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This Day In 1970's History: Thursday April 24, 1975
A Senate-House conference tentatively agreed on legislation that would give President Ford limited authority to use United States troops to evacuate Americans and some Vietnamese from Saigon. The bill would also allot $327 million to pay for the evacuation and finance humanitarian aid to South Vietnam. [New York Times]
The head of President Ford's Refugee Task Force in Washington said he was trying to accelerate the evacuation of Americans and Vietnamese from Saigon. As fears rose that time was running out for an orderly evacuation, the refugee official, Ambassador L. Dean Brown, said about 5,000 persons were being flown from Saigon to Guam daily, and that he hoped to see the evacuation rate raised to more than 8,000 a day. He said that if Communist forces begin shelling the Saigon airfield, the rescue program would be forced to stop. [New York Times]
Some 5,000 Vietnamese were flown from Saigon to Guam as the evacuation continued. Though Communists forces made only limited gains along Saigon's shrinking defense perimeter, fear about the city's future intensified. Pan American World Airways halted its flights from the city, four embassies closed and the number of Americans remaining in the city dropped to about 1,500 from 7,500 last month. [New York Times]
The Viet Cong strongly implied that the only acceptable head of a Saigon government would be Gen. Duong Van Minh, a longtime advocate of peace, neutrality and cooperation with the Communists. Though the general was not specifically endorsed or even named, a Viet Cong broadcast rejected as unacceptable virtually every other conceivable candidate. The Viet Cong also made it clear that General Minh must have no mandate other than his acceptability to them. [New York Times]
Terrorists shot their way into the West German Embassy in Stockholm, killed the military attache and seized hostages before blowing up part of the building after their demands for the release of 26 anarchists who are imprisoned in West Germany had been rejected. [New York Times]
