History of the United States (1964–1980)
The growing Watergate scandal was a major disaster for Nixon, eroding his political support in public opinion and in Washington. However he did manage to secure large-scale funding for South Vietnam, much of which was wasted. The United States withdrew its troops from Vietnam before the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. However, Watergate resulted in significant Democrat gains in the 1974 midterm elections and when the new 94th Congress convened the following January, it immediately voted to terminate all aid to South Vietnam in addition to passing a bill forbidding all further US military intervention in Southeast Asia. President Ford was against this, but as Congress had a veto-proof majority, he was forced to accept. South Vietnam rapidly collapsed as the North invaded it in force, and Saigon fell to the NVA on April 30, 1975. Later nearly one million Vietnamese managed to flee to the U.S. as refugees. The impact on the U.S. was muted, with few political recriminations, but it did leave a "Vietnam Syndrome" that cautioned against further military interventions anywhere else. Nixon (and his next two successors Ford and Carter) had dropped the containment policy and were not willing to intervene anywhere.
Foreign policy of the John F. Kennedy administration
At the time of Kennedy's death, no final policy decision had been made as to Vietnam. In 2008, Theodore Sorensen wrote: "I would like to believe that Kennedy would have found a way to withdraw all American instructors and advisors [from Vietnam]. But... I do not believe he knew in his last weeks what he was going to do." Sorensen added that, in his opinion, Vietnam "was the only foreign policy problem handed off by JFK to his successor in no better, and possibly worse, shape than it was when he inherited it." U.S. involvement in the region escalated until his successor Lyndon Johnson directly deployed regular U.S. military forces for fighting the Vietnam War. After Kennedy's assassination, President Johnson signed NSAM 273 on November 26, 1963. It reversed Kennedy's decision to withdraw 1,000 troops, and reaffirmed the policy of assistance to the South Vietnamese.