Directing the Removal of United States Armed Forces From Hostilities Against the Islamic Republic of Iran That Have Not Been Authorized By Congress

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is February 12, and I am here to remark on an anniversary and tell a story. It is quite appropriate that Senator Leahy should be here on the floor with me because he is a great friend of Vietnam and has done great work in the U.S.-Vietnam relationship. We are about to be joined by Senator Carper, who flew as a Navy pilot in Vietnam.

This story goes back to February 12, 1973. February 12, 1973, was the day that our POWs were freed in Vietnam. I told this story to Dan Sullivan when we were having dinner together a few months ago. He said: Sheldon, you should tell that story on the Senate floor and put it in the Senate Record. So, at Dan's suggestion, I am here today.

What happened on February 12, 1973?

Two things happened. The first was that the prisoners being held in North Vietnam were released at the Hanoi Airport and were delivered into U.S. custody, and that went quite smoothly. The North was organized, for the prisoners were there, and the planes were there. Our prisoners, who were released from North Vietnamese custody on that day--this one will look familiar to many of us here; he was our colleague John McCain--climbed aboard their aircraft and went to the Philippines for medical treatment.

Down at Tan Son Nhut Airport, in Saigon, things were a little bit different. Huey helicopters had been sent off to the rally point at Loc Ninh, where our helicopters were to pick up 27 American prisoners of war who had been held by the Vietcong, and that did not go smoothly. The helicopters took off. The military aircraft, with their hospital insignia, were waiting at Tan Son Nhut for our soldiers and Foreign Service officers to come out. Actually, the longest held POW in the group who was going out to the Tan Son Nhut Airport was a Foreign Service officer who had been held for more than 7 years. They were all waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting, and there were disagreements and uncertainties and suspicions. So the day on which the POWs were supposed to return and go to Tan Son Nhut wore into evening and then into night.

While everybody was waiting, there were some dignitaries there. This was the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam at the time, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker. This was the Deputy Ambassador. This was the first time a U.S. Embassy had two Ambassador rank officials. It was because the operation was so big in Vietnam. The Deputy Ambassador was a guy named Charles Sheldon Whitehouse, who was my father. Because he was there and because I was visiting--one of a very small group of dependents who was in Vietnam at the time--I was there. I was on the field at Tan Son Nhut during that long day as we waited for the prisoners to come out and as we tried to get intel on what was holding things up, on why the helicopters were not bringing them back.

The day became night, and they brought out huge klieg lights that lit up the field. I can still remember the bright insects flying around in front of the lights, against the dark sky, in the hot night, on the hot tarmac of the airport. We waited and we waited and we waited, and we did not know when this was going to happen or what had gone wrong.

Then, late into the night, we finally heard the familiar ``toka, toka, toka, toka'' coming--the sound of the helicopters--which every person who spent time in Vietnam during that conflict remembers very, very well. Pretty soon, they came close enough that you couldn't just hear them--you could see them. You could see the red belly lights flashing on the helicopters. What happened is something that I will remember always. Obviously, after many years like this, memories can fade a little, but I think I have this right because it struck me very much at the time.

The helicopters came in, and they hovered in a row over the airfield. Now, anybody who knows helicopters knows that the easiest thing to do is to fly them forward. It is harder to hover the helicopter than it is to fly it forward, and it is harder to hover a helicopter near the ground, because of the variations in the ground effect, than it is to hover it up high. What is very hard, which shows a mastery of helicopter piloting, is to be able to hover low above the ground in traffic, with other helicopters around that are beating the air and making it difficult to stay in place. So here came these helicopters. They lined up, one behind the other, at a hover--maybe 4 or 5 feet off the ground. You could hear the whine of the engines, and you could hear the beating of the rotors. The air was all kicked up by the wind that they had put up, but those pilots held that position.

I have never spoken to any of those pilots, but I took it as their last salute to their prisoner-of-war friends as they brought them out to freedom and, ultimately, home. This was their way they could show their skills and salute these men who were coming home.

Then all at once--it must have been by a signal on the radio--all of the helicopters--and I remember maybe 8 or 10 of them--settled down at once to the landing. All of the skids hit the pavement. They all wobbled a little bit and then settled. The engines kept roaring for a minute. Then, on another signal, all of the engines shut off. You could hear them wind down, and you could hear the blades slow down, and you could hear the quiet fall over the Tan Son Nhut airfield.

Out of those helicopters came these spectral men--these pale, undernourished, often ill men. One had to be carried out on a stretcher. One of them was photographed while greeting Ambassador Bunker. How glad he must have been to have seen a U.S. Ambassador. I don't know that there has been any time in the history of the U.S. Foreign Service when anyone has been more happy to see a U.S. Ambassador than these men who came off those helicopters were to see our Ambassador of Vietnam and to know that they were on their way home. With Ambassador Bunker and my father was also Fred Weyand, who was the MACV commander--the overall commander--of U.S. Forces.

One of the legendary Vietnam reporters, named Fox Butterfield, wrote about this evening in a story in the New York Times, and he closed out the story in this way:

After the freed men had boarded the plane for the flight to Clark [Air Force Base], General Weyand put his arm around Gen. John Vogt, the commander of the Seventh Air Force. They stood looking at the [departing hospital] plane.

``It's the greatest day we've ever had in Vietnam,'' General Weyand said.

I had the chance to share that day. I had the chance to see what those remarkable helicopter pilots did in that final salute to their colleagues.

I thank Dan Sullivan for urging me to come to the floor and tell that story on this February 12 anniversary of their freedom.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source