The Saigon CIA station photograph
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Kiriakou calls it "one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century", dozens of people on a rooftop, climbing a bent ladder to a helicopter perched on a small hut, trying for the last flight out of Saigon. It won the Pulitzer Prize.

The correction he offers concerns the building: "Many Americans think it was the American embassy. It wasn't the American embassy. It was an apartment building that was secretly the CIA's station in Saigon."

Visiting in 2026, he found it in ordinary use, "just a workingclass apartment building now", and got to the roof by paying for it: "we bribed the security guard down on the first floor and he let us go up there and take pictures." What he found there had not been touched: "there's an abandoned bar up there that looks like it was abandoned in 1975. People just left it the way it was the day the United States bugged out in 1975. It was an incredible thing to see."

See also

- Kiriakou Vietnam Visit 2026
- Cu Chi Tunnels
- Vietnam War
