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This is Later with Lee Matthews the
Lee Matthews Podcast More of what You Here

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Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. Beer
was nineteen seventy three. Ralph White had

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been working for Chase Manhattan Bank in
some exotic locations like Hong Kong and Thailand,

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but then his boss asked him to
do something that would end up not

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only changing his life, but the
lives of one hundred and thirteen other souls.

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And he's written all about it in
his new book, Getting Out of

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Saigon. Everywhere you get books and
Ralph, I wanted to start with your

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reaction when the boss asked you to
go to Saigon as a banker. Thanks

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for having me on. Yeah.
I was twenty seven years old in April

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of nineteen seventy five and I was
working for the Chase Manhattan Bank and they

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sent me to Bangkok, which was
my first choice of a foreign assignment,

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and I thought I was just going
to do my job, and they about

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two months after I arrived, they
came to me and said, look,

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we'd like for you to take over
Saigon branch. And because our manager there

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is Dutch and he doesn't think that
the American embassy will help him when things

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get bad and we need an American
year, and preferably one who's young,

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single and expendable. I said,
yeah, that's me. Yeah. Did

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it occur to you that that's why
they were sending you there? I knew

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exactly why they were. Okay,
they asked They asked the perfectly rational,

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mature guy to do it before they
asked me, and he just laughed at

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I can imagine, said, I
said, yes, sent me back into

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that briar patch. Ralph White.
The book is Getting Out of Saigon How

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a twenty seven year old American banker
saved one hundred thirteen Vietnamese Vietnamese civilians.

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So everybody at your firm, Chase
Bank, knew something was about to happen,

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they just didn't know what and on
what timeline. How did you prepare

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for what you had to do?
Basically, you knew you had to go

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get the assets out of the country, right. Yes, there wasn't much

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time for me to prepare. It
took a week for me to get a

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visa, and I didn't really I
talked to the manager of Saigon branch,

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came to Bangkok, and I chatted
with him quite a bit. So I

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knew. I knew the lay of
the land a bit. I'd worked in

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Saigon four years earlier for American Express
when I was very young, twenty two,

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and so I did know a little
bit of the lay of land as

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far as preparation. And I don't
mind telling you and your listeners. I

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had twenty five thousand dollars in my
in my briefcase in order to grease the

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wheels if I had to, And
and I had a loaded thirty eight special

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in case twenty five thousand dollars wasn't
enough. Nowadays, you'd have been stopped.

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I imagine with a thirty eight I
was flying on. Yeah, yeah,

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nobody. I mean the bank didn't
I The bank knew I had the

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money, Yeah, they gave it. They didn't know that I had a

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little backup plan. So you arrive
inside God, and what is step one?

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Well, step one was meet all
of the characters. At the embassy.

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I met the ambassador, the deputy
chief of mission. Ambassador was Graham

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Martin. Deputy Chief of Mission Wolfgang
Lehman. And right on down the chain

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of command, I met the fairly
senior not the not the head of the

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CIA station, but the number two
guy. I met the senior political officer

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at the embassy, the senior economics
officer, the commercial attache, the mission

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warden, and I met the Commanding
General, Homer Smith. So we went

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out to the airbase and and had
a meeting with him. So the first

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order of business was meeting the people
who were supposed to be helping me.

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And what was was what was there
some of their h What were they telling

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you at that point? Did things
look pretty bleak? You know? To

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the contrary, it was, Oh, everything's fine, Ralph, but don't

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worry about a thing. Let's not
talk about closing the branch. That's premature.

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And as far as getting Vietnamese out, that's not in the cards union

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special permits that you'll never be able
to get. So don't even think about

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getting your your employees out. That
was what I was hearing from the get

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go. Yeah, because that occurred
to you right away. Wait a minute,

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when this all falls apart, I
got a bunch of great people working

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for me, it was. And
then I would walk into the bank the

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next day, you know, and
and all these hard working people and the

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only reason you think about it,
why would you go to work? Yeah,

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if you thought you your your country
was going to disappear, and your

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bank was going to disappear. Your
employer what you know, why would they

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even show up to work? Why
wouldn't they try to get on a boat

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and go down the Saigon River?
And the and the reason is the only

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reason I had a bank to run. The only reason employees kept coming in

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was that they had confidence that the
Chase Manhattan Bank was going to to help

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them get out, and that and
that the the expatriate manager me was was

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going to was going to achieve it. And and I had zero plan,

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and and and you know that I
was the Chase Manhattan Banks plan. So

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you know, Chase was just hoping
that I would find a way to get

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them out. So I was just
scurrying around different offices. I was in

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the embassy every day, talking to
different officers. I was out at the

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airbase every day. I spent more
time with the embassy and the military people

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than I did with the employees.
By the time I took them out thirteen

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days later, I didn't I didn't
know most of their names. Talking to

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Ralph White, he's the author of
Getting Out of Saigon, how a twenty

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seven year old American banker saved one
hundred thirteen Vietnamese civilians. I don't want

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to give away the book because you
go into detail about how all this happened.

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But what took you so long to
write the book? This happened back

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in nineteen seventy five, and and
you've had a lot of time to mull

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things over. You know, the
story is. You might imagine, the

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story has been locked in my brain
for for a long time, So why

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now? I didn't know how to
say it. You know. I would

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be in conversations, sort of casual
conversations with people about the fall of Psycho.

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Oh, you're the guy who was
in in you know, in Psigon

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during the fall of Pigon, or
my chaseman at in bank. Colleagues would

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say, oh, how was that? And I would explain that. I

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would start off. I formed a
thesis that we wouldn't have the phrase the

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fall of Saigon in our language if
it hadn't been for the psychopathology of the

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of the US ambassador. And that's
a kind of hard argument to be making

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extemporaneously in conversation. So I wrote
the book to set out all the reasons

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that I felt that way, and
I think what I did was I wrote

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a book that explains why the fall
of Saigon was as traumatic as it was,

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why there was no contingency planning at
the senior level at the embassy and

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UH, and why why do we
why do we picture helicopters off of roofs

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when we think about the fall of
Saigon. That's a that's a not the

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optimal way to get people out.
No, it isn't, And it's probably

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a story that hasn't been told.
Of all the things that I've seen and

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read about the fall of Vietnam and
the fall of Saigon, very little is

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said about the actual ambassador himself.
You know, you have to look,

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you have to look hard to see
it. I've I have seen references to

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his sanity and his emotional state in
UH in three or four books, but

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it's it's it's not really out there
for everybody to see. I wanted to.

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I wanted to go on record and
and blow him up, and I

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hope I did a good job.
Well, you can read about it yourself.

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And getting out of Psigon, how
a twenty seven year old American banker

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saved one hundred and thirteen Vietnamese civilians
Ralph White, thank you for sharing your

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story and thank you for joining us
today kind to have me on, Lee,

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Thank you so much. Thanks for
listening to Later with Lee Matthews,

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the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember
to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons

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from five to seven and iHeart Media
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