'No Point In Being Bitter'

Well, I'm not a bitter person. . . . There's no point in being bitter about it. Just change the policy.I

tried to justify what happened. I tried to justify what we were doing about it. But I never -- the Vietnam War, in my opinion, should not have been in the '76 campaign. That was an event that took place and it was over. There should not be a place where they said, "You were wrong, you're responsible." We had plenty of other problems that had to be solved. You know, we ended Vietnam and I think reasonably successfully, but we had a terrible economic circumstance. We had high inflation, high interest rates, the economy was sluggish. I tell you, it was a mess.

But no bitterness ?

No, I don't carry grudges.

You said it was the saddest day of your presidency when all the helicopters were --

I did, when they left the embassy in Saigon. Oh, to see those helicopters go out, come back, go out and come back. We saved the lives of not only our U.S. military personnel, our U.S. civilian personnel, but on my personal orders, saved the lives of South Vietnamese who had supported us, contrary to [Defense Secretary] Jim Schlesinger, who wanted to let everybody go to hell.

You saved some lives. You could have saved more if there would have been more time.

That's right.

I think at one point Kissinger said, "If we had another week we could have saved 12,000 more."

Oh, at least I think, . . . Well, if you see pictures of that mob in the area of the embassy, you know there were a lot of people that never made it, and if they didn't make it they probably lost their lives under the North Vietnamese.