Nate Thayer

Nate Thayer Awards and Honors

Thayer’s reporting has earned him The World Press Award, the 1997 British Press Awards 2006 Scoop_of_the_Year British Press Award, and the 1998 Francis Frost Wood Award for Courage in Journalism, given by to a journalist "judged to best exemplify physical or moral courage in the practice of his or her craft."

He was a visiting scholar at the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University 

He was the  recipient of the Center for Public Integrity  International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting oof the Year (http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/icij  http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/icij/journalists/profile/856/  "Upon awarding Thayer the ICIJ Award, the judges noted: :"He illuminated a page of history that would have been lost to the world had he not spent years in the Cambodian jungle, in a truly extraordinary quest for first-hand knowledge of the Khmer Rouge and their murderous leader. His investigations of the Cambodian political world required not only great risk and physical hardship but also mastery of an ever-changing cast of Political faction characters." http://www.publicintegrity.org/assets/pdf/pi_1999_03.pdf Maud S. Beelman, "Reporting Across Borders," The Public i: Newsletter of the Center for Public Integrity,Vol 7, no. 2, Mar 1999.]

According to Vaudine England of the BBC "Many of the regions greatest names in reporting made their mark in the pages of the Far Eastern Economic Review from the legendary Richard Hughes of Korean War fame, to Nate Thayer, the journalist who found Cambodias Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot."http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8268105.stm Vaudine England, "Leading Asian Magazine to Close," BBC Asia-Pacific News, September 22, 2009.]

Thayer was also the first person in 57 years to turn down a prestigious Peabody Award because he did not want to share it with ABC News  [Nightline] saying publicly lambasting American television news saying:"I in no way want my name associated with such egregious violations of journalistic and professional ethics." .http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/your-scoop-nah-its-ours-if-we-want-it-1157187.html "Your scoop? Nah. Its ours if we want it." The Independent May 25 1998.]

Thayer is also the recipient of The Overseas Press Club of America Award, as well as the Asian Society of Publishers and Editors Award for "Excellence in Reporting,"

Thayer was also honored with the SAIS-Novartis "Award for Excellence in International Reporting."

He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by The Wall Street Jounral

In 1999 Thayer established at the Hofstra Universitys Department of Journalism and Mass Media Studies in the School of Communication the Nate Thayer Scholarship given annually to "a qualified student with the best foreign story idea. Winners are selected on the basis of scholastic achievement or potential as well as economic need." http://www.hofstra.edu/pdf/1999/ho019900008.pdf Hofstra University Student Information Package, Financial Aid Section, p. 45.] http://www.hofstra.edu/Academics/Colleges/SOC/JMSPR/index.html

"Your scoop? Nah. It's ours if we want it" By Paul McCann

Your scoop? Nah. It's ours if we want it

'Ethics' and 'large media organisation' are terms that look less and less comfortable together. Paul McCann profiles a recent conflict involving star foreign reporter Nate Thayer, Pol Pot and America's ABC News

By Paul McCann

The (London) Independent

Monday 25 May 1998

Nate Thayer is the kind of reporter that makes idealistic youngsters want to be journalists. He has risked his life in jungles, crossed the front lines of a civil war, been expelled from his home for exposing corrupt ministers and made secret rendezvous with genocidal killers. All for what is universally acknowledged to be the scoop of the decade - finding Pol Pot.

Now his lustre has been burnished all the brighter by his refusal to kow-tow to the might of the American TV network ABC. Furthermore he has become the first person in 57 years to turn down a prestigious Peabody award because it would have been shared with what he believes is a duplicitous media monster.

When he found the hidden Khmer leader last July, Thayer was described as having spent 10 years on the trail of Pol Pot.

"In fact that is rather a lot of hype," he says. "It's not like I had an obsession with Pol Pot. I was a Cambodian correspondent and lived there for six years. I also lived in Thailand for another five years so obviously there were plenty of other Cambodian and Asian stories that I covered.

"But I had always thought that Pol Pot was one of the last great interviews in the world. Here was a household name the world over who had never explained himself. He was perhaps the most effective 'secret leader' of the twentieth century.

"So all the time I lived in Cambodia and Thailand I kept one eye on Pol Pot. I made numerous trips into the jungle and built up contacts with Khmer Rouge leaders. And I made constant requests for access or an interview with Pol Pot.

"The break came in June 1997 when I was expelled from Cambodia for exposing connections between the Prime Minister and heroin traffickers. I decided to write a book so I spent a lot of time just sitting in a room with the Khmer Rouge's clandestine radio station on in the background. I heard then that the defence minister had been deemed a traitor and executed so I immediately went to my Khmer Rouge contacts who told me about serious infighting within the leadership and that Pol Pot had been overthrown.

"They even announced Pot's overthrow on the radio but no one believed them and that became the basis for my argument for getting access. No one would believe he had been overthrown unless a western journalist got in to prove it.

"From there I began the process of getting into one of the most impenetrable places in the world. The only foreigners to have been there before were the three guys who were kidnapped and executed. It was made all the harder because last July a civil war broke out in Phnom Penh and I had to fly to Bangkok and try from there by illegally crossing the border, not to mention the front lines of the Phnom Penh civil war and the front lines of the Khmer Rouge civil war.

"Once me and my cameraman were in a hotel over the border I had to phone a number in Europe to tell them my room number before being infiltrated into the jungle.

Thayer never did actually interview the leader responsible for the deaths of an estimated one million Cambodians. Instead, he filmed two hours of Pol Pot being denounced at a classic Maoist show trial.

Nevertheless, his story was dynamite, and as soon as it became known that he had footage, pictures and a story he was bombarded with hundreds of calls from news organisations. His main priority was to have the print story go in the Far Eastern Economic Review, which he had worked for as a freelancer for years and which had supported him for six months while he tried to get to Pol Pot in the jungle.

But he sold the North American television rights to his footage to ABC for $350,000 - "Mainly because ABC's Ted Koppel is as good as it gets on American TV. He seemed like the last honourable guy."

But now Thayer is seriously pissed off at ABC. The network's PR department got hold of the footage and did a major number on it. They made enhanced video-grabs which they gave to newspapers under an "ABC Exclusive" tag. This meant that, using ABC's released material, the New York Times was able to run Thayer's story before he had even started writing for the Economic Review. And by putting out the video grabs and downloading images onto its Web site, ABC ruined Thayer's chances of selling the stills from his trip into the jungle.

"Basically they said 'f*** you' to my lawyers because they knew their lawyers could eat a freelancer alive," says Thayer. "It was an outrageous ethical violation. They then refused to pay me my agreed fee until I signed something saying that they had done nothing wrong. It took 10 months to get my money and they only paid up because they knew when I had won the Peabody that it would turn into a PR nightmare."

ABC claims that its pre-broadcast publicity was perfectly normal behaviour and Thayer was naive for not understanding this.

Thayer believes the network's behaviour speaks volumes about the state of US television news. "ABC have one correspondent for the whole of Asia so they take freelancers' work and try to take credit for it. The function of people like Koppel is to prove that there is a serious side.

"But in reality to them the function of journalism in a free society is no more than delivering audiences to advertisers."

‘I AM IN DANGER’: Duch talks of the risks to his life, provides details of Khmer Rouge death machine By Nate Thayer

‘I AM IN DANGER’: Duch talks of the risks to his life, even as he provides further details of Khmer Rouge death machine 

By Nate Thayer in Battambang province

Far Eastern Economic Review

May 13, 1999

 

(Authors note: At the time of the publication of this interview, the UN special representative to Cambodia on Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg, called for the Phnom Penh government to ensure Duch’s protection “from possible retaliation or attempts to reduce him to silence…because of his key role as a cadre at the heart of the political security machinery he is a crucial witness to some of the worst of human-rights violations which have occurred during this century. Because of the publication of his interview, his safety and life may seriously be in danger.” Hammarberg called for an “ad hoc international tribunal” to be set up outside Cambodia. “The Cambodian judiciary unfortunately is unfit to handle a trial of this complexity and magnitude,” he said, because it failed to meet certain conditions such as “a culture of respect for due process.” The charges proposed by a UN panel of experts cover crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, forced labour, torture, and crimes against internationally protected persons. I was asked by the court for raw copies of my taped interviews of Duch, Pol Pot, Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea, Ta Mok, and Ieng Sary. I was also asked to be a witness and testify at the trial. I rejected both requests. Not because I oppose a trial for those indicted (and many others)--quite the opposite--but because I oppose being party to a politically motivated/manipulated/influenced show trial. Not to mention it is in violation of international standards of justice which forbid hearsay. And international law where if a person is alive and available to testify themselves, it is forbidden for a third party to quote that person when he is available to testify on his own behalf. A third reason, is I am a journalist, and portions of the interviews were given on various degrees of "on/off the record" and "background" basis. No court has the right to compel a journalist to reveal their sources. It undermines the whole basis of the role of a free press in a free society. But mostly, in this case, it is clear that there is little difference between this trial and a Stalinist era communist show trial where accused are cherry picked for political reasons, not based on an evidentiary process where investigators gather evidence, decide where they constitute sufficient, court admissible information to base an  indictment, and then press charges. These defendants were pre determined for political reasons and many others were excluded, also for political reasons, despite overwhelming evidence of culpability sufficient for indictment. For Cambodians, it reinforces the reality of impunity from justice for those with political influence. This trial is being given the rubber stamp of approval by the UN and international community, sending a message to your average Cambodian peasant that there exists no where to turn where an independent judiciary will seek justice on their behalf. In thousand sof Cambodian villages, people remain alive and in political power who have committed crimes against international law and their victims have no recourse.)

 

Kang Kek Ieu’s name is usually spelled “Kiang” by scholars, but in his interviews with the REVIEW, he said he writes it as Kang. He is an odd looking man, his large head seemingly out of proportion to his short, thin body. His huge ears frame a wide grin, which exposes his missing teeth and the rotting remaining ones. Both eyes are unfocused, clouded grey-blue with what appears to be glaucoma. His left hand is missing its index finger and is curved like a claw, the result, he says, of an accident while cleaning a weapon in 1983.

He seemed calm about being exposed as a mass—murderer, even laughing briefly at the irony of being asked by the REVIEW to write his own “confession.” Presented with a rough biography to verify, as well as copies of orders he and other leaders issued to torture and kill prisoners, he spoke for days and wrote long descriptions of the workings and structure of the Khmer Rouge killing machine. In the process, he sometimes wept and expressed deep remorse.

He was intent on concealing his whereabouts. “I don’t want any man to know our relationship,” he told the REVIEW, “They will make me unsafe. I have no secrets from the Far Eastern economic Review, but I fear the people around me. I don’t know who is the man of Nuon Chea, of Ta Mok, of Khieu Samphan. I am in danger. My life is at risk. My sister will worry if I speak in Khmer. She will say, ‘My brother will die!’ They can kill me. They will say I am the man of the CIA who sold out to the USA.”

Duch said he had been visited by the local police chief after being seen talking to the review in this remote hamlet. “I see you are talking to the bad people,” Duch quoted the police chief as telling him, “You should be careful.”

There are many people who don’t want the truth to be known, leading the United Nations to fear for his safety. In a statement, the UN special representative to Cambodia on human rights, Thomas Hammarberg, called for the Phnom Penh government to promptly take steps to ensure Duch’s protection “from possible retaliation or attempts to reduce him to silence…because of his key role as a cadre at the heart of the political security machinery he is a crucial witness to some of the worst of human-rights violations which have occurred during this century. Because of the publication of his interview, his safety and life may seriously be in danger."

Hammarberg called for an “ad hoc international tribunal” to be set up outside Cambodia. “The Cambodian judiciary unfortunately is unfit to handle a trial of this complexity and magnitude,” he said, because it failed to meet certain conditions such as “a culture of respect for due process.” The charges proposed by a UN panel of experts cover crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, forced labour, torture, and crimes against internationally protected persons.

If Duch goes before an international tribunal, his evidence would potentially be damning. Among his statements to the REVIEW:

--“Foreigners don’t know who ordered the killings. I want to explain clearly to you: It was a decision of the central committee of the Communist Party. I followed the orders of my superiors, Nuon Chea and Son Sen, but I have great difficulty now, thinking that the people who died did nothing wrong.”

--“My superior first was Vorn Vet during the war time, then after liberation (in 1975) I reported directly to Son Sen. In July 1978, I was transferred to Nuon Chea when Son Sen went to command the fighting in the east with the Vietnamese.”

--Duch later killed Vorn Vet at Tuol Sleng (see “Death in Detail”) after he was purged. “Ta Mok personally arrested Vorn Vet at his house. (Standing Committee member) Ke Pok was there and hid under the bed, trembling with fear. Nuon Chea's wife told me this.” Ke Pok, who as a Khmer Rouge commander was implicated in the purges of the late 1970’s, is now a one-star general in the Cambodian army.

--“The decision to arrest all the women and children, the families of suspects, was made by the provincial committee, the regional leaders, or the central committee of the party. Everyone connected must be killed.”

--Duch said that photos were taken of all the prisoners sent to Tuol Sleng “to prove to the party that they were arrested. For some people, Nuon Chea wanted me to give him pictures of their dead bodies for proof. He ordered me to bring pictures of their dead bodies to his office.”

The arrest of Hu Nim, the former Khmer Rouge Minister of Information, was decided by the entire Central Committee, Duch said. But it was Nuon Chea and Son Sen who actually ordered the arrests and executions of purged cadres. “For arresting people, it was the everyday job of Nuon Chea and Son Sen.” Nuon Chea was in charge of the killing machine and “the second man for the killing was Son Sen.” (Son Sen is now dead; Nuon Chea is living freely in western Cambodia)

--Neither Vorn Vet nor Ieng Sary (the former Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister, now also living in Pailin) was present at the 1978 meeting at which the leaders decided to purge the Khmer Rouge eastern zone, Duch recalled. “Son Sen and Nuon Chea ordered the arrest and killing of many of the party leaders,” he said. Then, looking puzzled, he added: “I don’t know why.”

He described the process of distributing the confessions he extracted from his victims under torture: “I made four copies of every confession. I would give the original to Son Sen and keep one copy at Tuol Sleng. Son Sen would give a copy to Nuon Chea and Nuon Chea would give to others depending on the case. After July, 1978, I gave copies to Nuon Chea directly.”

I had a special telephone in my house direct to Son Sen that could not be tapped. Nuon Chea talked less on the phone, but preferred to write instructions and I would visit him at his office. Son Sen loved to talk on the phone, sometimes for more than an hour.”

The Khmer Rouge leaders are aware that the archives seized at Tuol Sleng are potentially incriminating, Duch indicated.” On 25 June 1986, Son Sen asked me, ‘What about the papers at S-21? (a name for the national-security apparatus)’ I told him the truth, that Nuon Chea didn’t tell me the Vietnamese were coming.” (Duch had already said that because of this lack of warning, he didn’t have time to destroy the papers) “Son Sen got very angry with Nuon Chea.”

Poring over some of the Tuol Sleng documents, which ordered the torture and killing of thousands of people, Duch said: “This is the handwriting off Nuon Chea. You see this handwriting is square; mine is oval, like Son Sen’s.”

Having spoken of the fates of eight westerners killed at Tuol Sleng, Duch also recalled the death of another foreigner, a French truck driver who had been working in Indochina before the Khmer Rouge took power. The man’s death was ordered by Ta Mok, Duch said. “I killed him in 1971. Ta Mok ordered me to kill him.” He said the Frenchman, whose name is being withheld by the REVIEW pending the notification of his family, ‘was very courageous. He explained to me about Catholicism.”

Though Duch seemed to realize that these revelations would change his life, he didn’t know quite how. “I guess I cannot work to build schools in my district now, “he said. He then asked whether he might get a job as a human rights worker.

DEATH IN DETAIL: ‘Duch’ implicates living Khmer Rouge leaders in killings. Says Nuon Chea ran Pol Pot’s Death machine By Nate Thayer

DEATH IN DETAIL: ‘Duch’ implicates living Khmer Rouge leaders in killings. Nuon Chea ran Pol Pot’s Death machine, Duch says.

By Nate Thayer in Battambang province

Far Eastern Economic Review

May 13, 1999

(Authors note: This article was written one week after the REVIEW published a several story package by myself and photographer Nic Dunlop. Dunlop had first located Duch, who was living under an alias doing social work and recognized his face, in a truly extraordinary focus by Dunlop on what was then one of the most notorious and in hiding mass murderers in the world, weeks earlier. While Dunlop took his photograph, he did not, with good reason, broach the subject with Duch of  who he really was. The area was dangerous and Nic wanted to be sure it was indeed Duch, and be prepared for a negative reaction. He returned to Bangkok, contacted me, and we returned to a remote village in western Cambodia and confronted Duch with who he was. It was not a relaxing encounter. If Duch had chosen to, he could have disposed of us and no one would ever prove the details. This was hours from any communication with the outside and the heart of territory still controlled by nominally defected ex-KR. I knew the government had long been aware of Duch's location. And I had closely kept track of rumours of him for years which had him dead, working as a school teacher, a converted born-again Christian, and using a similar name to the alias he had introduced himself to Dunlop with. I had informed the REVIEW office that if I was not in contact in 48 hours, there was probably a serious problem. After a very brief denial when I asked if he "had ever worked for the security services between 1975 and 1979" (he contended he was a school teacher then), Duch took a second look at my business card, paused, and silently stared directly in my eyes for perhaps 30 seconds. He then said: "You are from the Far Eastern Economic Review. You are the one who interviewed Pol Pot and Ta Mok." Those seconds hung in the air far longer than was comfortable. "Yes," I said, " And we know who you are." Duch stared silently again for what seemed like forever, his mind obviously racing with the implications of the encounter, reached over, put his hand on my leg, and said "It is God's will you are here. My future is now in God's hands." And he never  lied again. We brought copies of his own torture and execution documents from Tuol Sleng, many with his handwriting and those of Nuon Chea and others. He meticulously acknowledged and identified each one. I gave him a rough biography I had written of him and asked him to correct or add details. He did so with great focus adding many dates and events. I had contacted several Catholic and Protestant Priests and said I was going to meet with someone who had " perhaps killed many people" and asked which passages of the bible might such a person most relate to. ( The answer was Paul: "chief of the Sinners" who was himself a murderer and converted, confessed his sins, sought redemption, was forgiven, and was granted salvation. It was a passage that Duch knew by memory)  After several days of interviewing him, the story was published in the REVIEW. We warned and made clear to Duch that his life would be in danger at 5:00 pm on that wednesday night, when the Review would send its normal press release of the next issues top storiies. We knew it would be picked up everywhere and broadcast in the VOA Khmer language service at 8:00pm that night. Arrangements were made for a secret arrest warrant to be issued in Belgium, so there would be legal authority to have him smuggled across the Thai border to safety, as many powerful people would have reason to silence him. Amnesty International and the UN Centre for Human Rights were pre alerted to the public release of the fact that Duch had been located. They were prepared to release public statements simultaneously with the story publication calling for the Cambodian government to ensure his safety as his life was in danger and he was a key defendent and witness for any trial on Khmer Rouge crimes against humanity. Duch was given mobile phone contacts for me in Battambang city, about two hours away, and told arrangements were in place for a safe house for him or to be smuggled out of the country if he felt his life was in danger. He chose to initially stay in his village. Within hours of the story being released, the very angry village police chief came to his house and said he was ordered to "come to a meeting.' A well known euphamism to Duch, he fled on foot and contacted me in Battambang. I checked him in under a pseudonym in the room next to mine at an obscure hotel. There, tape recorders were turned on and for a week he spoke in great detail of the entire machinery of the Khmer Rouge movement and specifics of many instances of war crimes and crimes against humanity and who ordered carried out and was involved. During this time, international pressure was significant; Governments called for his arrest, many called for his safety to be ensured by Cambodia authorities. The story was published but Duch had seemingly vanished again. After initial refusal, Hun Sen formally agreed to launch a government search for his whereabouts, and journalists descended on Battambang. As a journalist it wasn't my job to arrest him. It was also my responsibility to ensure he understood the consequences of his public statements and to ensure he wasn't murdered for speaking out to the REVIEW, as he had as much a right to due process of law as that he denied to thousands. I was beseiged by Cambodian government, military, diplomats and journalists demanding to know the whereabouts of Duch, who by this time had been known to have dissapeared from his village. One pro--government paper's front page banner headline was "Is Nate Thayer Hiding Duch?" above photogrpahs of us both. After a week, Duch decided he would seek, like Nuon Chea, Khiue Samphan, Ieng Sary and thousands of other former KR, the protection of  a senior Khmer Rouge military officer who had 'defected' to the government and was now a general in the Hun Sen army. We both left the hotel at the same time, he to the compound of the General and a rather nervous me--with 40 hours of the only copy of tape recordings detailing the Khmer Rouge killing apparatus--by land through a myriad of government military checkpoints over the border into Thailand. Duch was immediately betrayed by his contact and was whisked by helicopter to Phnom Penh where he has been in prison ever since. This story is one of those published after the two weeks spent with Duch.)

This time, it was Duch’s turn to write his confessions. In the weeks since the REVIEW broke the news that the notorious Khmer Rouge security boss was still alive, Kaing Kek Ieu has been in hiding, answering verbally and in writing the magazine’s questions about his role in the movement’s 1975-79 reign of terror.

The revelations about his job as chief executioner were chilling enough. But even more importantly, he recounted in detail how senior Khmer Rouge officials ordered the mass murder of prisoners processed through Tuol Sleng detention centre, which Duch—as he was then known—directed. Notably, he implicated Pol Pot’s number 2, Nuon Chea, who is living freely in Pailin, western Cambodia.

Duch’s testimony, which began with last week’s article, is fueling calls for the arrest and international trial of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders. It has also made Duch the most wanted man in Cambodia, with the United Nation’s warning that his life is in danger from those who want him silenced.

Phnom Penh fears that moving against the Khmer Rouge leaders, who have officially defected to the government but still effectively control the ex-Khmer Rouge guerrillas surrounding Pailin, could plunge the country back into civil war. Only one Khmer Rouge leader—former military chief-of-staff Ta Mok—is in custody.

Duch, now a born-again Christian, said he was ready to testify against his former comrades and answer for his own crimes in front of an international tribunal. “It is Ok. They can have my body, Jesus has my soul. It is important that this history be understood. I want to tell you everything clearly.” And he did.

“I was a technician for the Communist party,” he declared, then went on to describe the inner workings of S-21, the Khmer Rouge security apparatus that he directed from Tuol Sleng, a converted Phnom Penh school where at least 16,000 people—many of them purged Khmer Rouge cadres and their families—were taken for interrogation. Only seven survived.

Duch said the policy of killing all prisoners was ‘an oral instruction of the party since 1971, when we were trying to rid our ranks of the enemy.” The definition of enemy expanded in 1973, when Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot decided that all cadres should come from the peasantry and the educated should be eliminated. “At that time many things changed and many people were killed,” Duch said.

Once the Khmer Rouge seized power, the internal purges widened. “After liberation in 1975, Pol Pot said: ‘We must protect the party and country by finding the enemies from within the Party. We are not strong enough to attack the enemies from outside, so we must destroy them from within.’ First we arrested the people in the north, then the southwest, then the northwest, then the east. He used Nuon Chea to do the work. Pol Pot never directly ordered the killings. Nuon Chea was always cruel and pompous. He never explained to the cadre, he only ordered them.”

Nuon Chea was in direct command of the Communist party’s killing machine, Duch said. “Vorn Vet and Chay Kim Hour were ordered killed by Nuon Chea,” he said referring to two top leaders. Duch said he personally carried out the orders. “I even had to exhume the body of Vorn Vet from the earth to take a picture of him dead because Nuon Chea wanted proof that he was killed.”

Duch said he also killed eight westerners at Tuol Sleng on Nuon Chea’s orders. “Nuon Chea ordered me to burn their bodies with tires to leave no bones.” The victims were from America, Australia, Britain, France and New Zealand, theoretically making their killers indictable in their country of origin. He said the foreigners were held for a month and tortured using electric shocks by chief interrogator Mam Nay, now a police officer in western Cambodia.

Duch’s testimony could also bolster the case against Ta Mok, the one-legged general who was captured in March, but as of early may, the authorities in Phnom Penh had made no effort to summon Duch to give evidence. “Ta Mok had his own prison,” Duch said—a revelation previously unknown to investigators. “It was located at Cherie O’Phnoe in Kampot province. Many were killed there.”

Duch said his technique for killing prisoners was superior to Mok’s. “I knew from experience that if they were only tortured they wouldn’t say anything. So torture had to be accompanied by psychological tactics; so I told them they would be released if they talked. This was a lie, but it worked. Ta Mok didn’t care about the mental state of his victims. He just tortured them and killed them.”

Duch’s execution methods were similarly efficient.” We had no instruction from the party on how to kill them, but we did not use bullets. Usually we slit their throats,” he said, drawing his finger across his aorta to demonstrate. “We killed them like a chicken.”

Asked about the thousands of women and children he killed, Duch turned away as tears welled in his eyes. “It was a fact that everyone in the Communist party knew that everyone arrested must be killed. Ask anybody in the party.”

Now that his past has been revealed, Duch clearly fears for his life. He sometimes spoke only in whispers, referring to Khmer Rouge leaders by their initials so that listeners would not recognize their names. At other times, he asked to be driven to remote areas to speak in a vehicle where he couldn’t be overheard. Over two weeks, the REVIEW conducted over forty hours of interviews that shed unprecedented light onto the workings of the Khmer Rouge.

“The decisions to kill were not made by one man, not just Pol Pot, but the entire central committee,” Duch stressed.

“Nuon Chea, he was the principal man for the killings. Pol Pot was interested in military strategy. Khieu Samphan did not have the right to decide who to arrest and order killed. He was a notetaker.”

“Pol Pot knew about S-21, but did not direct it personally. He left that job personally to Nuon Chea as No. 2 in the party and Son Sen as head of the army and police.” Then, shaking his head, he added: “They arrested nearly everyone by the end.”

The decision to purge thousands of cadre in the eastern zone in 1978 was taken at a secret meeting of top leaders, Duch said. “Pol Pot ordered it. At the meeting were Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Pol Pot, and Son Sen.”

Duch said the purge reached its worst in the last weeks of 1978. “My prison was full. Nuon Chea ordered 300 (Khmer Rouge) soldiers arrested. He called to meet me and said, ‘Don’t bother to interrogate them—just kill them.’ And I did.”

The purge didn’t save the movement. Angered by repeated cross-border attacks by the Khmer Rouge, Vietnam invaded Cambodia in December 1978 and captured Phnom Penh within two weeks. “It is true that the last days before the Vietnamese came I personally killed the remaining prisoners” at Tuol Sleng, Duch said. “I was called by Nuon Chea to his office and he ordered me to kill all the remaining prisoners.”

“I asked Nuon Chea to allow me to keep one Vietnamese prisoner alive to use for propaganda on the radio and he replied, ‘Kill them all. We can always get more and more.’”

“I was like a waterboy for Nuon Chea. He didn’t tell me that the Vietnamese were invading so I had no time to burn the documents. When I met Nuon Chea in 1983, he told me, ‘All the papers from the Party were burned except for yours. You are stupid.’”

Thousands of forced confessions bearing notations that Duch identified as his own, or those of Nuon Chea and others, were left behind at Tuol Sleng. The documents, including orders to torture and kill prisoners, would serve as key evidence in any trial of Khmer Rouge leaders.

“I think a trial is a very good idea. It is a good thing to arrest Ta Mok and Nuon Chea. And if Pol Pot and Son Sen were still alive, they should be tried as well. Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan did not have the right to decide the killings by themselves,” Duch said.

Pol Pot committed suicide in 1998, a year after ordering the murder of Son Sen. Khieu Samphan lives in Pailin with Nuon Chea and Ieng Sary, the former Khmer Rouge foreign minister.

Duch, who worked for several years for foreign aid organizations under various aliases, is uncertain about the future. “I guess that I will have to go to jail now, but it is OK. The killings must be understood. The truth should be known.”

Additional excerpts from Thayer’s interviews with Duch will be posted on May 7 on the REVIEW’s Web site. www.feer.com

 

'I'm tired of talking about it':Excerpts from interview with Pol Pot By Nate Thayer

'I'm tired of talking about it'

Excerpts from interview with Pol Pot October 16, 1997

By Nate Thayer

Phnom Penh Post

Friday, 24 October 1997 

   

Pol Pot, in his Oct 16 interview, dodged the big question - his role in mass murder - despite repeated attempts to get a response from him.

Nate Thayer's interpreter, senior KR cadre Tep Kunnal was less than keen on his job, trying to beg out of his translating duties. Thayer prevailed upon Kunnal to stay and translate the questions and answers. The following are excerpts, starting with Thayer's opening questions, addressed to the interpreter:

Q: He knows he is accused of leading and organization that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and that he has been condemned by most of the world for it. Is he a mass murderer, or what has he contributed to his country:

A: I think that you can raise all of the questions at one time, and some questions I think that I can answer connecting one to another to simplify things. But it's up to you...

Q: I'm interested in the issues of the time he was in power between 1975 and 1979. The millions of people who indeed did suffer during that time, and whether he feels that he's fairly accused. That's one question, let's start with.

A: Yes, I want to reply. Your question is not unfamiliar. That question has been raised time and again: I would like to say first that my conscience is clear. Everything I have done and contributed is first for the nation and the people and the race of Cambodia.

[Pol Pot then spoke about how the Vietnamese wanted to take over Cambodia, adding "they wanted to assassinate me because they knew without me they could easily swallow up Cambodia".]

Q: I would like to hear all of that, and if he's willing to stay here for hours, I am too. But if we could please deal with this first. As you know, most of the world thinks that you're responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Cambodians who didn't deserve to suffer. Could you answer that question directly? Do you feel that you were indeed responsible for crimes against humanity, against your own people?

A: I'm going to reply. I want to tell you clearly. First, I would like to tell you that I came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people. Even now, and you can look at me, am I savage person? My conscience is clear... As I told you before, they fought against us, so we had to take measures to defend ourselves...

Q: You have an opportunity here, a historical opportunity. You know well that during your years in power, your policies - agrarian experiments, social and political organizations, the direct executions of many thousands of people - that many families suffered. The country itself also suffered because of your policies. Your fellow Cambodians want to know whether you feel any remorse, whether you acknowledge that you made very serious mistakes while you were in power?

A: There are two sides to it, as I told you: There's what we did wrong, and what we did right. The mistake is that we did some things against the people - by us and also by the enemy - but the other side, as I told you, is that without our struggle there would be no Cambodia right now.

Q: But for all those hundreds of thousands who suffered - not just died but suffered from forced labor, from lack of food, from what were clearly failed central policies while you were in power - don't you think that they deserve an apology?

A: For the wrong things of our struggle, as I told you, for the wrong things, it has been written in the book. This is a testimony before history.

Q: Which book?

A: The book is the "The Right and Wrong of Democratic Kampuchea". [Pol Pot was apparently referring to a political tract released by the Democratic Kampuchea movement, as the Khmer Rouge calls themselves, in the late 1980s.]

Q: But that acknowledged only 30,000 deaths. All independent scholars, from all political ideologies, acknowledge a minimum of hundreds of thousands of people who died as a result of failed central policies while you were in power...That is a fact. While you were in sole power-and all the other members of your standing committee say you were in full power-thousands of people died because of failed social policies of your government. Are you willing to acknowledge that fact?

A: As I told you, that was written in the book, and I'm tired of talking about it...

Q: Let's talk about Tuol Sleng. There is overwhelming evidence that you had overall responsibility for Tuol Sleng. Sixteen thousand people who signed confessions were executed, including women and children who were suspected CIA, KGB, Vietnamese agents. Were you responsible for Toul Sleng and do you really believe that those 16,000 - including women and children - were agents of a foreign government?

A: I was at the top. I made only big decisions on big issues. I want to tell you - Tuol Sleng was a Vietnamese exhibition; a journalist wrote that. People talk about Tuol Sleng, Tuol Sleng, Toul Sleng, but when we look at the pictures, the pictures are the same. When I first heard about Tuol Sleng, it was on VOA [Voice of America]. I listened twice. And there are documents talking about someone who did research about the skeletons of the people... They said when you look closely at the skulls, they are smaller than the skulls of the Khmer people.

Q: Are you saying that you never heard of Tuol Sleng before 1979?

A: No, I never heard of it. And those two researchers, they said that those skeletons, they were more than 10 years old.

Q: Sir, let me say that there is overwhelming scientific evidence, overwhelming proof that thousands of people, Cambodians, were executed at Toul Sleng while you were in control of Phnom Penh. There is no dispute among anybody else in the world outside of Anlong Veng, perhaps, that it is true.

[No response.]

DEPT OF SCOOPS: Where’s the Committee to Protect Journalists from each other?-"Talk of the Town"-The New Yorker

DEPT OF SCOOPS

Where’s the Committee to Protect Journalists from each other?

The New Yorker

May 25, 1998

Talk of the Town

By Philip Gourevitch

A George Foster Peabody Award is the broadcasting world’s version of the Pulitzer, and until last Monday, when the fifty-seventh annual awards ceremony was held, at the Waldorf-Astoria, nobody who was honored with a Peabody had ever spurned the distinction. Then Nate Thayer came to town. Thayer is the thirty-eight-year-old Bangkok-based journalist-adventurer who, last July, obtained one of the great scoops of our time by trekking into the Cambodian jungle, attending the show trial of Pol Pot, and trekking out into Thailand with the whole bizarre spectacle on high-quality videotape. Much of that footage was promptly aired by ABC’s “Nightline” in a three-part series, which went on to win one of this year’s Peabody’s for “distinguished achievement and meritorious public service.” And Thayer went from being the first journalist to meet up with Pol Pot in nearly twenty years to being the first to turn down a Peabody.

 

In a letter “formally and unequivocally” rejecting his share in the award, Thayer wrote, “Ted Koppel and ‘Nightline’ literally stole my work, took credit for it, trivialized it, refused to pay me, and then attempted to bully and extort me when I complained. They should not be rewarded for this kind of behavior and I under no circumstances want my name associated with these egregious violations of basic journalistic ethics and integrity.” So last week’s gala luncheon became a split-level ceremony: upstairs, in the Waldorf’s Grand ballroom, Koppel accepted the trophy—the sixth Peabody of his career—while downstairs, in one of the Waldorf’s many saloons, Thayer pleaded his case to the barman, who set up his double scotches for free, explaining, “I like a man with principles.’

Thayer has no quarrel with the series Koppel anchored, or with the fee of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars that, a month ago, ‘Nightline” finally paid him for the use of his footage. But the deal—which he originally negotiated with Koppel over the phone—was for a one-week exclusive on North American television rights only. As Thayer understood it, that meant that he could sell the remaining world broadcast rights and the potentially lucrative still photographs from his encounter with Pol Pot, and that he retained the print-media exclusive to the story, which he had promised to his longtime employer, the far eastern Economic Review, a Hong Kong-based weekly. Thayer says that he chose to work with Koppel “because of his reputation for integrity” and yet “within twenty-four hours the pictures and the story were all over the place. ABC’s public-relations just took it over.”

 

Even before the first “Nightline program on Pol Pot aired, the network’s promotion teams were shipping out photographs made from Thayer’s footage, and video clips were available on the ABC web site, where anybody could simply download them. “Nightline” also allowed a writer from the Times to preview ten minutes of the footage, with the result that Thayer’s scoop—text and photographs appeared on the paper’s front page before his own article for the Review had gone to press. According to a spokeswoman for ABC, this sort of pre-broadcast publicity is normal, and the network did nothing to violate its agreement. If Thayer thinks otherwise, the spokeswoman says, “It might be that he had no idea that this is what happens when you deal with a large news organization.”

 

Thayer does think otherwise. “My main objection is that the industry has taken control of journalists, and part of our job is to fight for the integrity of our profession,” he said last week over more double scotches in a midtown bar. “I’ve just become incredibly disillusioned over the last year.” Sadly, Thayer’s sense of himself as something of a dinosaur is not inaccurate; in the dangerous pursuit of his stories that have made him famous, he has often needed to trust verbal agreements—even with Khmer Rouge cadres—as a matter of life or death. And nobody in the news business seems to recognize that fact better than Ted Koppel. Last October, at the same Waldorf podium where he would claim his latest Peabody award, Koppel addressed a banquet for the Committee to Protect Journalists, paying homage to reporters who risk “ death, or torture, or imprisonment” in violent places under repressive regimes, and he warned that American journalism was equally endangered.—but “more insidiously”—by “the trivialization of our industry.” He said, “We struggle to be first with the obvious…we’re afraid of the competition; afraid of earning less money; afraid of losing our audience.”

Last week, with the ghost of those words hanging in the hall, Koppel kept his Peabody acceptance speech brief. “Nate has chosen not to accept this award, because he has some profound differences with ABC news, with “Nightline”, with me. I’m sorry about that, genuinely sorry,” he said, adding, “While he rejects this award, I don’t want to reject the enormous contribution he made to bringing the world this story.”

 

It was odd hearing Thayer spoken of as having made a “contribution” to the story that he alone had brought out of the Cambodian Jungles. Finding Pol Pot was his biggest scoop, but for ten years, in one groundbreaking story after another, Thayer has not only chronicled Cambodia’s treacherous political history but also done a good deal to shape it. Early last month, for instance, he got word that the Khmer Rouge leaders who had purged Pol Pot, and were keeping him captive, wanted to turn the aging and sickly boss of the killing fields over to “the Americans” for trial; before an international tribunal. “But they didn’t know any Americans,” Thayer recalled. “Just me. I went back in, and spoke with them, and reported their wishes. The Voice of America’s Khmer-language service led the eight-o’clock news with the story on April 15^th. Pol Pot was listening, and a few hours later he was dead.” Thayer grinned, and ran a big hand over his shiny shaved scalp, his narrow eyes seemed to brighten. “ That’s my award,” he said, and laughed. “ I killed Pol Pot.”---Philip Gourevitch

Amazon.com: The marketing of my book that didn't exist yet "Sympathy For The Devil" [Paperback]

My book "Sympathy for the Devil: A Journalists Memoir from inside Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge" had not even been wriiten when my then publisher's PR department described it and with Amazon started selling it online. The below hype was never even made aware to me nor was I consulted. It is still online despite my attempts to have it taken down. But now it says that the book is not currently available.

Sympathy For The Devil [Paperback]

 

Product Description

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Viking USA (Mar 1 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670885762
• ISBN-13: 978-0670885763
• Shipping Weight: 503 g

Book Description

The adventures of one of the world's bravest journalists in his ten years on the trail of the elusive Pol Pot--one of the most evil men in history.

Among his peers, Nate Thayer is known as "a man with a mission, a mobile, and an AK-47." In Sympathy For the Devil, he recounts his search for Pol Pot, a man synonymous with the 1970s Cambodian reign of terror, and explores what he learned from him in "the last great interview in Asia." Thayer's pursuit of Pol Pot took him through one of the most impenetrable, malarial, landmine-strewn jungles of the world: Khmer Rouge-controlled northern Cambodia--where he narrowly survived repeated death threats, assassination attempts, and detention by Khmer Rouge, Thai intelligence, and Cambodian troops. Through his clandestine network of contacts, it climaxed in his presence (the only Westerner) at the ex-dictator's 1997 people's tribunal. And in an hour spent exploring Pol Pot's mind--paranoid, precise, and unrepentant.

Thayer's gripping book is an unforgettable account of the lengths to which a reporter will go to reach the truth, and a close first-hand look at evil and its ways. It is an urgent reflection on Cambodia past, present, and future--from the only journalist to enter its hidden core and leave alive.

Nate Thayer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nate Thayer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Nate Thayer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nate Thayer (born April 21, 1960) is a journalist who interviewed Pol Pot. He was the Cambodia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, a respected investigative publication that published from 1946 to 2009. His journalism has focused on international organized crime, narcotics trafficking, human rights, and areas of military conflict.

Nate Thayer discussing Pol Pot's trial, July 1997.

Contents  [hide]  1 Publications, honors and awards 2 Career 2.1 Thayer at Pol Pot's Trial 2.2 Nightline controversy 2.3 Interview with Pol Pot 2.4 Thayer and the death of Pol Pot 2.5 Interview with Kang Kek Iew 2.6 Subsequent work 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Publications, honors and awards

Thayer has written for Jane's Defence Weekly, Soldier of Fortune, The Associated Press and for more than 40 other publications, including The Cambodia Daily and The Phnom Penh Post. Thayer’s reporting earned him The World Press Award, the 1997 “Scoop of the Year” British press award, and the 1998 Francis Frost Wood Award for Courage in Journalism, given by Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York to a journalist "judged to best exemplify physical or moral courage in the practice of his or her craft."^[1] He was a visiting scholar at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University^[2] as well as the first recipient of the Center for Public Integrity's ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting in November, 1998.^[3] Upon awarding Thayer the ICIJ Award, the judges noted:

"He illuminated a page of history that would have been lost to the world had he not spent years in the Cambodian jungle, in a truly extraordinary quest for first-hand knowledge of the Khmer Rouge and their murderous leader. His investigations of the Cambodian political world required not only great risk and physical hardship but also mastery of an ever-changing cast of factional characters."^[4]

According to Vaudine England of the BBC, "Many of the region's greatest names in reporting made their mark in the pages of the Review, from the legendary Richard Hughes of Korean War fame, to Nate Thayer, the journalist who found Cambodia's Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot."^[5]

Thayer was also the first person in 57 years to turn down a prestigious Peabody Award, because he did not want to share it with ABC News' Nightline whom he believed stole his story and deprived him and the Far Eastern Economic Review of income.^[6][7]

Since 1999 Hofstra University's Department of Journalism and Mass Media Studies in the School of Communication has awarded the Nate Thayer Scholarship to a qualified student with the best foreign story idea. Winners are selected on the basis of scholastic achievement or potential as well as economic need.^[8]

[edit] Career

Thayer was born in 1960^[9] in Massachusetts, the son of Harry E. T. Thayer who was United States Ambassador to Singapore from 1980 to 1985. He studied at the University of Massachusetts Boston. From 1980 to 1982 he was involved with the Boston-based Clamshell Alliance, acting as spokesman during protest events at the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant^{[10][11][12][13]} as well as anti-draft protests.^[14]

He began his career in Southeast Asia on the Thai-Cambodian border, taking part in an academic research project in which he interviewed 50 Cham survivors of Khmer Rouge atrocities at Nong Samet Refugee Camp in 1984.^[15][16] He then returned to Massachusetts where he worked briefly as the Transportation Director for the state Office of Handicapped Affairs.^[17][18] Thayer himself noted, "I got fired. I was a really bad bureaucrat."^[19]

He later worked for Soldier of Fortune Magazine reporting on guerrilla combat in Burma,^[20] and in 1989 he began reporting for the Associated Press from the Thai-Cambodian border.^[21] In October 1989 he was nearly killed when an anti-tank mine exploded under a truck he was riding in.^[22] In 1991 he moved to Cambodia where he began writing for the Far Eastern Economic Review.^[23][24]

In August 1992 Thayer traveled to Mondulkiri Province and visited the last of the FULRO Montagnard guerrillas who had remained loyal to their former American commanders.^[25] Thayer informed the group that FULRO's president Y Bham Enuol had been executed by the Khmer Rouge seventeen years previously.^[26] The FULRO troops surrendered their weapons in October 1992; many of this group were given asylum in the United States.^[27][28]

In April 1994 Thayer participated in (and funded) the Cambodian Kouprey Research Project, a $30,000, two-week, 150 km field survey to find the rare Cambodian bovine known as the kouprey.^[29] Thayer later wrote: "After compiling a team of expert jungle trackers, scientists, security troops, elephant mahouts and one of the most motley and ridiculous looking groups of armed journalists in recent memory, we marched cluelessly into Khmer Rouge-controlled jungles along the old Ho Chi Minh trail."^[30]

On July 3, 1994 Thayer was asked help negotiate Prince Norodom Chakrapong's release and safe passage to the airport after the prince had been accused by Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh of plotting a coup d'etat.^[31][32] Thayer was subsequently expelled from Cambodia by Prince Ranariddh, but he returned anyway.^[33]

In early 1997 he was again expelled from Cambodia for exposing connections between Prime Minister Hun Sen and heroin traffickers.^[34][35] Thayer then decided to pursue a fellowship at Johns Hopkins University.

[edit] Thayer at Pol Pot's Trial

Pol Pot´s trial, reported by Nate Thayer, August 2, 1997

Nate Thayer became world famous in July 1997 when he and Asiaworks Television cameraman David McKaige managed to visit the Anlong Veng Khmer Rouge jungle camp inside Cambodia where Pol Pot was being tried for treason.^[36] Thayer had hoped for an interview but was disappointed:

"Pol Pot said nothing. They made it clear and I believed them, that I was to interview Pol Pot after the trial. Pol Pot literally had to be carried away from the trial--he was unable to walk--and I was not able to talk to him. I did try to talk to him... he did not answer any questions, and he did not speak during the trial.^[37]"

Thayer noted, "Every ounce of his being was struggling to maintain some last vestige of dignity."^[38]

Thayer believed that the trial had been staged by the Khmer Rouge for him and McKaige:

"It was put on specifically for us, to take the message to the world that Pol Pot has been denounced. They had reported on their radio, on June 19, that Pol Pot had been purged. No one believed them. After five years of lying over their radio, there was no reason anyone should take what they say credibly. It was clear to them that they needed an independent, credible witness to show what was happening."^[39]

[edit] Nightline controversy

According to Thayer, Ted Koppel of ABC News made a verbal agreement with Thayer to use footage from the trial on Nightline, then violated that agreement:^[40]

"[Koppel] returned home with a copy of my videotape. I gave it to him in exchange for his strict promise that its only use would be on Nightline. However, once he had the copy of the tape, ABC News released video, still pictures, and even transcripts of my interviews to news organizations throughout the world. Protected by its formidable legal and public relations department, ABC News made still photographs from the video, slapped the “ABC News Exclusive” logo on them, and hand delivered them to newspapers, wire services, and television...All of these pictures demanded that photo credit be given to ABC News... The story won a British Press Award for “Scoop of the Year” for a British paper I didn’t even know had published it...I even won a Peabody Award as a “correspondent for Nightline." But I turned it down—-the first time anyone had rejected a Peabody in its 57-year history."^[41]

ABC News responded that they had "agreed to pay Nate Thayer the sizable sum of $350,000 for the rights to use his footage of former Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. Despite the fact that ABC provided prominent and repeated credit and generous remuneration for his work, Mr. Thayer initiated a five-year barrage of complaints coupled with repeated demands for more money."^[42] In 2002 Thayer sued Koppel and ABC News for $30 million in punitive damages and unspecified compensatory damages.

[edit] Interview with Pol Pot

In October 1997, Thayer returned to Anlong Veng and became only the second western journalist (after Elizabeth Becker in 1978) ever to be granted an interview with the former dictator^[43][44] and, along with McKaige, was certainly the last outsider to see him alive.^[45] Thayer recounted the story of his interview with Pol Pot in his book Sympathy for the Devil: Living Dangerously in Cambodia - A Foreign Correspondent's Story.^[46] Pol Pot told Thayer:

"First, I want to let you know that I came to join the revolution, not to kill the Cambodian people. Look at me now. Do you think ... am I a violent person? No. So, as far as my conscience and my mission were concerned, there was no problem. This needs to be clarified...My experience was the same as that of my movement. We were new and inexperienced and events kept occurring one after the other which we had to deal with. In doing that, we made mistakes as I told you. I admit it now and I admitted it in the notes I have written. Whoever wishes to blame or attack me is entitled to do so. I regret I didn't have enough experience to totally control the movement. On the other hand, with our constant struggle, this had to be done together with others in the communist world to stop Kampuchea becoming Vietnamese. For the love of the nation and the people it was the right thing to do but in the course of our actions we made mistakes.^[47]"

[edit] Thayer and the death of Pol Pot

Thayer visited Anlong Veng again on April 16, 1998, only a day after Pol Pot had died. After photographing the corpse he briefly interviewed Ta Mok and Pol Pot's second wife Muon, who told Thayer, "What I would like the world to know is that he was a good man, a patriot, a good father."^[48] Thayer was then asked to transport Pol Pot's body in his pickup truck to the site a short distance away^[49] where it was later cremated.^[50]

[edit] Interview with Kang Kek Iew

In April 1999 Thayer, alongside photojournalist Nic Dunlop, interviewed Kang Kek Iew (Comrade Duch) for the Far Eastern Economic Review after Dunlop had tracked Duch to Samlaut and suspected strongly that he was the former director of the notorious S-21 security prison.^[51] Dunlop wanted Duch to provide clues that would reveal his identity, and Thayer began probing Duch's story that he was Hang Pin, an aid worker and a born-again Christian:

"Then Nate said, 'I believe that you also worked with the security services during the Khmer Rouge Period?' Duch appeared startled and avoided our eyes...Again Nate put the question to him...He looked unsettled and his eyes darted about...He then glanced at Nate's business card...'I believe, Nic, that your friend has interviewed Monsieur Ta Mok and Monsieur Pol Pot?'...He sat back down...and inhaled deeply. 'It is God's will that you are here,' he said."^[52]

Duch surrendered to the authorities in Phnom Penh following the publication of this interview.^[53][54] Dunlop and Thayer were first runners-up for the 1999 SAIS-Novartis Prize for Excellence in International Journalism, presented by the The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, for "exposing the inside story of the Khmer Rouge killing machine."^[55]

[edit] Subsequent work

Nate Thayer has also covered Albania,^[56] Indonesia,^[57] Mongolia^[58] and the Philippines.^[59] In 2003 he reported on the Iraq War in a five-part series for Slate Magazine.^{[60][61][62][63][64]} He also covered the Bangkok 2010 Redshirt riots.^[65][66] He has recently worked for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists' Center for Public Integrity writing a three month investigation on North Korea as a rogue state financed by criminal activity.^[67]

[edit] References

1. ^ "Hofstra forms journalism award selection committee." Long Island Business News, 04/06/98, Vol. 45 Issue 14, p. 19.
2. ^ Dale Keiger, "In Search of Brother Number One," Johns Hopkins Magazine, November 1997
3. ^ ICIJ Journalists: Nate Thayer
4. ^ Maud S. Beelman, "Reporting Across Borders," The Public i: Newsletter of the Center for Public Integrity, Vol 7, no. 2, Mar 1999.
5. ^ Vaudine England, "Leading Asian Magazine to Close," BBC Asia-Pacific News, September 22, 2009.
6. ^ "Your scoop? Nah. It's ours if we want it." The Independent, May 25 1998.
7. ^ Richard Linnett and Wayne Friedman, "Marketing the News: The Selling of Pol Pot," Advertising Age, 11/18/2002, Vol. 73, Issue 46.
8. ^ Hofstra University Student Information Package, Financial Aid Section, p. 45.
9. ^ Philip Gourevitch, The Talk of the Town, “Ink,” The New Yorker, August 18, 1997, p. 25.
10. ^ Randy Shipp, "Antinuclear coalition set for fresh assault on Seabrook," The Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 1980, p. 7.
11. ^ Michael Knight, "1,500 Repulsed at Seabrook Trying to Take Nuclear Site; Two Officers Injured On Easy Ground," New York Times, May 25, 1980, p. 22.
12. ^ "Clamshell Plan to Protest Reactor Move to Seabrook," Boston Globe, Feb 18, 1981, p. 1
13. ^ "250 Protest at Seabrook Nuclear Site," The Harvard Crimson, Wednesday, March 04, 1981.
14. ^ Edward Quill and Richard H. Stewart, "Draft Foes Partly Padlock Post Office," Boston Globe, Jul 23, 1980, p. 1.
15. ^ Ben Kiernan, "Orphans of Genocide: the Cham Muslims of Kampuchea Under Pol Pot," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Volume 20, Issue 4, 1988, p. 2.
16. ^ Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79. New Haven: Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0300144345, 1996, p. 264.
17. ^ Frances Robles, "Many Who Depend on The Ride Say They Can't," Boston Globe, Aug 21, 1988 p. 33, Metro Section.
18. ^ Joe Ferson, "Handicapped Criticize MBTA on Van Service: Frequent Delays, Faulty Equipment Cited." Boston Globe, Sep 16, 1988, p. 82.
19. ^ Nate Thayer, "Finding Pol Pot: Nate Thayer's Story-Behind-the-Story." The Public i: Newsletter of the Center for Public Integrity, Vol 7, no. 2, Mar 1999.
20. ^ Thayer, "Finding Pol Pot," 1999.
21. ^ Nate Thayer, "Aid Workers Flee as Cambodia Fighting Intensifies," The Associated Press, 13 September 1989.
22. ^ "U.S. Reporter Injured, One Killed by Mine in Cambodia," 16 October 1989, Reuters.
23. ^ Nate Thayer, "Rubies are Rouge." Far Eastern Economic Review, Feb 7 1991, pp. 29-30.
24. ^ Andrew Sherry, "Nate Thayer vs. Pol Pot," April 5, 2005
25. ^ Nate Thayer, “Montagnard Army Seeks UN Help,” Phnom Penh Post, Sept. 12, 1992.
26. ^ Nate Thayer, "Forgotten Army: The Rebels Time Forgot," Far Eastern Economic Review, Sept 10, 1992, pp. 16-22.
27. ^ Nate Thayer and Leo Dobbs, “Tribal Fighters Head for Refuge in USA,” Phnom Penh Post, October 23 1992.
28. ^ Nate Thayer, "Trail of tears: 'Lost' Montagnard Army Vows to Fight On," Far Eastern Economic Review, Sept 10 1992, pp. 18-22.
29. ^ "Search for the kouprey: trail runs cold for Cambodia’s national animal". Phnom Penh Post, April 2006.
30. ^ Nate Thayer, "Motley crew moves out on jungle mission impossible," Phnom Penh Post, April 22, 1994.
31. ^ Nate Thayer, "Frantic calls from Regent's Rm 406," Phnom Penh Post, National News, 15 Jul 1994.
32. ^ Nate Thayer, "As It happened..." Far Eastern Economic Review, July 14, 1994, pp. 15-16.
33. ^ Philip Gourevitch, "Guns 'N Deadlines," HQ Magazine, Nov/Dec 1997, pp. 116-119.
34. ^ Nate Thayer, "Narco-nexus." Far Eastern Economic Review, April 24 1997, Vol. 160 Issue 17, p. 20.
35. ^ Nate Thayer, “Drug Suspects Bankroll Cambodian Coup Leader,” Washington Post, July 22, 1997.
36. ^ Nate Thayer, “Pol Pot, I Presume,”. Wall Street Journal, August 1, 1997.
37. ^ *"Cambodia: Trial of Pol Pot," interview with Gareth Evans and Tep Kunnal.
38. ^ Philip Gourevitch, The Talk of the Town, “Ink,” The New Yorker, August 18, 1997, p. 25.
39. ^ Keiger, 1997.
40. ^ Kelly Heyboer, "A Journalistic Coup Turns Sour," American Journalism Review, September 1997, pp. 10-11.
41. ^ Nate Thayer, "Freelancers’ Vital Role in International Reporting With the rise of media conglomerates, foreign news has been shoved aside." Nieman Reports, Dec 2001.
42. ^ Jeffrey Schneider, VP, ABC News, quoted in Richard Linnett and Wayne Friedman, "Marketing the news: the selling of Pol Pot." Advertising Age, 11/18/2002, Vol. 73, Issue 46; Section: Briefs.
43. ^ Nate Thayer, "Dying Breath The inside story of Pol Pot's last days and the disintegration of the movement he created," Far Eastern Economic Review, April 30, 1998
44. ^ Becker E. When the War was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution. 1st PublicAffairs ed. New York: PublicAffairs, 1998, ISBN 978-1891620003, p. 516.
45. ^ Nate Thayer, "Finding Pol Pot: Nate Thayer's Story-Behind-the-Story." The Public i: Newsletter of the Center for Public Integrity, Vol 7, no. 2, Mar 1999.
46. ^ Nate Thayer, Sympathy for the Devil: Living Dangerously in Cambodia - A Foreign Correspondent's Story. Penguin Putnam Inc., New York 1999, ISBN 978-0670885763
47. ^ Nate Thayer, "Day of Reckoning." Far Eastern Economic Review, 30 October 1997: pp. 14-20.
48. ^ Thayer, "Dying Breath," April 30, 1998.
49. ^ Gordon Sharpless "Anlong Veng: Normalcy returns to the former Khmer Rouge stronghold," Tales of Asia, July 2000
50. ^ Nury Vittachi, "A brief history of FEER," October 1, 2009.
51. ^ Nic Dunlop, The Lost Executioner: A Journey to the Heart of the Killing Fields. New York: Walker & Company, 2006.
52. ^ Dunlop, 2006, pp. 271-72.
53. ^ Stan Alcorn, "Photography in the Killing Fields," DART Center for Journalism and Trauma, March 2008.
54. ^ Nic Dunlop and Nate Thayer, "Duch Confesses," Far Eastern Economic Review, May 6, 1999; vol 170, no. 3:, p. 76.
55. ^ "Associated Press Team Wins ’99 SAIS-Novartis Prize," SAIS Reports, Johns Hopkins University, April/May 2000, p. 2.
56. ^ S. Jayasankaran, Nate Thayer, "From Logs to Lotus," Far Eastern Economic Review, 12 December 1996, cover story.
57. ^ Syamsul Indrapatra, Nate Thayer, Bertil Lintner, John McBeth, "Worse to come," Far Eastern Economic Review, 162.30 (Jul 29, 1999): 16-18.
58. ^ Nate Thayer, “Forward Steppes,” Far Eastern Economic Review, March 27, 1997, p. 20.
59. ^ Rigoberto Tiglao, Andrew Sherry, Nate Thayer, Michael Vatikoitis, "'Tis the season," Far Eastern Economic Review, 161:52, Dec 24, 1998: 18-20.
60. ^ Nate Thayer, "Live From Baghdad," Slate, March 19, 2003
61. ^ Nate Thayer, "The Bombing of Baghdad," Slate, March 22, 2003
62. ^ Nate Thayer, "Baghdad Gets Scarier," Slate, March 24, 2003
63. ^ Nate Thayer, "More American Bombs, and More Iraqi Defiance," Slate, March 24, 2003
64. ^ Nate Thayer, "The Road From Baghdad," Slate, March 28, 2003
65. ^ "Thai crisis : CTV News Channel: Nate Thayer in Bangkok."
66. ^ Michael Sheridan and Nate Thayer, "Vengeful redshirts threaten tourism: The Thai protest has spawned an underground militant wing in Bangkok," The Sunday Times, May 23, 2010
67. ^ Nate Thayer, profile

[edit] External links

• "Journalist Nate Thayer was on the scene in Cambodia recently when Pol Pot, the leader of the guerrilla force, the Khmer Rouge, was sentenced to life imprisonment in a show trial," NPR Interview, August 7, 1997
• "Continuing Unrest," PBS Interview with Sydney Schanberg and Nate Thayer, June 18, 1997.
• "Cambodia: Trial of Pol Pot," interview with Gareth Evans and Tep Kunnal.
• "Your scoop? Nah. It's ours if we want it," The Independent, 25 May 1998
• "Killing Fields Leader 'killed himself'," BBC News, January 21, 1999
• "70's Torturer in Cambodia Now 'Doing God's Work'," The New York Times, May 2, 1999
• "Former Khmer Rouge leader arrested," The New York Times, Sept 19, 2007
• "Alternative Wasn't There For Hun Sen," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jan 5, 1999
• Nate Thayer, "Dying Breath: The inside story of Pol Pot's last days and the disintegration of the movement he created," Far Eastern Economic Review, April 30, 1998
• Nate Thayer, "The Road From Baghdad," Slate, March 28, 2003
• Nate Thayer's Interview with Pol Pot on YouTube, Part 1
• Nate Thayer's Interview with Pol Pot on YouTube, Part 2
• Dirck Halstead, "Rewind: Wars and Memories (PART I)" October 17, 1997
• "Educating Nate Thayer by Al Rockoff and Project Pineapple," June 9, 2010
• Andrew Drummond, "The Rebel Who Caught Pol Pot," The Times, July 30, 1997.

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ESCAPES: The Living Fields; Cambodia's Most Famous War Reporter Retreats to Dorchester County, Md.

ESCAPES: The Living Fields; Cambodia's Most Famous War Reporter Retreats to Dorchester County, Md.

The Washington Post

November 8, 2000 | Steve Hendrix

"If I were writing about this area," the war correspondent says with one arm draped over the steering wheel of his pickup, "that would be my lead right there."

The war correspondent is squinting down the sunny main street of Cambridge, Md.--a rank of blank storefronts and shabby 1960s siding. Specifically, he's pointing at a digital clock that glows feebly on the side of a two-story corner law office. "That clock has been six hours slow since I got here. It's the perfect emblem for this place."

This place is Dorchester County, Md., a working Chesapeake borough less than two hours from Washington where it sometimes seems the digital age has progressed no further than a half-bright digital clock overlooking a sleepy downtown. The war reporter--who has a hard time looking at any scene without mentally crafting a paragraph about it--is Nate Thayer, a hard-eyed, trouble-hunting journalist who has infiltrated some of the bloodiest jungle strongholds in Southeast Asia. To the surprise of his family, colleagues and readers, the 40- year-old Thayer recently retreated to placid Dorchester after more than 15 years of chasing danger around the world. Last spring, he bought a capacious old farmhouse and 70 acres on Church Creek, less than a mile as the heron flies from Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. He's quietly writing a book and tending the fields with his longtime sweetheart, Carol Bean, and Scoop, a scrappy mutt they rescued from the slums of Bangkok. After a long adrenaline ride through hot spots and hellholes, Thayer says he came to Dorchester for a little peace. Reluctantly.

"I was the world's most unmotivated buyer," he laughs, walking across the street to his frequent breakfast spot at the counter of Doris Mae's Restaurant. "I looked at waterfront property all over the world, Thailand, France. When I finally came over here, everyone said, 'Don't even look in Dorchester, there's nothing there,' which immediately intrigued me. The overwhelming sentiment here is not to change things. That's why I like it."

A white-haired woman at the griddle looks up as Thayer enters. He's an imposing figure in any setting, but particularly in a small- town egg joint with Navy recruitment posters on the wall. He's tall, lithe and swimmer-strong (from daily laps at the Cambridge YMCA). With a shaved head, a natural scowl and an ever-present pinch of black snuff under his front lip, Thayer looks downright piratical. It's a broke-nose mien that serves him well in the dyspeptic bars where he does much of his reporting, but one that belies his blue- blood lineage (his father was an ambassador to Singapore) and his own intellectual bent as a rapacious reader who recently did a turn as a think-tank scholar with Johns Hopkins University.

The waitress greets Thayer in a motherly way and asks if he wants his eggs poached, an item not on the menu. He says yes, asks her the news and looks around at the orderly calmness that pervades this community. "Having lived so long in the absence of rules," he says, "I've come to appreciate a properly organized society."

Thayer began his career as a flouter of rules, a hard-drinking 28- year-old with a taste for conflict and serious weapons. As a Bangkok- based freelance reporter, he quickly gained a reputation for going where others couldn't--or wouldn't--go. He learned the local dialects, lived and walked in the jungle with the bad guys and endured the sundry malignancies of modern Indochina: multiple bouts of cerebral malaria, kidnappings, a land mine explosion that shattered his leg and ruined his hearing. But the stories kept coming. In 1992, along the old Ho Chi Minh trail, Thayer discovered a forgotten band of mountain rebels who had to be convinced the Vietnam War was over and their American sponsors long gone. He has exposed heroin kingpins, corrupt politicians and murderous generals. "I want to go to my grave making people with guns, power and money nervous," he says with a frank grin. "I love it."

But more than any other, Thayer has been in pursuit of one villain for the whole of his career: Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge dictator who oversaw the greatest mass murder since Hitler. To work his way into Khmer Rouge territory, Thayer allowed himself to be captured numerous times, each occasion making friendly with another local Communist field commander. He tramped, on one trip, through more than 400 miles of jungle with Khmer Rouge units. He shared their mess and was treated in their field hospital after the truck he was riding in tripped a land mine and he woke up with his head in the engine compartment and a companion's severed leg across his chest. Finally, in 1998, Thayer's single-minded pursuit led him to what many consider the scoop of the decade, the first on-the-record interview with Pol Pot since he was driven from Phnom Penh in 1979. When they met in a sweltering jungle hut, the man responsible for killing an estimated 2 million people fixed his gaze on Thayer and said slowly, "I've known your name for a long, long time."

Five months later, Pol Pot--old and broken--was dead.

Somehow, it's even more jarring to hear Thayer's matter-of-fact telling of his extraordinary history as he moves through his now decidely ordinary life in Dorchester County. After breakfast, he rumbles down brick-paved High Street, past the boat basin crowded with both yachts and work boats. The big, shady Victorian sea captains' houses along here are slowly being bought and restored. It's an antique waterside neighborhood that seems like it could be, maybe, on the verge of better times.

"I think it's going to take off," Thayer says, pulling up to a large, well-groomed red house with a noble front porch. It's Cambridge House, a bed-and-breakfast that Thayer wants to visit. He entertains a steady stream of globe-trotting reporters, photographers and diplomats at his new place, and he considers it a host's duty to be able to recommend local inns and restaurants. Inside, innkeeper Stuart Schefers cautiously shares Thayer's optimism about the county.

"Slowly it's coming back," says Schefers. In addition to Cambridge House--already popular with bicyclists, birders and hunters-- Schefers is a partner in the Chesapeake Grill, one of a number of ambitious new restaurants in the area. "It's been neglected, but it is one of the few areas around the bay that hasn't been ruined by overdevelopment."

Driving the growing feeling that Dorchester may finally cash in on the tourism that has plumped up St. Michaels Island just across the Choptank River is a Hyatt resort being built hard on the edge of town. The $150 million, 450-acre development is slated to open in Christmas 2001, instantly becoming the biggest employer in the county. After decades of placidly watching tourist dollars zoom through town at 60 mph on their way to Ocean City, Dorchester may be in for a boom of its own.

A few minutes later, Thayer is driving down the wattle of shoreline below Cambridge, an intricate terrain laced with the many creeks and marshes that feed the Chesapeake. There are few buildings, just some modest homes, a sun-baked one-room schoolhouse where young Harriet Tubman once learned her letters and, tucked in a shoreside forest, an ancient Anglican church and cemetery. The corn fields are in stubble now; the sorghum is up and the waterfowl are on the wing. It's duck-hunting country and through the autumn, Thayer--who has heard some gunfire in his time--listens to the reports echoing across this wet, flat land.

"It's so dominated by water," he says, gazing at the low white crab boats working up the creek. Thayer is a slow, deliberate talker, and he drives the same way. Old farmers in tractor caps pass him in pickups even shabbier than his. "It's steeped in classic rural traditions, agriculture, fishing. That's what drives life here."

That will remain, Thayer believes, even if more people discover what he has, in part, because the vast 25,000-acre Blackwater refuge keeps adding more land. But there's also a doggedness to the local culture that will survive the lure of quick-buck development. (And already, more Volvos lugging bikes and kayaks are to be seen on the local roads, pulling into B&Bs and restaurants that cater to city visitors who come for the Eastern Shore the way it used to be.)

"You find that they are determined to maintain a farmer's way of life, even though they could make a killing by selling out to developers," says the war correspondent. As he rolls by, window open, a blazing white egret lifts out of the reeds with heavy, angelic flaps. "They know better than I do what a good place this is."

ESCAPES KEYS

Getting There: Dorchester County (war-free since 1865) is on the Eastern Shore, about 90 miles from Washington. From the Beltway, take Route 50 east all the way to Cambridge. James Michener set part of "Chesapeake" here, and it's the birthplace of Harriet Tubman (Home Towne Tours offers tours of Tubman sites, 410-228-0401).

Lodging: Cambridge House (112 High St., 410-221-7700, www.cambridgehousebandb.com) is a stout, begabled old captain's mansion at the town waterfront. Rooms are $120, with a five-course dinner available with weekend packages ($329). Twenty-eight miles south of Cambridge, Wingate Manor (2335 Wingate-Bishop's Head Rd., 888-397-8717, $80 to $120) is a comfortable, roomy old pile hard on the Honga River. Bikes available gratis, boats for rent.

Eating: Rolston's Chesapeake Grill (321 High St.) makes it no longer necessary to cross the Choptank for upscale steak and seafood (entrees start at $20, with a less expensive bar and bistro up front). Hysers (824 Locust St.), an honest lunch counter, mixes a serious ice cream soda.

Antiquing: Dorchester remains bargain country, with almost a dozen antiques shops around Cambridge proper, the largest being the Packing House Antique Mall (411 Dorchester Ave., 410-221-8544).

Info: Dorchester County Tourism, 800-522-8687, www.tourdorchester.org.

Adages; Marketing the news: the selling of Pol Pot.(Ted Koppel and ABC in lawsuit)

 

Adages; Marketing the news: the selling of Pol Pot.(Ted Koppel and ABC in lawsuit)

Advertising Age

November 18, 2002 | Linnett, Richard; Friedman, Wayne

Byline: Richard Linnett, contributing: wayne friedman

Earlier this year, Ted Koppel survived an attempt by ABC to bounce him and ``Nightline'' off the air for David Letterman's ``Late Show,'' but will he be able to defend himself against a $30 million lawsuit?

Adages has learned that Mr. Koppel and ABC are being sued for $30 million in punitive damages and unspecified compensatory damages by Nate Thayer, a freelance reporter who alleges that they stole his exclusive story and that the ``misappropriation of credit deprived Thayer of the advertising value of his name.''

Thayer broke what has been called one of the great scoops of the last century. At the heart of the lawsuit is the question of who has the right to market a scoop to the rest of the media: The outlet airing the story or the reporter who got it?

In 1997, after a decade-long search, Thayer finally tracked down Pol Pot, who was believed to be dead, deep in the jungles of northern Cambodia. It was the first time Pol Pot had been photographed and interviewed in 20 years. And it was the last. The Cambodian dictator, who was said to be responsible for the deaths of about 3 million Cambodians, died under mysterious circumstances a year after Thayer filmed him. Thayer's video footage of the interview with Pol Pot aired on ``Nightline'' on July 28, 1997.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Oct. 30, alleges that Koppel and ABC breached a contract with Thayer that allowed for limited use of the Pol Pot footage. Thayer would get credit for the images and be paid $350,000 for the story. The agreement, the suit says, was made verbally in front of witnesses, and Koppel promised that ABC lawyers would draft a final document. ``Don't worry,'' Koppel said to Thayer, according to the complaint. ``You must trust me, journalist to journalist.''

``Instead of complying with those terms,'' said Mel Weiss, partner at Milberg Weiss Berhad Hynes & Lerach, New York, which is representing Thayer, ``ABC immediately created a frame grab, used it without giving Thayer credit, fixed ABC's logo on the photo saying `ABC News exclusive,' forwarded the frame to news services, posted it on the ABC Web site, gave a transcript of the video and a 10 minute portion of it to The New York Times, and broadcast the video on monitors throughout the streets of Cambodia, which basically destroyed Thayer's commercial viability with this product.'' The suit accuses Koppel and ABC of copyright infringement, breach of contract, unjust enrichment, tortious interference with business relations and fraud, among other things.

According to the complaint, Thayer never received a written contract. He claims an ABC lawyer told him the reason he couldn't get a contract that day was because the lawyer ``did not know how to type'' and he had ``no secretary.'' Thayer also claims he did not receive payment until 10 months later, when ABC sent $350,000 to defuse the controversy after Thayer refused to accept a Peabody Award that he was to share with ABC for the Pol Pot report.

Along with damages, Thayer is demanding the defendants be required to pay him ``the profits and other economic benefits realized.'' Profits would include advertising revenue ``Nightline'' got the nights it aired the footage, according to a person with knowledge of the lawsuit.

``In 1997 ABC News agreed to pay NateThayer the sizable sum of $350,000 for the rights to use his footage of former Cambodian dictator Pol Pot,'' said Jeffrey Schneider, VP, ABC News. ``Despite the fact that ABC provided prominent and repeated credit and generous remuneration for his work, Mr. Thayer initiated a five-year barrage of complaints coupled with repeated demands for more money that culminate in this filing, in what is essentially a contract dispute. We find it unfortunate that Mr. Thayer and his lawyers have attempted to attack the good name of one of America's most respected news broadcasts as well as a journalist of impeccable reputation. We look forward to the opportunity to prove in court that Thayer's claims have no merit.''

Send scoops to [email protected]

CAPTION(S):

Swimming to Cambodia: Ted Koppel creates a news event in Phnom Penh with footage of Thayer's interview with Pol Pot. * Thayer: Through a minefield

ESCAPES: The Living Fields; Cambodia's Most Famous War Reporter Retreats to Dorchester County, Md.

ESCAPES: The Living Fields; Cambodia's Most Famous War Reporter Retreats to Dorchester County, Md.

The Washington Post

November 8, 2000 | Steve Hendrix

"If I were writing about this area," the war correspondent says with one arm draped over the steering wheel of his pickup, "that would be my lead right there."

The war correspondent is squinting down the sunny main street of Cambridge, Md.--a rank of blank storefronts and shabby 1960s siding. Specifically, he's pointing at a digital clock that glows feebly on the side of a two-story corner law office. "That clock has been six hours slow since I got here. It's the perfect emblem for this place."

This place is Dorchester County, Md., a working Chesapeake borough less than two hours from Washington where it sometimes seems the digital age has progressed no further than a half-bright digital clock overlooking a sleepy downtown. The war reporter--who has a hard time looking at any scene without mentally crafting a paragraph about it--is Nate Thayer, a hard-eyed, trouble-hunting journalist who has infiltrated some of the bloodiest jungle strongholds in Southeast Asia. To the surprise of his family, colleagues and readers, the 40- year-old Thayer recently retreated to placid Dorchester after more than 15 years of chasing danger around the world. Last spring, he bought a capacious old farmhouse and 70 acres on Church Creek, less than a mile as the heron flies from Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. He's quietly writing a book and tending the fields with his longtime sweetheart, Carol Bean, and Scoop, a scrappy mutt they rescued from the slums of Bangkok. After a long adrenaline ride through hot spots and hellholes, Thayer says he came to Dorchester for a little peace. Reluctantly.

"I was the world's most unmotivated buyer," he laughs, walking across the street to his frequent breakfast spot at the counter of Doris Mae's Restaurant. "I looked at waterfront property all over the world, Thailand, France. When I finally came over here, everyone said, 'Don't even look in Dorchester, there's nothing there,' which immediately intrigued me. The overwhelming sentiment here is not to change things. That's why I like it."

A white-haired woman at the griddle looks up as Thayer enters. He's an imposing figure in any setting, but particularly in a small- town egg joint with Navy recruitment posters on the wall. He's tall, lithe and swimmer-strong (from daily laps at the Cambridge YMCA). With a shaved head, a natural scowl and an ever-present pinch of black snuff under his front lip, Thayer looks downright piratical. It's a broke-nose mien that serves him well in the dyspeptic bars where he does much of his reporting, but one that belies his blue- blood lineage (his father was an ambassador to Singapore) and his own intellectual bent as a rapacious reader who recently did a turn as a think-tank scholar with Johns Hopkins University.

The waitress greets Thayer in a motherly way and asks if he wants his eggs poached, an item not on the menu. He says yes, asks her the news and looks around at the orderly calmness that pervades this community. "Having lived so long in the absence of rules," he says, "I've come to appreciate a properly organized society."

Thayer began his career as a flouter of rules, a hard-drinking 28- year-old with a taste for conflict and serious weapons. As a Bangkok- based freelance reporter, he quickly gained a reputation for going where others couldn't--or wouldn't--go. He learned the local dialects, lived and walked in the jungle with the bad guys and endured the sundry malignancies of modern Indochina: multiple bouts of cerebral malaria, kidnappings, a land mine explosion that shattered his leg and ruined his hearing. But the stories kept coming. In 1992, along the old Ho Chi Minh trail, Thayer discovered a forgotten band of mountain rebels who had to be convinced the Vietnam War was over and their American sponsors long gone. He has exposed heroin kingpins, corrupt politicians and murderous generals. "I want to go to my grave making people with guns, power and money nervous," he says with a frank grin. "I love it."

But more than any other, Thayer has been in pursuit of one villain for the whole of his career: Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge dictator who oversaw the greatest mass murder since Hitler. To work his way into Khmer Rouge territory, Thayer allowed himself to be captured numerous times, each occasion making friendly with another local Communist field commander. He tramped, on one trip, through more than 400 miles of jungle with Khmer Rouge units. He shared their mess and was treated in their field hospital after the truck he was riding in tripped a land mine and he woke up with his head in the engine compartment and a companion's severed leg across his chest. Finally, in 1998, Thayer's single-minded pursuit led him to what many consider the scoop of the decade, the first on-the-record interview with Pol Pot since he was driven from Phnom Penh in 1979. When they met in a sweltering jungle hut, the man responsible for killing an estimated 2 million people fixed his gaze on Thayer and said slowly, "I've known your name for a long, long time."

Five months later, Pol Pot--old and broken--was dead.

Somehow, it's even more jarring to hear Thayer's matter-of-fact telling of his extraordinary history as he moves through his now decidely ordinary life in Dorchester County. After breakfast, he rumbles down brick-paved High Street, past the boat basin crowded with both yachts and work boats. The big, shady Victorian sea captains' houses along here are slowly being bought and restored. It's an antique waterside neighborhood that seems like it could be, maybe, on the verge of better times.

"I think it's going to take off," Thayer says, pulling up to a large, well-groomed red house with a noble front porch. It's Cambridge House, a bed-and-breakfast that Thayer wants to visit. He entertains a steady stream of globe-trotting reporters, photographers and diplomats at his new place, and he considers it a host's duty to be able to recommend local inns and restaurants. Inside, innkeeper Stuart Schefers cautiously shares Thayer's optimism about the county.

"Slowly it's coming back," says Schefers. In addition to Cambridge House--already popular with bicyclists, birders and hunters-- Schefers is a partner in the Chesapeake Grill, one of a number of ambitious new restaurants in the area. "It's been neglected, but it is one of the few areas around the bay that hasn't been ruined by overdevelopment."

Driving the growing feeling that Dorchester may finally cash in on the tourism that has plumped up St. Michaels Island just across the Choptank River is a Hyatt resort being built hard on the edge of town. The $150 million, 450-acre development is slated to open in Christmas 2001, instantly becoming the biggest employer in the county. After decades of placidly watching tourist dollars zoom through town at 60 mph on their way to Ocean City, Dorchester may be in for a boom of its own.

A few minutes later, Thayer is driving down the wattle of shoreline below Cambridge, an intricate terrain laced with the many creeks and marshes that feed the Chesapeake. There are few buildings, just some modest homes, a sun-baked one-room schoolhouse where young Harriet Tubman once learned her letters and, tucked in a shoreside forest, an ancient Anglican church and cemetery. The corn fields are in stubble now; the sorghum is up and the waterfowl are on the wing. It's duck-hunting country and through the autumn, Thayer--who has heard some gunfire in his time--listens to the reports echoing across this wet, flat land.

"It's so dominated by water," he says, gazing at the low white crab boats working up the creek. Thayer is a slow, deliberate talker, and he drives the same way. Old farmers in tractor caps pass him in pickups even shabbier than his. "It's steeped in classic rural traditions, agriculture, fishing. That's what drives life here."

That will remain, Thayer believes, even if more people discover what he has, in part, because the vast 25,000-acre Blackwater refuge keeps adding more land. But there's also a doggedness to the local culture that will survive the lure of quick-buck development. (And already, more Volvos lugging bikes and kayaks are to be seen on the local roads, pulling into B&Bs and restaurants that cater to city visitors who come for the Eastern Shore the way it used to be.)

"You find that they are determined to maintain a farmer's way of life, even though they could make a killing by selling out to developers," says the war correspondent. As he rolls by, window open, a blazing white egret lifts out of the reeds with heavy, angelic flaps. "They know better than I do what a good place this is."

ESCAPES KEYS

Getting There: Dorchester County (war-free since 1865) is on the Eastern Shore, about 90 miles from Washington. From the Beltway, take Route 50 east all the way to Cambridge. James Michener set part of "Chesapeake" here, and it's the birthplace of Harriet Tubman (Home Towne Tours offers tours of Tubman sites, 410-228-0401).

Lodging: Cambridge House (112 High St., 410-221-7700, www.cambridgehousebandb.com) is a stout, begabled old captain's mansion at the town waterfront. Rooms are $120, with a five-course dinner available with weekend packages ($329). Twenty-eight miles south of Cambridge, Wingate Manor (2335 Wingate-Bishop's Head Rd., 888-397-8717, $80 to $120) is a comfortable, roomy old pile hard on the Honga River. Bikes available gratis, boats for rent.

Eating: Rolston's Chesapeake Grill (321 High St.) makes it no longer necessary to cross the Choptank for upscale steak and seafood (entrees start at $20, with a less expensive bar and bistro up front). Hysers (824 Locust St.), an honest lunch counter, mixes a serious ice cream soda.

Antiquing: Dorchester remains bargain country, with almost a dozen antiques shops around Cambridge proper, the largest being the Packing House Antique Mall (411 Dorchester Ave., 410-221-8544).

Info: Dorchester County Tourism, 800-522-8687, www.tourdorchester.org.

Stories on Khmer rouge, killings in Korea win awards, NATION

Stories on Khmer rouge, killings in Korea win awards, NATION

The Nation (Thailand)

May 4, 2000

The Nation (Thailand)
05-04-2000
NATE Thayer and Nic Dunlop of the Far Eastern Economic Review were
the first runners-up at the 1999 SAIS-Novartis International Journalism
Award for their outstanding work, "Inside Story of the Khmer Rouge Killing
Machine", according to Johns Hopkins University's Paul H Nitze School of
Advanced International Studies.

The Bangkok-based journalist and photographer won international
accolades for tracking down the chief executioner of the Khmer Rouge regime,
Kang Khek Ieu, alias Duch. Dunlop discovered him living a new life as a
"born-again Christian" aid worker in western Cambodia.

The John Hopkins University said their extensive reports had greatly
helped in enhancing international pressure on the Cambodian government
to try the remaining members of the Khmer Rogue.

Meanwhile, an Associated Press investigative news team won the top
award for its efforts to uncover the truth about Korean civilians killed
by American military personnel 50 years ago in the Korean War.

The ten finalists were selected from a field of 170 entries submitted
by journalists from 27 countries by a distinguished panel of journalists
from France, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey, and the United States.

The first runner-ups in the international news competition are Nate Thayer and Nic Dunlop of Far Eastern Economic Review for their work tracking down the chief executioner of the Khmer Rouge regime.

 

AP Awarded for No Gun Ri Story

AP Online

March 23, 2000

AP Online
03-23-2000
AP Awarded for No Gun Ri Story

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Associated Press on Thursday won the 1999 SAIS-Novartis International Journalism award for its efforts to uncover the truth about Korean civilians killed by American troops at the start of the Korean War.

The story of No Gun Ri, where U.S. soldiers gunned down hundreds of helpless South Korean civilians, had never been reported. The award is shared by AP Special Correspondent Charles J. Hanley, reporters Martha Mendoza and Sang-hun Choe, and researcher Randy Herschaft.

``Their work has had a major impact,'' said Paul Wolfowitz, dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University. ``The AP reports have also added new fuel to the debate over the nature of modern warfare and war crimes.''

The AP journalists and researcher will be honored on April 26 in Washington, D.C. In addition to the award, the winners will also receive a $15,000 prize.

The first runner-ups in the international news competition are Nate Thayer and Nic Dunlop of Far Eastern Economic Review for their work tracking down the chief executioner of the Khmer Rouge regime. The journalists found him living a new life as a born-again Christian aid worker in Cambodia and obtained a detailed confession of his crimes.

Marla A. Ressa, Jakarta bureau chief for CNN International, placed third in the competition for her eyewitness video reports on the conflicts in East Timor.

The award program is funded by a grant from the Swiss health care corporation Novartis.

The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

Copyright 2000 The Associated Press All Rights Reserved

Briefs: Pol Pot Interviewer Gets Award

 

Briefs: Pol Pot Interviewer Gets Award

AsianWeek

November 25, 1998

1

AsianWeek
11-25-1998
Briefs: Pol Pot Interviewer Gets Award

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. -- Nate Thayer, the first Western journalist in nearly two decades to interview Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot in 1997, was awarded $20,000 this weekend for outstanding international investigative reporting.

Thayer is the first recipient of the prize from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. He is the Southeast Asia correspondent for the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review.

Briefs: Pol Pot Interviewer Gets Award

 

Briefs: Pol Pot Interviewer Gets Award

AsianWeek

November 25, 1998

AsianWeek
11-25-1998
Briefs: Pol Pot Interviewer Gets Award

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. -- Nate Thayer, the first Western journalist in nearly two decades to interview Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot in 1997, was awarded $20,000 this weekend for outstanding international investigative reporting.

Thayer is the first recipient of the prize from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. He is the Southeast Asia correspondent for the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review.

Ethnic NewsWatch SoftLine Information, Inc., Stamford, CT

"Your scoop? Nah. It's ours if we want it " The London Independent

"Your scoop? Nah.It's ours if we want it"

The London Independent

'Ethics' and 'large media organisation' are terms that look less and less comfortable together. Paul McCann profiles a recent conflict involving star foreign reporter Nate Thayer, Pol Pot and America's ABC News

By Paul McCann

Monday, 25 May 1998

 

Nate Thayer is the kind of reporter that makes idealistic youngsters want to be journalists. He has risked his life in jungles, crossed the front lines of a civil war, been expelled from his home for exposing corrupt ministers and made secret rendezvous with genocidal killers. All for what is universally acknowledged to be the scoop of the decade - finding Pol Pot.

Now his lustre has been burnished all the brighter by his refusal to kow-tow to the might of the American TV network ABC. Furthermore he has become the first person in 57 years to turn down a prestigious Peabody award because it would have been shared with what he believes is a duplicitous media monster.

When he found the hidden Khmer leader last July, Thayer was described as having spent 10 years on the trail of Pol Pot.

"In fact that is rather a lot of hype," he says. "It's not like I had an obsession with Pol Pot. I was a Cambodian correspondent and lived there for six years. I also lived in Thailand for another five years so obviously there were plenty of other Cambodian and Asian stories that I covered.

"But I had always thought that Pol Pot was one of the last great interviews in the world. Here was a household name the world over who had never explained himself. He was perhaps the most effective 'secret leader' of the twentieth century.

"So all the time I lived in Cambodia and Thailand I kept one eye on Pol Pot. I made numerous trips into the jungle and built up contacts with Khmer Rouge leaders. And I made constant requests for access or an interview with Pol Pot.

"The break came in June 1997 when I was expelled from Cambodia for exposing connections between the Prime Minister and heroin traffickers. I decided to write a book so I spent a lot of time just sitting in a room with the Khmer Rouge's clandestine radio station on in the background. I heard then that the defence minister had been deemed a traitor and executed so I immediately went to my Khmer Rouge contacts who told me about serious infighting within the leadership and that Pol Pot had been overthrown.

"They even announced Pot's overthrow on the radio but no one believed them and that became the basis for my argument for getting access. No one would believe he had been overthrown unless a western journalist got in to prove it.

"From there I began the process of getting into one of the most impenetrable places in the world. The only foreigners to have been there before were the three guys who were kidnapped and executed. It was made all the harder because last July a civil war broke out in Phnom Penh and I had to fly to Bangkok and try from there by illegally crossing the border, not to mention the front lines of the Phnom Penh civil war and the front lines of the Khmer Rouge civil war.

"Once me and my cameraman were in a hotel over the border I had to phone a number in Europe to tell them my room number before being infiltrated into the jungle.

Thayer never did actually interview the leader responsible for the deaths of an estimated one million Cambodians. Instead, he filmed two hours of Pol Pot being denounced at a classic Maoist show trial.

Nevertheless, his story was dynamite, and as soon as it became known that he had footage, pictures and a story he was bombarded with hundreds of calls from news organisations. His main priority was to have the print story go in the Far Eastern Economic Review, which he had worked for as a freelancer for years and which had supported him for six months while he tried to get to Pol Pot in the jungle.

But he sold the North American television rights to his footage to ABC for $350,000 - "Mainly because ABC's Ted Koppel is as good as it gets on American TV. He seemed like the last honourable guy."

But now Thayer is seriously pissed off at ABC. The network's PR department got hold of the footage and did a major number on it. They made enhanced video-grabs which they gave to newspapers under an "ABC Exclusive" tag. This meant that, using ABC's released material, the New York Times was able to run Thayer's story before he had even started writing for the Economic Review. And by putting out the video grabs and downloading images onto its Web site, ABC ruined Thayer's chances of selling the stills from his trip into the jungle.

"Basically they said 'f*** you' to my lawyers because they knew their lawyers could eat a freelancer alive," says Thayer. "It was an outrageous ethical violation. They then refused to pay me my agreed fee until I signed something saying that they had done nothing wrong. It took 10 months to get my money and they only paid up because they knew when I had won the Peabody that it would turn into a PR nightmare."

ABC claims that its pre-broadcast publicity was perfectly normal behaviour and Thayer was naive for not understanding this.

Thayer believes the network's behaviour speaks volumes about the state of US television news. "ABC have one correspondent for the whole of Asia so they take freelancers' work and try to take credit for it. The function of people like Koppel is to prove that there is a serious side.

"But in reality to them the function of journalism in a free society is no more than delivering audiences to advertisers."

Peabody winner rejects award for Pol Pot story

Peabody winner rejects award for Pol Pot story

AP Online

May 18, 1998

AP Online
05-18-1998
NEW YORK (AP) _ Nate Thayer, a Bangkok, Thailand-based journalist who sold a story about Cambodian leader Pol Pot to ABC's ``Nightline,'' rejected the prestigious Peabody award for the piece, saying ABC and Ted Koppel stole his work.

Thayer, 38, said in the May 25 edition of New Yorker magazine, that Koppel promised the story would be a one-week exclusive with North American television rights only.

But before the story went on the air, Thayer said ABC shipped photos of the footage worldwide, put the news on its Web site and allowed The New York Times to preview part of the story in a publicity effort. The effort scooped Thayer's own print account for the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review.

In a letter rejecting the Peabody, Thayer said ``Ted Koppel and `Nightline' literally stole my work, took credit for it, trivialized it, refused to pay me and then attempted to bully and extort me when I complained. They should not be rewarded for this behavior and I under no circumstances want my name associated with these egregious violations of basic journalistic ethics and integrity.''

ABC said the pre-broadcast publicity is common practice for such an exclusive story.

Koppel said he was sorry Thayer chose not to accept the Peabody, broadcasting's equivalent to the Pulitzer.

``While he rejects the award, I don't want to reject the enormous contribution that he made to bringing the world this story,'' Koppel said last Monday at the 57th annual awards luncheon.

Thayer was paid $350,000 last month for the story, which aired last July. The video captured the show trial of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader blamed for the deaths of up to 2 million of his countrymen. It was the first time in nearly 20 years the Cambodian dictator, who died in prison in March, was caught on camera.


Copyright 1998 The Associated Press All Rights Reserved.

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Television Winners.(Peabody Awards): "THE TRIAL OF POL POT" ABC News/Nightline Washington, D.C.

Television Winners.(Peabody Awards)

Broadcasting & Cable

May 11, 1998

"THE TRIAL OF POL POT" ABC News/Nightline Washington, D.C.

The best television journalism is groundbreaking, authoritative and evidentiary. It brings a significant news event to the forefront, and does so with the critical background research, context and thoughtful presentation that it requires. Such is the case with this series of reports spanning July 2830, 1997. The reports were made possible by the heroic and exclusive footage provided by Nate Thayer, correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, and his cameraman, David McKaige of Asiaworks. Mr. Thayer and Mr. McKaige were invited to a remote area of Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge to witness the so-called "trial" of Pol Pot, one of history's infamous genocidal despots. The men brought back video of stunning clarity and historical importance. While broadcasting this monumental reportage was in itself significant and meritorious, Nightline enhanced its meaning and impact by providing exceptional historical perspective, important tests of authenticity, and valuable interpretations about the veracity and significance of the trial. In addition to the heroic and historic efforts of Mr. Thayer, credit is due to the accomplished broadcast news professionals at Nightline, including executive producer Tom Bettag, anchor and managing editor Ted Koppel, producers Leroy Sievers and Bryan Myers, senior producers Richard Harris, Mark Nelson and C. Scott Willis, director Eric Siegel, and correspondent Jim Laurie. For presenting a television news event of international significance and for doing so with reasoned analysis, skillful writing, balanced research, and insightful interviewing, a Peabody is presented to ABC News/Nightline for "The Trial of Pol Pot."

 

A LIST OF THIS YEAR'S PEABODY AWARD WINNERS.(ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT)

Recently viewed: Article: Peabody winner rejects award for Pol Pot story

A LIST OF THIS YEAR'S PEABODY AWARD WINNERS.(ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT)

Albany Times Union (Albany, NY)

April 3, 1998

Byline: Associated Press

Winners of the 1997 George Foster Peabody Awards:

......``The Trial of Pol Pot,'' ABC News/Nightline, exclusive video by correspondent Nate Thayer in Cambodia with background and context by Ted Koppel and ``Nightline'' staff.

A journalistic coup turns sour. (media coverage of interview with Pol Pot in Cambodia)

 

A journalistic coup turns sour. (media coverage of interview with Pol Pot in Cambodia)

American Journalism Review

September 1, 1997 | Heyboer, Kelly

On the television screen, it appeared to be an enviable journalistic coup for all involved: ABC's "Nightline" airing the exclusive first look in 18 years at former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot while little-known journalist Nate Thayer told Ted Koppel and the world how he emerged from the Cambodian jungle with the scoop of his career.

But behind the scenes, the story that made headlines around the world had dissolved into a bitter battle between Thayer and ABC over allegedly broken promises, media ethics and money.

"This is one of the most disheartening experiences of my life," says Thayer, an American covering Asia for the Far Eastern Economic Review and other publications. "It was clearly a mistake to believe people such as ABC would be honorable."

Thayer, who sold the videotape of the Pol Pot show trial he witnessed to "Nightline" for $350,000, now accuses ABC of breaking verbal agreements, stealing his story and costing him significant monetary damage for the loss of potential photo rights. "Nightline" producers say the disagreement, now in the hands of ABC's lawyers, stems from a naive Thayer underestimating the power of the Internet.

The saga began in late July when Thayer, 37, using contacts made in more than a decade of reporting in Asia, talked his way into a Khmer Rouge jungle hideout in northern Cambodia after hearing about a crisis in the core leadership of the fading Communist party that once ran the country.

Khmer Rouge agents smuggled Thayer and David McKaige, an Asiaworks cameraman, from Thailand to Cambodia. The pair, both working on a freelance basis, had requested an interview with Pol Pot, the "Killing Fields' leader believed to be responsible for more than a million deaths during the late 1970s. Because Pol Pot had not been seen by Western journalists in nearly two decades, Thayer and McKaige were unsure what to expect when Khmer Rouge agents led them to a jungle shed on July 25.

"All of the sudden, two minutes later, not only was there Pol Pot, but a mass people's tribunal that was put on for us," Thayer says.

Thayer and McKaige rushed back to Bangkok knowing they had potentially explosive material from a staged trial proving Pol Pot was not only alive, but denounced by his followers and sentenced to lifetime house arrest. By the following day, rumors of their presence at the trial were flying, and the pair say they were fielding offers from around the world for exclusives.

Elizabeth Becker, one of two journalists who conducted the last interview with Pol Pot in 1978 (when she was with the Washington Post), says that when she heard a reporter had finally seen the elusive leader, she assumed it was Thayer.

"It must have been Nate," says Becker, now the New York Times" deputy Washington editor. "He is a maniac about this story.... He's just been crazed."

Holed up in a Bangkok hotel room with thousands of phone calls pouring in, Thayer says he decided to give the Far Eastern Economic Review an exclusive on the text of the story and still pictures of the trial for his regular rate of less than $3,000, even though the magazine didn't finance or assign him the story.

Meanwhile, with about five days until the magazine's next publication date, the red-hot videotape of the event was up for grabs, and a bidding war ensued.

"I was obviously hoping to get compensated for what was 14 years of my life's work. I chose 'Nightline because I believed 'Nightline' would do the story credibly. They were not by any means the highest bidder," he says.

Koppel and "Nightline" Executive Producer Tom Bettag rushed to Bangkok and completed negotiating an agreement with Thayer for exclusive first rights to air the videotape in North America. Thayer says he was careful to insist that ABC only air the videotape, so the Far Eastern Economic Review would still have the exclusive on the fun story later in the week, and so he could market the still photos he took of Pol Pot separately.

But in the days before "Nightline" aired the tape, Thayer says ABC's pre-publicity department did a frame grab on the video and handed the photos of the trial and the details of his story to papers around the country in an attempt to hype the broadcast. Before his magazine piece was even written, his "exclusive" was in papers around the world.

ABC refused Thayer's last-minute demands that "Nightline" not air the tape, because it was already scheduled and had been previewed on "World News Tonight." Without a written contract with the network, Thayer had allowed himself to get scooped.

"Nightline" executives insist Thayer's lawyers had agreed to allow ABC to feature stills from Thayer's video on its Internet site, abcnews.com, essentially giving the world free access.

"Clearly, at the center of this is, if you are going to put it on the Internet, it's going to go worldwide," says executive producer Bettag. "That's a decision he made."

Thayer denies that he agreed to allow the story on the Internet. Because Thayer's contract with "Nightline" was in the process of being finalized while the three-part broadcast aired (Thayer ultimately refused to sign it), the argument boils down to Thayer's word against that of the ABC business representative who negotiated the deal.

"We genuinely believe that we kept our word top to bottom, and we feel terrible that Nate is that angry and that upset," says Bettag.

On the heels of landing the story of his career, Thayer says he's lost faith in the profession and is disillusioned by the lengths journalists win go to land a good story.

"They wanted this story and promised us everything we asked for," he says. "As soon as they got their hands on the tape they said, 'Fuck you, deal with our lawyers.'... There's a reason why our profession has such a bad reputation."

Bettag laments that the Pol Pot story -- a great piece of journalism -- might be overshadowed by a controversy over a business deal. "'Nightline's' feeling for Nate is one of huge respect for a journalist," Bettag says. "The business just got in the way and left a bad taste in Nate's mouth."

Thayer says he and his cameraman will not take any money from ABC until the network acknowledges that it stole his story. He has yet to collect the agreed upon $350,000 because he won't sign the contract.

"These aren't journalists. These are huge public corporations run by lawyers and public relations people," he says. "I didn't have a penny a week ago, and if I don't have a penny a week from now, I still have my integrity."

East Asia: The Last Foreign Correspondent

BOMBORRA ..."East Asia: The Last Foreign Correspondent

By Dan Boylan  on August 30, 1997

As Britain handed its cherished Hong Kong back to China in 1997 and Cambodia endured a coup that would bring decades of civil war to an end, American journalist Dan Boylan filed the following.

PHNOM PENH  - “Strange … peace kills business,” one reporter said on a recent night at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Cambodia. Sitting alone, he stared into his Angkor beer while the sun sank against the Tonle Sap River outside.

Just last summer, as AK-47′s rattled nearby, the club was packed. Reporters from around the world had descended upon Phnom Penh to cover Cambodia’s latest war, a short-lived affair that smashed a short-lived coalition government. With the action came the out-of-town professionals.

“Yeah, it was wall to wall then,” said club manager Tony Anderson. “But if you watched or read anything they were reporting, you’d have thought there was fighting on every corner. That simply wasn’t the case. If you really wanted to know what the hell was going on, you needed to talk with the reporters based here.”

The reporters based here, the ones Anderson admires, are a new breed of foreign correspondent – the freelancer. Phnom Penh’s full of them; part-time writers, photographers and hangers on, all working against the odds. They defy media budget cuts and a reduced demand for international news by sticking around to cover everyday Cambodia.

They are a mix of saints and sinners; some write truth and tragedy, others get blown-up playing war alongside guerrilla troops and some simply enjoy the cheap pot and sex – for US$20 you can get sky high with a hooker until sunrise. But the real attraction is the opportunity: Cambodia is cheap, full of stories, and too dangerous for most. “All you need to get here is a backpack and some dreams,” said one reporter.

One dream universally pursued here finally ended two weeks ago with the death of Pol Pot.  A madman of staggering proportion, Pol Pot ran the Khmer Rouge and ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, leaving an estimated 2 million people dead in his wake. He spent the next two decades hiding in the country’s impenetrable northern jungles.

The man was the ultimate savage riddle – who really was he, where was he, and why had he killed so many fellow countrymen, babies…pregnant mothers?  Freelancers seeking to solve the puzzle and remind the world of the tragedy he left behind, started trickling into Cambodia during the late 1980s when the country began to stabilize (it still receives the US State Department’s highest grade travel advisory).

Kicking around Phnom Penh and Bangkok, a base for many reporters covering Cambodia, it’s a pleasant surprise to find a number have Massachusetts links; the State House, the combat zone (when there was one), appreciation for the Boston Herald’s Howie Carr, etc. etc.

In fact, it was a Bostonian, Nate Thayer, who nearly solved the riddle last year, when he the scored an exclusive interview with Pol Pot. Considered the decade’s biggest international scoop and the last major interview in Asia, Thayer’s meeting was Pol Pot’s first with an outsider in 18 years and ended up being the last. “Look at me, am I a savage? My conscience is clear,” the dying 72-year-old told Thayer last October.

Thayer’s stories forced world leaders to finally consider trying the murderer before international courts for crimes against humanity. A week before Pol Pot’s death, Bill Clinton even admitted serious interest in the issue. Now, it’s too late.

Thayer hunted 10-years for the story. During the quest, he trekked 700 kilometers of jungle, was hospitalized 16 times with cerebral malaria, suffered land mine injuries, and led a now mythical hunt for Cambodia’s bizarre endangered cow – the Kupray. Thayer once finagled $478 out of the Associated Press for gin and tonics. “Medical reasons,” he said with a laugh. “You know, tonic contains anti-malarial agents.”

He split UMASS Boston in 1988. “I looked at my life – school, a job and a fiancée from hell – and decided it was all wrong…it was fucking boring.” Thayer scraped by month-to-month, working for Soldier of Fortune magazine and the AP before freelancing for the Far Eastern Economic Review weekly magazine. For the Review, Thayer linked Cambodia’s key political figures to Southeast Asia’s massive heroin trade, and uncovered the last army still fighting the Vietnam War. “I was the first white guy they’d seen in 17 years,” he said. “When I showed up the head of the tribe asked, ‘where are our guns?’”

People here say Thayer’s an inspiration. His Pol Pot story took 10 years of grunt work, an impossibility for reporters who drop into Cambodia only when it’s on the verge of war. Others here have put in their time, like international freelancer and cameraman David McKaige, who accompanied Thayer on his Pol Pot interview.

In the past decade, the fierce eyed 32-year-old McKaige has worked in Bosnia, Africa, Sri-Lanka and other war-torn regions. “I’ll admit it -  I’ve been numbed by some of what I’ve seen,” he said, commenting on the height of the Balkan War. “You’d walk into a village and see a young girl who’d just been gang raped an hour earlier, send out the story, and no-one in the world gave a shit. That was hard.”

McKaige stuffed his backpack at the end of his freshman year at Boston College and started hacking through the Cambodia/Thai border freelancing for CBS. These days, he runs AsiaWorks in Bangkok, supplying Southeast Asian news footage to media organizations across the world. McKaige’s work is an uphill battle. Budget cuts by America’s networks (CBS, NBC and ABC), have reduced regional coverage and expertise. “Tokyo bureaus now cover all of Asia,” he said.

Some wire services have also cut budgets, killing coveted “ex-pat packages,” that allowed reporters to live abroad in comfort. Reuters, the British news wire, began acing expat deals in the early 1990s. “Reuters beancounters heralded the death of the ex-pat package,” said Luke Hunt, a quick-witted Australian correspondent based in Hong Kong. “Locals have begun writing what outsiders, who knew their home audiences, once covered.”

On some level this works, as the focus of international news since the Cold War’s end has shifted from politics to business. America and it’s allies no longer fight the Soviet Union to contain communism, but instead wrangle with local leaders to open markets to capitalism. The new weapons are trade agreements and stock markets and news from these battlegrounds doesn’t require the same world-view as coverage of America’s military situation in Asia.

But many here say it’s gone to far, leaving big picture stories by the wayside. McKaige pointed to Reuters, located beneath his AsiaWorks studio, as an example. There, in an office of 25 employees, 23 work on financial news and corporate sales, while two reporters cover general news. “In Asia these days – it’s all fucking business,” McKaige said.

Thayer believes everyone, including corporate types, want to know more.  According to the Review’s sales figures for 1997, the two Pol Pot cover stories were last year’s best sellers. “It’s complete bullshit that business people are only interested in investment news,” Thayer said. “People everywhere want to know what the hell’s really going on in the world.”

An interesting point, but how does it apply to Cambodia now that Pol Pot’s gone?  He was the evil head of a beastly story about a country utterly destroyed in a side-show to the Vietnam War. The country has no economic stories suited for the 1990s news climate, outside of gun and drug smuggling.  Human interest news all but dried up when anti-land mine operatives won last year’s Noble Peace Prize.  What’s left?

While pondering such cosmic issues, some correspondent’s fall back on the perverse image of the trade: heavy drink and obnoxious behavior. Take former Reuters correspondent Leo Dobbs who got fired after he called Cambodian Premier Hun Sen’s house at midnight and told Hun’s wife to “fuck off.”  Dobb’s, who’s mighty thirst is known as far as Hong Kong, remembered nothing of the incident the following morning until a call came from Reuters rescinding his post.

“You get some crazy people down here,” said Michael Hayes, editor of the Phnom Penh Post, Cambodia’s leading English language paper. “Established journalists don’t want to live in a shithole like this, and that brings in the backpackers.”

Hayes, who arrived lacking journalism experience himself, said fresh blood can be a good thing.  Since the Post’s first edition in 1992, he’s relied largely on a pool of freelance talent, led by Thayer, to put out a bi-weekly paper that’s tackled issues no one else will touch. “These guys are the lifeblood of reporting coming out of the third world these days,” he said.

Back at the Foreign Correspondents Club they know this. They’ll tell you Thayer may have been passed over for last year’s Pulitzer Prize earlier this month, but everyone knows it was his work that brought the tragedy of Cambodia back into the world’s headlines. Pol Pot may be dead, but his legacy lives – child soldiers, rocket launchers, jungle warfare…senseless death.  Those stories will likely come from the freelancers.

Elections set for this summer should be bloody enough to attract the hordes of international press again, but like they say, if you want to know what’s going on, you have to talk to the people based here. “This place will fill up again soon,” said the reporter at the bar as the moon began to rise. “It’ll be bullshit, but that’s life in Cambodia.”