The Secret CIA Building Saigon 1975
The apartment building at 22 Ly Tu Trong Street, formerly known as 22 Gia Long Street, is located in Ho Chi Minh City, the largest city in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh City is also known as Saigon. In 1975, during the Fall of Saigon, the final significant battle of the Vietnam War, photojournalist Hubert van Es, reporting for UPI, caught this famous image of US government officials fleeing the city by helicopter. Operation Frequent Wind was the cover name for the evacuation.
On April 29, 1975, one of many helicopter evacuations from 22 Gia Long Street. taken by UPI photographer Hubert van Es.
According to a common misconception, the picture showed Americans swarming onto the roof of the US Embassy to board a helicopter. The embassy was located at 4 Thng Nht Boulevard (now Lê Dun Boulevard), about 950 meters (0.59 mi) to the north-northeast; in reality, the apartment complex, known as the Pittman Apartments, housed employees of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), with its top floor reserved for the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy chief of station. As North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam forces approached Saigon, the picture shows an Air America Huey helicopter landing on the roof of the elevator shaft to evacuate U.S. government officials.
22 Gia Long Street's rooftop in 2002
The photo's description was changed at the United Press International office in Tokyo, which is why it is frequently misunderstood what it depicts (UPI). Although photographer van Es correctly captioned the image when submitting it to UPI, the Tokyo office of UPI modified it to say falsely: "A U.S. chopper evacuating staff of the U.S. embassy." Van Es tried to fix the mistake several times, but his attempts were "futile," and he ultimately "gave up." As a result, one of the most well-known photographs from the Vietnam War "shows something other than what practically everyone believes it does," according to van Es.
Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City at the end of the war, and Gia Long Street, which was originally named for the emperor Gia Long (1802–1820), was renamed L. T. Trong Street in memory of a 17-year-old communist who was killed by the French. By riding the elevator to the 9th floor, visitors are given access to the roof.
Reporters compared the evacuation at 22 Gia Long Street to pictures of helicopter evacuations from the U.S. embassy in Kabul as the 2021 Taliban attack headed to Kabul's fall. The BBC continued to incorrectly identify the US Embassy in the image, which was later altered to the fictitious "CIA."
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