vietnam height of the war. saigon is based from falling any citibank assistant manager, a man who could've been anyone of us us is given a choice. go home and never looked back or risk your life to save others. what would you have done. i'll tell you what john riordan did. he risked his life to rescue more than 100 friends and colleagues of what would certainly be described as great danger. it was a daring mission. the details will astound you and if you haven't already, you need to read the book. hang on. i'm not done yet. because one courageous men risked his life more than 100 lives were saved. they are now here in america with their children, grandchildren all thanks to this man. today we are lucky enough to be joined by some of the people whose lives shown forever changed in a moment we will hear stories. first, an honor to introduce a real hero someone who embodies the real ideals to inspire all of us. showing. [applause] true great determination and selfless actions, we couldn't be more proud to host this reception in your honor and those who helped rescue. we are thrilled to have you with us, have your book here. such an incredible story to have peered you represent the vast our country and company has to offer and we are proud to call you a city banker. ladies and gentlemen, my privilege to introduce mr. john riordan. [applause] speenine thank you michael very much. thank you to citibank and jennifer lowry. am i pronouncing it i pronouncing your name correctly? don't like to get it exactly right. andrea, thank you, all of you. all that the employees and staff of citibank to have made this evening possible my gratitude indeed. i would also like to do a couple other things used to my publisher, public affairs. peter awesomeness. you are out there. peter is a publisher, founder of public affairs publishing company and he is here tonight with david steinberg who is the ceo, is that the right title. i don't know if client is here. he's the president of public affairs. because of public affairs, this has happened for me. they got ahold of me very early on after the cbs 60 minutes program and taught me about the publishing business as much as they needed to and filled me full of ideas and goals and told me if i didn't succeed out in big trouble. so far i've done pretty well. i hope that goes on. i would like to do a special thanks to cbs management two films here today. i think it's called the cbs morning show. once they put it out to me i will put it on my website and if you have a book or get one you'll see the website address on the back. please stay tuned for that. show how are you he's the producer who because of tom krause and because of mark s. i got to meet the cbs people and this is what roland mika snowball downhill. so far we are still standing. the great angst of the aged amanda urban who is a partner at icm in new york. a great thanks to all of the staff who agreed to be present here tonight from the saigon branch of ultimately new york. our senior manager in saigon and the man i turned it back him and ran with it and i don't think i ever did. i got him out of the country anyway. i have personal is right next to him. everyone knows you. the head teller, cheese, and many family members tonight. and the big suv -- not suv, svp and new york, my training director 45 years ago. he did a great job. and tom krause who never let go of the story and called me two years ago in saint john, i've got someone you have got to talk to and it was marcus broccoli is a former editor of the "washington post." tom's wife is here somewhere else. kay who has also been helpful in working with all of the event and got me speaking in new hampshire sometime in may. i'll say something about what happened just before we left to vietnam. the main thing that happened was i got a telephone call that very rudely interrupted my day for mr. tom krause. he was out. he is right here. both of them. there are many other random phone giving me a hard time and i argued my best but if i didn't do it they didn't get it from somebody else said. i didn't want to be replaced at that time. as the day moved on, the staff cooperated beautifully. they did not shanghai me or tightly to the post and say you are going to be a little bit of a chip to get the bank to move on. i worked very closely citibank in new york and hung on and they let me go peacefully the next day when the bank couldn't get any of the vietnamese staff on board because they didn't have papers and this is very sad and. they worked all day long helping earn records and travelers checks and safety paper. i was afraid the fire department would show up for the police or the army or some such organization. luckily they were paying attention to other things at that time and the distraction was hopeful. halfway through the afternoon of april 3rd, the day the famous call came from the cpus in new york. one here and one here. i'm assuming communicating with somebody. i don't think it was a friend. it is citibank new york or citibank hong kong and suddenly a shot at the mall despite space came out. like it had a run on paper. in red across the bottom of the telex paper was john riordan you're one of the ambassador right now. i said i think this may be misdirected. and they said get over here and now. so i got him i got in the car and went over there in the gates of the embassy opened saluted. because the embassy heard of our plans from a private meeting the other two bankers had in the morning. somebody pushed the button and up to the faithful are popped. one more for it to keep the rockets i think. that is why the ambassador was on the fifth floor. i walked into this round and it was not as far back but it is much wider than no-space at the moment and there is this little gray-haired man of the kind of what i look like here. you said here is mr. riordan from smtp saigon and he is going to close his bank and misguided pan am 747 jumbo jet coming in tomorrow and he'll take all of this staff and their families out of saigon and out of the country. i said yes mr. ambassador, those are my orders. i want you to cancel that play and come over and have dinner with mrs. merton in me tonight at our embassies of the msn mr. ambassador hope you can get a red check on that but i'm closing the bank and the plane is coming in and i take orders via citibank new york. he said something that shouldn't be repeated here so i won't. he went no further and did this washing of his hands. he said i wash my hands of all of you bankers and the chase manager was there. people look like all of the exception until this started speaking about me, everybody was facing the other direction. all i saw was the black or blue suits. i knew three of the people in the audience. they were spies or spooks or politicals, but there are common people. it is my opinion you bankers are reciprocating the fall of south vietnam. they are from the embassy or for me. then he stopped and said now get out of here. the next thing i know i was out on the street to continue on with what was happening in the next day i was the only fncb officer or person on the plane and there's the little finger i get once in a while. i hope you will find out what happens later. [applause] this is really nice. i would like to introduce each person here and then have a few moments or menace to make whatever comments they would like to. do i need to keep it -- can you hear me just as well? wonderful. this is mr. schwinn and he was the senior officer at the vietnamese staff and his when i turned it over to after we wrestled and fought and earned travelers checks and safety paper and things like that. maybe you would like to begin then i'll move on to mrs. cook. >> when we said before the telex machine and from my office that we didn't have enough money. if we do, we just pay off and get the heck out of the country because we are closing. i don't think we can do that because the central bank the national bank of vietnam would not have allowed us to do that if you close right now. i think they are going to precipitate tales of the city. so that i think was the first of april. but you know, what we did was we decided just to call as many loans as they could do so as to not expect any more deposit. in the meantime these things have been and create all the issues for me. and at that point having the people just coming in with lots of vietnamese and they said they wanted to put in their account because they wanted to get those departed when they get out of the country. i said no no no we cannot take anymore days. i think they need to buy gold buy dollars because i don't do the should put in the bank anymore. are you guys trying to get away from here, close to bank and get out of the country? i said no, no, wait the central bank. we open under the bank and we cannot do that. but people just like the money on the counter and they laughed. but we can officially locked into it. for me personally what impressed me is let me speak a little bit about citibank. it didn't last so long as citibank because of appreciation for my friend here john. but also appreciation for the day because i think being a small branch, at the highest level we don't have more than 50 or $60 million. when we left it reduces to send name by $10 million in assets, that is including our capital. a tiny amount of money but spend no airport entrance against that of the country, as many as we could. after three american banks in a country, bank of america, chase who are opened five years, six years earlier than we did. they have more personnel more asset that mass but not getting all of their members and immediate families out of the country. some might show up during the last month in the country was to work the managers. i was in the other country at the time. there is a great rash and we were talking about the preparations to a back to eight. i think you've seen much of the details in the book. the thing is i appreciate what the bank was doing for me and for our staff and i truly appreciate that and i got a kick out of -- at that time. who is saved on behalf of the board he wanted to take care of the well be that the staff first. i think when a chairman of the bank is telling me i don't care about the outset of the day but it took good care of this task. that is something in my mind and that is what i appreciate so much being part of the city bag is -- citibank as being part of the event today. [applause] >> now mrs. cook. that had personnel officer who's always called her the union leader. good for everyone. your thoughts or observations. the mac by name as cook samo. first i have to say if john didn't come back to hong kong to take us out, i wouldn't be sitting here today. i appreciate and i'm grateful to him for other and also to citibank as a personnel administrator i knew that the bank had planned to take us out. i was instructed to the hong kong regional and contact information. before the international was ordered to leave saigon to pay severance pay to all of the staff. this is a good in a bad thing that you have sent him to lean on in case. but also, they said now you pay severance pay at the international spot so what happened to us? so i was sent there and a lot of back time. that is what is going on in the north of providence falling into the north vietnamese and vc the exodus of people moving children and people dying in the sea, trying to escape. and the international. john was the creditor at the bank. today, i think in april he came in and said i got to leave. i hate to leave you behind but i was ordered to leave, so i'll take my wife and my son and leave saigon today. after that john was in the plan. everything was quiet. everybody worried. nothing happened until the day john came back. i remember it was a monday. it was a holiday in vietnam and we were told a few of us and we had a leader to john zarrella at night. >> mrs. cuc, can we live it right there? we don't want to tell the whole story. [laughter] thank you very much. she was our head teller. she could tell the tale right now. >> i don't know much. >> you always start out that way. last night i and they had tell her, so everything was kept secret from us. they didn't know until the last minute that they had to leave everything behind. our parents our house. i was happy, very happy when john came back. i want to say for risking his life to save us and also to citibank to come to the u.s. and have a good life here. >> teaming mac very much. [applause] and then, we have this handsome trainee professor boss of mine from 45 years ago. rick brash, as vp of the asia-pacific they position in 1975. >> i do have a picture of john sitting down on the job. >> maybe a little bit about what is going on at the floor demanded the business at that time. we cannot recall this is a period of time and the dominoes theory was being widely distributed in terms of the press view of what is going on and people here were worried if vietnam went and laos and cambodia were gone. there insurrections in the philippines and thailand and malaysia and indonesia. where would it end? there is a lot of concern about it. walt had a friend in washington named kissinger is a type two on a regular basis and it was the result of a conversation bear that caused the telephone call that tom and peek out that ben got transmitted to john. a decisive guy but also very, very committed to citibank or sell over the world and the instructions he gave were very clear that everything was to be done. no expense or effort was to be spared to get the staff out. he backed that up because he called one trip at pan am and got a commitment to make things available anytime with called and said we needed them. he called his friends in the shipping business, said he was clearly on board. he was doing his job. over the rest of us doing? john said i wasn't really the only division had because the head of the international business at that time was sure she would come up through the bank system in asia and was relatively new in that position and they have different ideas about organizing. the environment that comment piqued and i worked did more for division heads for asia. burt david said in from north asia. saint easterbrook's in the philippines for east asia. bill farnsworth in bangkok where i come from who is in charge of south asia and we in new york were supposed to be the coordinators and make things work together. and it did work pretty well. george was an interesting guy and it was a concept that got the decision-making down much closer to where the action was. just make life a little more complicated for some people. one of the things that the things the division heads were working on, clearly the evacuation and a lot of work on how to deal with the placement of this staff, how the settlements would be made thanks to the personnel record so many of the skills of people and there is a group put together good personnel officers to deal with that. we also were worried about the side effects have it because clearly if we left vietnam there were a lot of countries in asia that would raise questions. the division has put together a common approach to go around to all the central bank and explain what we're doing,, why we did it and assure them we were not abandoning asia. this is our commitment to asia was strong and we wanted to be there to take care of our customers and this was something we had to do. we also were worried about the managers and the countries because the newspaper is really pushing on this domino theory, it was hard to have a grasp as to how you want to put that together. so pete howell, who was tasked with putting together a seminar that we ran for all the senior officers he got some of his buddies, chalmers johnson from berkeley, the reigning expert at that time on japan in north asia and israel vocal that you who's starting his book on deng xiaoping. who else did they have? i can't remember. he was iraq's third and got a bunch of people together. the seminar was well received and went over well and give a little perspective for the managers to think about and doing that. and it was supported by walt. >> rick, do you think we could leave it there for now? >> i want to say one thing about one person sitting here because this we should not forget. the part of the success of the asia course was that we hired very bright motivated selfless people that were locals to the countries and developed into managers, et cetera and probably the best example of that issue yet and won't who is here. he will be in the history books as citibank forever because the only country manager whoever turned the lights out on a country and then went back and turned the lights back on when it was safe. [applause] >> maybe we could switch over to tom krause said in a telephone call. >> i will be very brief. it must have been a duet. based on the information we were getting fairly heavy-duty information back here and jon was getting much less in vietnam. they had no idea how bad things were. so when we called him that fateful day, he was resisting just about everything we suggested. i think it was more than a suggestion. but let's leave it at that. i think i will pause and say the book is a page turner. it is a tribute to john, a tribute to the vietnamese staff and a tribute to citibank. it is a great read. i think everyone will get a copy of it and i encourage you to run home and start plowing -- you don't have to plow. it's an easy read. but back here we had a flurry of activity but nothing had much impact because ultimately it was john who make things happen. with planes ships all heading to the time but they all left more or less empty until john pulled adoption tricks did everything fall into place. said thank you. [applause] i have one more minute. i would just like to mention the name mike duke i name mike tokai was my bias and took off for the skiing trip in switzerland and left me in charge. he was the one who asked me out to dinner after the date guys came and said she will not go back and read elsewhere yes. the tie was the one who made the case for me that somebody had to go back. they had taken his passport away and i still had mine. it wasn't much of a choice. but also like to say there's three people here. lesley stahl marie around a period and craig whitney. are you here? craig for the near times. famous out there and advisor to the library of congress. lesley stahl you might know from cbs 60 minutes. they were extremely helpful. they all did blurbs of the book and i think that is the right word. i kept calling them blogs. as mark is there? could you raise your hand? he is the missing link between tom and cbs that made it happen. and tom's wife kay who know mark is from the hotel in washington d.c. thank you very much all of you. [applause] john, i can't finish it that they in a special thanks to mike in to citibank. john may be the father -- the fact that mike set this up really tells us the spirit of the citibank family is still alive and he nurtured by his current father. said thank you for doing this. [applause] >> booktv is on location at princeton and university where the interview professors who are also authors read me now introduce you to patricia fernandez-kelly has written a book called "the hero's fight: african americans in west baltimore and the shadow of the state" african-americans in west baltimore -- professor fernandez-kelly, tell us about west baltimore. >> it was one of the places that in my estimation, most important in our nation current moment but it is an area for surprisingly has received very little attention. i see my research, which is immersive

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