Echoes of Conflict: Remembering Vietnam Speaker Series

Former CIA analyst Frank Snepp is a graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He joined the CIA in 1968 and served in its Vietnam station. During multiple tours, spanning five and a half years, he became the station’s senior analyst of enemy intentions and a close aide to two ambassadors and two station chiefs. Snepp interrogated many key prisoners and was centrally involved in tasking and debriefing the CIA’s two top intelligence sources working behind enemy lines.

In the spring of 1975, Snepp accurately assessed enemy plans for seizing Saigon militarily. Hoping to head off disaster, Ambassador Graham Martin enlisted Snepp to help President Nguyen Van Thieu escape the country. Three days later, Snepp was among the last 17 CIA officers to be lifted off the embassy roof as communist forces moved in on the city as predicted. Snepp was awarded the CIA’s highest medals for his service, but resigned in early 1976 to write an account of what had gone wrong. His memoir, “Decent Interval,” published a year later, became an instant bestseller and helped focus attention on the plight of Vietnamese allies left behind.