Revenue Sharing program.
  
• 4/25/1975 Nguyen Cao Ky addressed a large crowd of rightists in Saigon, and spoke of leading the defense of Saigon himself. There would be no surrender, he insisted. Meanwhile, Thieu and his wife had packed their belongings and made arrangements to get out of the country. Mrs. Thieu had managed to get hold of 16 tons of gold from the Bank of Vietnam.
  
• 4/25/1975 Robert Healey, Executive Editor of the Boston Globe, after seeing the Zapruder film, published an editorial in which he stated: "The visual presentation is far more convincing than all the books and all the magazine articles that have ever been advanced. They make a simple and convincing case that President Kennedy had to be killed by bullets fired from two directions...and no words can make the case better than the Zapruder film." ("Time to Reopen the Dallas Files," 4/25/1975)
  
• 4/25 or 4/24/1975 Walter Cronkite aired interview footage with LBJ, shot 9/1969, as he speculated about a possible conspiracy in the JFK assassination
  
• 4/26/1975 AFL-CIO-sponsored rally in Washington draws 60,000.
  
• 4/26/1975 Saigon: president Huong said publicly that he would step down if the National Assembly agreed on a successor. The Thieus flew to Taiwan secretly aboard a US Air Force C118.
  
• 4/27/1975 (Sunday) Vietnam: Communist artillery began to be fired into Saigon. At Long Thanh, 20 miles east of Saigon, one of the fiercest tank attacks of the war overran the ARVN tank base. Minh told ambassador Martin he wanted the remaining US military personnel out of Vietnam immediately. Saigon National Assembly votes 134-0 to hand power over to Minh.
  
• 4/28/1975 (Monday) McCord's sentence was reduced to four months in prison by Sirica; he gave no reason for doing this.
  
• 4/28/1975 Ford announced in a speech that he sought de-regulation of business.
  
• 4/28/1975 More rocket attacks on Saigon. 140,000 North Vietnamese are ranged around the city. The capitol has 60,000 defenders. In the words of reporter David Butler, this is the day "when the door slammed shut on what was to have been the American Century." Gen. Duong Van Minh takes power in Saigon, but had not publicly announced his decision to negotiate with the Communists. 35 minutes after his swearing-in speech, North Vietnaemese pilots in captured US planes, led by defector Nguyen Thanh Trung, attacked Tan Son Nhut airport, less than four miles from the Marines statue. This was the Communists' first air raid of the war. Panic swept through Saigon. An artillery barrage at Tan Son Nhut killed two US Marines, Darwin Judge and William McMahon. Vietnam: CIA chief Thomas Polgar and Maj. Gen. Homer Smith angrily told Martin it was time for the final evacuation. The tree behind the embassy, sitting where the big helicopters would have to land (since the airport was now closed) would have to be cut down immediately. Martin refused to hear any of it, insisting that airplanes could still land at the airport. Polgar told Martin to go to Tan Son Nhut to see the situation for himself. Martin agreed, and as he was leaving, Polgar had some Marine guards cut the tree down. By 10am, Martin had come back to the embassy, realizing that the airbase was no longer usable.
  
• 4/28/1975 Richard Helms, after an appearance before the Rockefeller Commission, was pressed by reporter Daniel Schorr about his exact knowledge of CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. The normally unflappable Helms exploded, shouting, "Killer Schorr! Killer Schorr!" and hurled numerous profanities at him as he left the hearings. The NYT and Post did not quote all the sexual obscenities Helms used. When asked about LBJ's comments that Kennedy might have been killed in retaliation for anti-Castro plots, Helms said, "I don't know why President Johnson said these things." Daniel Schorr, from his book Staying Tuned: "President Ford moved swiftly to head off a searching congressional investigation by extending the term of the Rockefeller commission and adding the assassination issue to its agenda. The commission hastily scheduled a new series of secret hearings in the vice president's suite in the White House annex. Richard Helms, who had already testified once, was called home again from his ambassador's post in Tehran for two days of questioning by the commission's staff and four hours before the commission on April 28. I waited with colleagues and staked-out cameras outside the hearing room, the practice being to ask witnesses to make remarks on leaving. As Helms emerged, I extended my hand in greeting, with a jocular "Welcome back'." I was forgetting that I was the proximate reason for his being back. His face ashen from fatigue and strain, he turned livid. "You son of a bitch," he raged. "You killer, you cocksucker Killer Schorr - that's what they ought to call you!" He then strode before the cameras and gave a toned-down version of his tirade. "I must say, Mr. Schorr, I didn't like what you had to say in some of your broadcasts on this subject. As far as I know, the CIA was never responsible for assassinating any foreign leader." "Were there discussions of possible assassinations?" I asked. Helms began losing his temper again. "I don't know when I stopped beating my wife, or you stopped beating your wife. Talk about discussions in government? There are always discussions about practically everything under the sun!" I pursued Helms down the corridor and explained to him the presidential indiscretion that had led me to report "assassinations." Calmer now, he apologized for his outburst and we shook hands. But because other reporters had been present, the story of his tirade was in the papers the next day."
  
• 4/29/1975 North Vietnamese troops move into the outskirts of Saigon. Massive helicopter evactuation removes most of the last embassy personnel while thousands of Vietnamese try to get into the embassy grounds. The Americans reach the helipad on the roof of the embassy, locking a heavy door behind them to keep the Vietnamese back. Seven miles northwest of Saigon, at Go Vap, US-made South Vietnamese tanks battled Russian-made North Vietnamese tanks. At 4am North Vietnamese artillery pounds Tan Son Nhut air base. The last US fighter planes scramble to take off. 11:51am Evacuation orders are given. Helicopters from the waiting US armada off the coast head for Saigon. At noon, Saigon announced that Big Minh had ordered the US Embassy to close down. 3pm US airlift of refugees and embassy officials begins. 11:30pm Marines at the air base destroy building and equipment. The last Marines leave the airport shortly after midnight.
  
• 4/29/1975 The three US television networks aired documentaries on the war: Vietnam: A War that is Finished; Special Report Seven Thousand, Three Hundred Eighty-Two Days in Vietnam and Vietnam: Lessons Learned, Prices Paid.
  
• 4/30/1975 3:15 am Ambassador Martin receives a message from the Secretary of Defense to get all Americans out of Saigon within half an hour. 4:42am Ambassador Martin and the last of his staff board a helicopter on the embassy roof. Martin had pleaded with Kissinger to keep the evacuation going, but Kissinger told him, "Now Graham, we want all our heroes at home." 5:10am two hundred Americans take two hours to make it from the ground floor to the embassy roof, fighting off panicking refugees and trying to block doors, stairwells and elevator shafts behind them. 6:30am Communist troops overran the 8th Precinct police headquarters. Defending forces were quickly being pushed back. 7:53 am Vietnam: The last helicopters came to the US embassy in Saigon to pick up the remaining Marines, who threw tear gas canisters at the crowds in the yard trying to get aboard. 9am By this time, South Vietnamese who had collaborated with the Americans, and expected to be evacuated, now realized that no help was coming. Soldiers and officers changed into civilian clothes. Police abandoned their posts, and looting began. 10:20am Minh went on Radio Saigon and called on the military to surrender to prevent the city from being attacked. The communists found the city loaded with food, supplies, and military equipment from the US. 12:45pm A 20-year-old female guerrilla, Nguyen Trung Kien, raised the communist flag over the presidential palace.