William E. Le Gro was a colonel in Vietnam and author of "Vietnam from Cease-Fire to Capitulation." Le Gro reports that he felt the Paris Peace Accord was doomed from the start, at least in terms of maintaining a cease fire, but that its purpose for the United Statesto disengage the US from Vietnam and to ensure the return of American prisoners of warwas a success. Le Gro says the United States did not back up its Paris promises to assist South Vietnam in the event of an incursion by the North. Despite the indication of its bombing of Cambodia, the US did not promise military action in good faith. He cites the US drawdown in materiel support to Vietnam as a cause of the Souths fall but disputes the role corruption among officials played, dismissing it as an easy excuse some Americans used to hasten disengagement. He reports on the remarkable buildup of North Vietnamese capability inside the South during the mid-1970s. He describes the fall of Ban Me Thuot but contradicts the reports out of Washington that the South Vietnamese had simply stopped fighting. He provides an account of the evacuation from Saigon of American military personnel and their South Vietnamese staffers. And he expresses a feeling of deep betrayal that the United States government did not keep the promises made in Paris.
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