Thomas Polgar

Thomas Polgar (July 24, 1922 – March 22, 2014) was an American CIA officer who served as the Saigon, South Vietnam station chief from January 1972 until the Fall of Saigon in April 1975.

Early years Polgar was born on July 24, 1922, in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary into a Jewish family.

He left Hungary in 1938 to study accounting at the Gaines School in New York. He graduated in 1942 but was unable to return to Hungary which had become part of the Axis powers. He wrote to First Lady of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt explaining his situation and was soon naturalised as a U.S. citizen and drafted into the United States Army.

Military and CIA career As Polgar was fluent in several languages, he soon began working in the Office of Strategic Services. He was parachuted into occupied Europe and operated around Berlin in the late stages of World War II.

He moved to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on its formation in 1947. He served as an aide to general Lucian Truscott who controlled European espionage operations.

At the time of Polgar's appointment Saigon was the largest CIA station in the world and he oversaw a network of more than 550 field officers, including more than 200 undercover.

In his last day in Saigon Polgar oversaw the destruction of classified materials and before destroying the station's cable machine he wrote a final message from the U.S. Embassy which read:

This will be final message from Saigon station. It has been a long and hard fight and we have lost. This experience, unique in the history of the United States, does not signal necessarily the demise of the United States as a world power. The severity of the defeat and the circumstances of it, however, would seem to call for a reassessment of the policies of niggardly half-measures which have characterized much of our participation here despite the commitment of manpower and resources, which were certainly generous. Those who fail to learn from history are forced to repeat it. Let us hope that we will not have another Vietnam experience and that we have learned our lesson. Saigon signing off.

Polgar was evacuated on one of the last helicopters from the U.S. Embassy at 04:40 on May 1, 1975.

Post Vietnam Polgar claims that the CIA ordered its employees not to speak of the fall of South Vietnam. In 1977 Polgar's subordinate Frank Snepp wrote his book Decent Interval giving his perspective of the Fall of Saigon without the approval of the CIA. Snepp criticised Polgar as indulging Ambassador Graham Martin's overoptimistic view of likelihood of the survival of South Vietnam and the possibility of negotiations to end the North Vietnamese assault. Polgar said that while he held Snepp "in the highest regard... what he’s giving is the private’s view of the war."

In 1976 he was appointed station chief in Mexico City. He then served as station chief in Bonn, West Germany. He retired from the CIA in 1981. For his service he was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal twice, the State Department Award for Valor and the CIA Intelligence Star.

Later life and death Following his retirement, he worked as a consultant on defense and counterterrorism, and he also served as an investigator on the Senate select committee examining the Iran–Contra affair.

Polgar died at his home in Winter Park, Florida aged 91.