1. Graham Martin was the ambassador to Thailand and as US representative to SEATO from 1963 to 1967, ambassador to Italy from 1969 to 1973 and the last United States Ambassador to South Vietnam from 1973 until his evacuation during the Fall of Saigon in 1975.
However, unlike many other Southern whites who represented the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, Graham Martin was an avid supporter of the New Deal, which he saw as a way to improve North Carolina, which was a very backward and underdeveloped state at the time.
Under the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, Martin became a protege of W Averell Harriman, who became his patron, which greatly aided his career.
Graham Martin began his career in the National Recovery Administration, a New Deal agency created to counter the effects of the Great Depression.
Graham Martin first worked in the diplomatic field at the US embassy in Paris, France, from 1947 to 1955.
Graham Martin was appointed on 10 September 1963 and left this post on 9 September 1967.
Graham Martin interceded and gave the toast himself, explaining later to both Humphrey and Nixon that as the Ambassador, he was the President's personal representative.
Graham Martin finished his explanation by saying "If you become President yourself someday, Mr Vice President, you can be sure that I will guard your interests as closely as I did President Johnson's tonight".
Ambassador Graham Martin advised that if Thai commanders were "in charge", these would remain "Thai bases".
Graham Martin was appointed on 30 October 1969 and left this post on 10 February 1973.
Graham Martin was appointed as Ambassador to South Vietnam on 21 June 1973.
Graham Martin's nephew had been killed in action in South Vietnam in 1965, and Graham Martin felt a strong sense of responsibility to ensure that his death was not in vain by winning the war.
Graham Martin was one of the few US diplomats who was still committed to winning the Vietnam war, and as a liberal Democrat, any failures in Saigon on his part would not reflect badly on the Republican Nixon administration.
Graham Martin was a controversial US ambassador to South Vietnam; he was ill-prepared to act as an ambassador in a country fighting for its survival.
Graham Martin had been injured in an automobile accident, which limited his ability to travel.
Graham Martin spoke no Vietnamese, but he was fluent in French, a language widely spoken by the South Vietnamese elite as Vietnam was a former French colony.
In common with many other American diplomats, Graham Martin found President Nguyen Van Thieu to be a "prickly" personality who was too sensitive to any slight, real or imagined.
Graham Martin had an abrasive personality, much given to rudeness and outbursts of rage, and many found him to be unpleasant.
William Colby, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at a meeting with Kissinger warned that Graham Martin was delusional in his assessment, and advised an evacuation, advice that Kissinger rejected.
Graham Martin advised Kissinger, who was now the Secretary of State, that he was against a mass evacuation from Saigon, which he feared would depress morale in the ARVN.
In early April 1975, Graham Martin had Alan Carter, the chief of the US information bureau in Saigon, tape a video in which Carter stated that there was no danger of Saigon falling and the United States would stand by the Paris Peace Accords.
Graham Martin was sick with pneumonia in April 1975 and his body did not react well with the antibiotics he was taking, he was described as looking "like a walking corpse".
Graham Martin continued to believe that the ARVN would hold Saigon and the Mekong Delta area after observing ARVN's tenacious 12 days of fighting in the Battle of Xuan Loc under the command of General Le Minh Dao.
On 20 April 1975, Kissinger instructed Graham Martin to start preparing to pull out all the Americans in South Vietnam while saying that no South Vietnamese were to be pulled out.
The evacuation was chaotic largely because Graham Martin did not order an evacuation to begin until late April 1975.
Graham Martin had waited so long to order an evacuation that it was only possible to leave Saigon via air as the city was surrounded by the advancing PAVN.
Graham Martin decreed that only Vietnamese women married to Americans and their legitimate children would be flown out, a ruling that excluded the vast majority of the Vietnamese women in relationships with American men and their children.
Graham Martin ordered the US Marines who served as the embassy's guards to burn the $2 million US dollars in cash that served as the embassy's reserve funds.
Moments later, an aide ran out to shout that Graham Martin had changed his mind and wanted to save the money after all.
Graham Martin pressed to have the gold of South Vietnam's Central Bank worth $60 million US moved to New York, but the State Department would not allow the gold to be flown out of Saigon until it was insured.
Unable to exit via his car, Graham Martin was forced to walk four blocks down from the embassy to his house where he picked up his wife, Dorothy, together with one suitcase and a model of a Buddhist pagoda.
Later that day, Dorothy Graham Martin boarded a helicopter that took her to the American fleet in the South China Sea, leaving behind her personal suitcase so a South Vietnamese woman might be able to squeeze on board with her.
Graham Martin was evacuated by helicopter from the US Embassy on the morning of 30 April 1975 as PAVN forces overran the city.
Graham Martin died in March 1990 and is buried in Section 3 at Arlington National Cemetery.