News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci
(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Former US Embassy Is Razed

Date: June 15, 1998

Twenty-three years after the battered building finally fell to the barrage of North Vietnamese troops tramping through Saigon, the former US Embassy in the former South Vietnam finally fell to a wrecker's ball.

Vivid images of desperate people clamoring to escape the oncoming onslaught filled our tv screens, minds and memories as the Embassy compound filtered thousands of civilians, refugees and military personnel in the final days and hours of South Vietnam. After the Embassy's abandonment, the building housed Petro Vietnam and has remained vacant since its return to US control in 1994.

The building was part of the US holdings nationalized that was, in part, reason for the embargo levied against the then DRV. During the orchestrated process to lift the embargo and ultimately normalize relations between the two countries, the SRV was required to return certain former US properties.

Ambassador Peterson who took his position last year conducts business elsewhere in Ho Chi Minh City. Now with a new compound planned, the US plans to open a spanking new consular office on the site of the former Embassy.