The Specter of Vietnam

What would it have been like, being on one of those last helicopters? Those of us who weren’t rushed out of Saigon when it fell 50 years ago, marking the end of the Vietnam War, can get a sense from the accounts of those who were. But the photographs are the most vivid depiction.

Less well-known is the final dispatch of Thomas Polgar. CIA station chief of Saigon, Polgar was one of the last Americans to leave the doomed city. His final assessment, delivered shortly before his departure, read, in part: “It has been a long and hard fight and we have lost. This experience, unique in the history of the United States, does not signal necessarily the demise of the United States as a world power.”

About the Author

Jack Butler

Jack Butler is a former submissions editor at National Review.

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What would it have been like, being on one of those last helicopters? Those of us who weren’t rushed out of Saigon when it fell 50 years ago, marking the end of the Vietnam War, can get a sense from the accounts of those who were. But the photographs are the most vivid depiction.

Less well-known is the final dispatch of Thomas Polgar. CIA station chief of Saigon, Polgar was one of the last Americans to leave the doomed city. His final assessment, delivered shortly before his departure, read, in part: “It has been a long and hard fight and we have lost. This experience, unique in the history of the United States, does not signal necessarily the demise of the United States as a world power.”