On 21 March, at a special briefing for Saigon correspondents, General Abrams stressed the gains the South Vietnamese had achieved and denied that any sort of catastrophe had occurred. Continuing to concentrate on the large quantities of supplies destroyed, on kill ratios of ten to one, and on the loss by the PAVN of 13 out of 33 maneuver battalions, he conceded in response to hard questioning that the enemy had routed the 2nd Airborne Battalion at FSB 30, whose own commander had deserted his men. Yet the members of the more successful units, he said, would emerge from Laos with confidence higher than they had ever possessed. Countering these assertions on 23 March NBC News reported the evacuation of an ARVN regiment on Route 9 where soldiers clung to the skids of helicopters rather than waiting for more helicopters that might not come. That same evening President Nixon was interviewed on ABC News, he cautioned that it was too soon to judge whether the incursion was a success or a failure but still stressed that the raid had made considerable progress toward ensuring the continuation of American withdrawals and reducing the threat to the American forces that remained in Southeast Asia. He went on to emphasize that the impression of panic conveyed by television news films was inaccurate. "What have the pictures shown?" he said. "They've shown only those men in the four ARVN battalions... that were in trouble. They haven't shown people in the other 18 battalions. That is not because it's been deliberate. It's because those make news."