Word: fords
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Washington some advisers were urging Ford to reassure the American public that there was no chance the U.S. would be dragged back into the war: Vietnam was lost. But Ford was in awe of Kissinger, and, says Robert Hartmann, chief White House speech writer, "Kissinger, for negotiating reasons, was not ready to throw in the towel." Hartmann persisted, telling Ford "nobody declared this war, but you can declare the end of it." He remembers that Ford's "brow furrowed and he said 'I'm not sure Henry would approve...
Nonetheless, Hartmann's team wrote a crucial sentence--without Kissinger's knowledge--into a speech Ford delivered at Tulane University in New Orleans on April 24. At a packed field house, Ford called for a return to pride in the U.S., then declared, "but it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished, as far as America is concerned." Hartmann recalls, "As soon as the students heard the word 'finished' they almost literally raised the roof with whoops and hollers. They jumped up and down on the bleacher seats, hugging whoever popped up next...
...then, though, the decision was shifting out of his hands. In Washington the Administration had been wracked by tension: spats between Kissinger and Schlesinger, frustration over conflicting reports about just how bad the situation in Saigon was. Ford had suffered an unprecedented insult a few days earlier when two Congressmen walked out of a joint session at which he pleaded for unity. Late in the afternoon of April 28 (early morning of the 29th in Saigon), Kissinger's deputy Brent Scowcroft burst into a meeting of Ford with his energy and economic advisers, bearing a message about the rocket...
...roof and in the courtyard. During daylight, officers set off colored smoke bombs to help helicopter pilots locate the embassy. After dark, Herrington rigged up a different system. He found an old carousel slide projector, mounted it on the roof of one building, and had all the embassy's Ford cars parked around the landing zone with their headlights on. Whenever he heard helicopter rotors overhead, Herrington switched on the projector, flooding the landing zone with light...
...happen. Indeed, not one of the 120,000 Vietnamese and 20,000 Americans and others evacuated in the last month was lost to enemy action. But some Vietnamese were left behind when Ford early in the morning of April 30 ordered the evacuation ended, except for the handful of Americans still left...