On 29 April 1975, the day before the final fall of Saigon, President Gerald Ford announced the completion of the evacuation of American personnel from Vietnam. He stated that “this action closes a chapter in the American experience. I ask all Americans to close ranks, to avoid recrimination about the past, to look ahead to the many goals we share, and to work together on the great tasks that remain to be accomplished.” At a time when the overwhelming majority of Americans had concluded that the war was wrong and had come to question the policies leading to it, and at a time when Congress was becoming increasingly assertive in this area, Ford's effort to forestall any further debate about American foreign policy was sure to fail. By contrast, Senator Frank Church declared that the end of the Vietnam War provided “an opportune time for some reflection on America's role in the world” and a reevaluation of the policies that had led to that protracted, painful, and divisive conflict.

These two positions demonstrated the fracturing of the elite consensus on American foreign policy and delineated the sharp debates over the meaning of the Vietnam War, the nature of American foreign policy, and the policy of support for right-wing dictators that were emerging in the wake of the Vietnam conflict. President Ford and Henry Kissinger sought to retain the old verities of the Cold War and to maintain executive control over foreign policy.