He organized a rogue Vietnam War rescue mission, and saved hundreds of lives

When Lionel Rosenblatt realized the U.S. government wasn’t going to help the country’s Vietnamese allies and their families escape the encroaching communist army, he decided to do it himself.

Rosenblatt died after a battle with cancer on April 11. He was 82. He was best known for defying orders as a U.S. Foreign Service agent in 1975 to organize an unauthorized rescue mission, which saved the lives of hundreds of Vietnamese citizens ahead of the Fall of Saigon.

“That was Lionel’s nature,” Craig Johnstone, Rosenblatt’s colleague and co-conspirator in the mission, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. 

“He believed in just jumping into the problems, sorting your way through them on the fly, and he was extraordinarily effective in doing that.”

That mission became the defining moment of Rosenblatt’s career, setting him on the path to a life devoted to helping refugees, first as a member of the U.S. Department of State, and later as the president of the non-profit Refugees International. 

He is survived by his wife, Ann Rosenblatt, a sister and two brothers.

‘We thought they would be killed’

Johnstone says he clearly remembers the moment more than five decades ago that he and Rosenblatt decided to go rogue.

The pair, both of whom had previously held posts in Vietnam, belonged to a working group of Washington-based U.S. Foreign Service agents who were worried about the fate of their Vietnamese colleagues as North Vietnamese forces encroached on South Vietnam. 

“We thought they would be killed. In fact, we had no doubt about it,” Johnstone said. 

Graham Martin, then the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, suggested Vietnamese refugees should head to the nearest coast ports where American ships would attempt to pick them up.

“We considered that to be totally inadequate in terms of the evacuation planning,” Johnstone said. “I think at that moment, Lionel was ready to pack his bags.”

So the pair took personal leave and travelled privately to Saigon, where they arranged flights out of the country for 200 to 400 at-risk Vietnamese.

Johnstone says they operated out of a safe house to avoid the local police, and met with people on street corners, restaurants and hotels to make arrangements.

Staff at the U.S. embassy, he says, were mostly co-operative with their efforts, even though “they were under orders to apprehend us and send us back to the United States.”

They got hundreds out of the country, but some refused to leave. 

“Knowing Lionel, he would always regret that we hadn’t been able to do more,” he said.

“Lionel worked very hard to convince people that the situation … was more dire than it was being felt in Saigon at that moment. They were late to come to the realization that the end was just around the corner.”

He didn’t get in trouble

Upon their return to Washington, then-secretary of state Henry Kissinger called Rosenblatt in for a meeting.

“But instead of being scolded as he had expected, he was rewarded,” wrote Refugee International in a statement on Rosenblatt’s passing. 

“Offered his pick of posts at State, he opted to continue working on refugee issues.”

Rosenblatt went on to work on a U.S. government task force to re-settle the first wave of post-war refugees from Vietnam to the U.S., according to the New York Times.

He then served in Bangkok as the U.S. Embassy’s refugee co-ordinator from 1976 to 1981, working with Vietnamese refugees and Cambodians escaping famine after Vietnam ousted the brutal Khmer Rouge regime from power in 1979.

During his stint in Bangkok, he advocated for the Hmong hill-tribe minority in Laos, who served as proxy soldiers for the U.S. in its “Secret War” to support a pro-Western government against the communist Pathet Lao.

Expecting retribution after the Pathet Lao triumphed in 1975, tens of thousands of Hmong fled to Thailand. 

Recognizing that the tribal Hmong faced significant prejudice and poor resettlement prospects in the U.S., Rosenblatt and his team obscured their ethnic status on official paperwork to ensure their acceptance.

“It was always a mystery to me why they were good enough to fight for us but not good enough to consider for resettlement,” Rosenblatt said in a 2022 TV interview.

Rosenblatt later left the government to serve as president of Refugees International from 1990 to 2001, where he lobbied for more active humanitarian intervention in crisis spots, including Bosnia and Rwanda.

Refugee International has published a collection of tributes to Rosenblatt, where colleagues described him as someone whose “heart for refugees was as great as his brain and political savvy,” and a “ferocious advocate on behalf of displaced people.”

“Lionel was a force of nature who did not always play by the book but saved countless lives as a result,” wrote Eileen Shields-West, a former Refugee International board member.

“While he encouraged many others to follow in his footsteps, no one will ever be able to fill his shoes.”