Nate Thayer

IS IT POL POT?; Mystery over evil killer's last picture.

 

IS IT POL POT?; Mystery over evil killer's last picture.

The Mirror (London, England)

April 17, 1998 | Dowdney, Mark

1

EVEN in death Pol Pot, the butcher of Cambodia, held the world in suspense.

The evil tyrant, whose Killing Fields reign claimed up to two million lives, was reportedly found dead yesterday in his remote jungle hideout. The picture on the right was produced as evidence. But the grey hair revealed at Pol Pot's show trial in Cambodia last year has now turned dark.

And last night there were demands for positive proof that the 73-year- old dictator had not faked his death to escape justice.

Cambodia's Embassy in Paris said Pol Pot had been reported dead many times before and warned that yesterday's reports had not been confirmed by "trustworthy sources." The body identified as

Pol Pot lay on a mattress in a hut in northern Cambodia.

The only independent witness allowed to see it - American journalist Nate Thayer - insisted it WAS the deposed Khmer Rouge leader.

Thayer, who works for the Far Eastern Economic Review and is one of the few Westerners to meet Pol Pot, took photographs of the corpse.

He said last night: "There is no question that this is Pol Pot."

Cambodian diplomats in New York said the tyrant may have dyed his hair as a disguise in recent months when international pressure mounted to put him on trial for genocide.

The US State Department said Washington had no independent confirmation that Pol Pot was dead, but added that it had no reason to doubt the "compelling" photographic evidence.

IS POL POT REALLY DEAD?; Mystery of Killing Fields tyrant who massacred 2m.

IS POL POT REALLY DEAD?; Mystery of Killing Fields tyrant who massacred 2m.

Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland)

April 17, 1998 | Dowdney, Mark

Claims that evil tyrant Pol Pot had died were thrown into doubt last night.

The Khmer Rouge insisted the body they put on show was his.

But observers questioned its resemblance to the 73-year-old dictator, who was filmed nine months ago.

They also pointed out the stark difference in hair colour -with Pot's hair apparently DARKENING as he got older.

During his 18 years hidden in the jungle, the cunning monster was also reported dead several times - only to reappear.

Blood-soaked Pot, responsible for the deaths of two million of his own people in Cambodia's infamous Killing Fields, was due to be put on trial by the West for genocide.

The Cambodian Embassy in Paris expressed doubts over his death - and said it could have been faked to cheat justice.

An official embassy statement read: "We warn public opinion against this news which is not confirmed by trustworthy sources."

The embassy added that "it could not be ruled out once again that the death has been orchestrated to end the hunt to bring him to trial".

America's State Department could offer no conclusive evidence either.

Spokesman James Rubin said Washington had no independent confirmation.

Cambodia's present leaders also found it hard to accept that he was finally dead.

Officials insisted his body should be viewed by more independent witnesses -as well as being checked for poison.

However, others are convinced Pot is dead. Only one independent witness was allowed to see the body yesterday, American journalist Nate Thayer.

He said: "There is no question that this is Pol Pot and that he is dead."

Thayer, who works for the Far Eastern Economic Review, took photographs in the hut where the body lay.

He is one of the few Westerners who has met Pot before.

Thayer attended Pot's show trial last year, staged by the dictator's former comrades.

Meanwhile, the Cambodian Mission in New York put forward a theory for the difference in hair colour.

An official said: "We believe he dyed it to avoid recognition."

Pot is said to have died from a heart attack.

But another theory is that he was murdered because he knew too many secrets, which would have come out at the genocide trial.

China and Thailand feared what he might say about their secret support for his evil regime.

Youk Chhang, who is gathering evidence against top Khmer Rouge leaders, said: "I think we could almost have arrested him tomorrow, it was very close."

He said countries like Thailand and China must be "relieved."

Pot's own men, still at bay in the jungles of northern Cambodia, also knew they would remain outcasts if the horrors they oversaw in the 70s were raked over at a trial.

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger voiced the suspicions of many yesterday in blaming the Khmer Rouge for the death. He said: "I don't exclude they did it to avoid having to hand him over for trial. If they refused, they would have been outlawed even more."

The exact truth may never be known -but Cambodians are angry that Pot has never answered for his crimes.

It would be a grim irony if the man whose savagery rivalled that of Stalin and Hitler died peacefully in his own bed, as the Khmer Rouge claim.

Chey Sopheara, director of Phnom Penh's genocide museum, said: "If he is really dead, he will be judged in hell.

"I regret it is now too late to bring him to justice. The West should not have delayed arresting him from 1979 to now.

"How can we find justice now for those millions of people who died during his rule?"

Kim Saren lost her parents, five brothers and four sisters to Pot's regime.

She said: "He deserved to die. I am only sorry that he died so easily without being tried."

The body was put on display for a small group of Western journalists who reached the remote spot near the Thai border.

It was lying on a bed wearing trousers and a shirt, and partly covered by a green sheet.

A few flowers lay around its head and the hut reeked of preserving fluid.

The body was guarded by teenage guerrillas armed with AK-47s.

Pot had been under house arrest since he was denounced by his own supporters last year and toppled from power.

His jailer, General Noun Nou, said the body was due to be cremated according to Khmer tradition. That would also destroy any evidence.

Nou said: "His wife came to us at midnight. She learned that her husband was dead when she was tying his mosquito net for him."

He denied Pot was murdered, adding: "If they are afraid the body was tampered with, ask his wife. She was there. No one has done anything like that.

"His death is good for the Khmer Rouge. I hope his bad name will vanish with his death."

Pot's reign of terror was portrayed in the 1984 Oscar-winning film The Killing Fields.

American journalist Sidney Schanberg wrote the book which was turned into the movie, based on his horrific experiences. He was played by actor Sam Waterston.

Schanberg yesterday said the only sad thing about the reports of Pot's death was that he didn't face trial.

The journalist added: "He didn't think of himself as a killer. But he knew what he was doing. He had to know the bodies were piling up."

Cambodia and its people have never recovered from the atrocities he committed. The skulls of his victims, on public display in huge heaps, still cry for vengeance, say Cambodians.

After seizing power in 1975, Pot sealed Cambodia off from the rest of the world.

He was described by the king he ousted as "one of the most powerful monsters ever created by humanity".

The communist hardliner turned his country into a vast slave labour camp.

Pot's aim was to "start again" and return Cambodia to what he called Year Zero, with no Western influences.

The population of Phnom Penh - those who survived the death squads - were ordered into the countryside to work in the fields. They included the old, the sick, even toddlers. No one was spared.

Anyone who resisted was "re- educated". Even those who wore glasses were massacred.

Survivors recall being told by the Khmer Rouge troops: "Keeping you is no loss. Losing you is no loss."

Pot's torturers killed at least 18,000 people in Toul Sleng, the notorious jail in Phnom Penh where the gutters ran red with blood.

Amnesty International are now calling for Pot's fellow leaders to be caught and punished. A spokesman said: "Pol Pot was not the only architect of Cambodia's Killing Fields.

"He may have died but many other senior Khmer Rouge cadres remain free. They should not be allowed to also escape punishment."

Despite the horrors, Pot never apologised for his crimes.

When his mad reign was forcibly ended by the North Vietnamese in 1979, he simply slipped away into the jungles with his men and remained hidden.

Last year, in the only interview he ever gave while on the run, Pot said: "I would like to say my conscience is clear.

"Everything I have done and contributed is first for the nation and the people and race of Cambodia."

THEIR HANDS WERE STAINED WITH BLOOD

POL POT was one of long line of despots who stained the pages of history with the blood of their victims.

GENGHIS KHAN struck terror eight centuries ago and his name is still a byword for savagery. The Mongol warlord massacred the populations of city after city.

Historians now believe JOSEPH STALIN was responsible for the deaths of around 20million people in the Soviet Union. Many died in camps or in mass purges.

ADOLF HITLER was the twisted architect of the Final Solution. Six million Jews were put to death, many from countries conquered by Hitler's ruthless war machine. He also ordered the execution of many of his opponents within Germany in the 30s and 40s.

IDI AMIN'S reign of terror in Uganda, from a coup in 1971 until he fled in 1979, saw the deaths of up to 500,000 people. He is said to have taken pleasure in throwing personal foes to the crocodiles.

Iraq's SADDAM HUSSEIN, like many despots before him, claims to have the support of his people.

But he stands accused of the deaths of thousands of Kurds and Iranians in chemical warfare attacks.

IS IT POL POT?; Mystery over evil killer's last picture: EVEN in death Pol Pot, the butcher of Cambodia, held the world in suspense.

IS IT POL POT?; Mystery over evil killer's last picture

The Mirror (London, England)

April 17, 1998 | Dowdney, Mark

EVEN in death Pol Pot, the butcher of Cambodia, held the world in suspense.

The evil tyrant, whose Killing Fields reign claimed up to two million lives, was reportedly found dead yesterday in his remote jungle hideout. The picture on the right was produced as evidence. But the grey hair revealed at Pol Pot's show trial in Cambodia last year has now turned dark.

And last night there were demands for positive proof that the 73-year- old dictator had not faked his death to escape justice.

Cambodia's Embassy in Paris said Pol Pot had been reported dead many times before and warned that yesterday's reports had not been confirmed by "trustworthy sources." The body identified as

Pol Pot lay on a mattress in a hut in northern Cambodia.

The only independent witness allowed to see it - American journalist Nate Thayer - insisted it WAS the deposed Khmer Rouge leader.

Thayer, who works for the Far Eastern Economic Review and is one of the few Westerners to meet Pol Pot, took photographs of the corpse.

He said last night: "There is no question that this is Pol Pot."

Cambodian diplomats in New York said the tyrant may have dyed his hair as a disguise in recent months when international pressure mounted to put him on trial for genocide.

The US State Department said Washington had no independent confirmation that Pol Pot was dead, but added that it had no reason to doubt the "compelling" photographic evidence.

COPYRIGHT 2009 MGN LTD. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights or concerns about this content should be directed to Customer Service. For permission to reuse this article, contact Copyright Clearance Center.

Pol Pot Dead: NPR All Things Considered

Pol Pot Dead

NPR All Things Considered

April 16, 1998 

Linda Wertheimer, Robert Seigel  

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST: And I'm Linda Wertheimer.

Pol Pot, the leader of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge movement, is dead. He was 73 years old. His political movement, the Khmer Rouge, was responsible for the deaths of more than a million-and-a-half Cambodians.

Pol Pot's regime controlled Cambodia to 1975 to 1979, and eliminated all those who stood in the way of creating a agrarian Marxist state. But the Khmer Rouge was forced from power after a Vietnamese invasion. The group was essentially broken into factions.

And last year, Pol Pot was tried by his former comrades as a rival took control of what remained of the Khmer Rouge.

In the last year, the United Nations and the United States had revived an effort to formally hold Pol Pot responsible for the genocide that occurred in the killing fields of Cambodia.

Nate Thayer, the Southeast Asia correspondent for the "Far Eastern Economic Review," first interviewed Pol Pot in October 1997.

It was the first interview the leader had given to a western journalist in 18 years.

Earlier today, members of the Khmer Rouge took Thayer to see the body of Pol Pot at a camp near the Ti border. He confirmed that the body being displayed was indeed Pol Pot.

NATE THAYER, SOUTHEAST ASIA CORRESPONDENT, "FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW" : There is no question that I saw the body of Pol Pot, it was Pol Pot, and that he is dead. There is not question of that. There is questions raised on, of course, how he died. They say he died from heart failure. In fact, it's logical. I tend to believe it. But really without forensics it's impossible and of course there is speculation that he was the victim of a political murder.

WERTHEIMER: The reason that the news of his death has been received with some skepticism in Southeast Asia and here is that the United States has been interested in trying to arrest Pol Pot and has been working with China to try to do that and felt, I believe, that that was a possibility, that it was coming close, and then he dies.

THAYER: That's right. There was movement and significant movement that the remnants of the Khmer Rouge were now willing to turn Pol Pot over for proceedings in front of an international tribunal for crimes against humanity.

Now, Pol Pot's health has been extremely frail for a long time.

For the last 20 days or so he has been taken through the jungles as they've lost much of their territory. Today, while I was in the Khmer Rouge area, there was very heavy fighting very close by both incoming and outgoing artillery and small arms fire. There were regular mine explosions. The trauma of an elderly, extremely frail, probably very demoralized man under these conditions very easily could have prompted a heart attack, which is what they -- his wife, who I interviewed this afternoon, claims happened last night.

WERTHEIMER: Does the death of Pol Pot change anything for Cambodia? Is he still significant enough a figure that it changes the equation there?

THAYER: You know it's a very good question because, in fact, Pol Pot has been held up as the boogie man lurking in the jungles. But in fact he's been purged from any political role for some time.

And along with Pol Pot's death, unfortunately, goes the chance of finding out really what happened and why. There's so many unanswered questions of why so many people suffered so unspeakably and so unfairly. And this man was in sole control.

But the fact is that there are thousands of people who are guilty of crimes against humanity who continue to wield power in Cambodia' s mainstream politics today: the current prime minister, the defense minister, the interior minister, the finance minister, the justice minister, hundreds of generals in the military and security forces.

And these are people whose government is recognized and supported by the United States, among others.

Much of the United States' so-called quest for Pol Pot is really Washington politics. The fact is that there are mass murderers who are in power who are being issued diplomatic visas and have free run of the country today.

And maybe the death of Pol Pot will refocus really where it should be, in my view, which is that Cambodia is a country that is really on its knees, and whose people continue to suffer under despotic leaders 20 years after Pol Pot was driven from power.

WERTHEIMER: Thanks very much, Nate Thayer.

THAYER: OK, thank you very much.

WERTHEIMER: Nate Thayer is a correspondent for the "Far Eastern Economic Review." This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Transcribed by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. under license from National Public Radio, Inc. Formatting copyright (c) 1998 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information please contact NPR's Business Affairs at (202) 414-2954

Pol Pot's Really Dead-NPR

Pol Pot's Really Dead

NPR Morning Edition

April 16, 1998

NateThayer, Susan Stamberg    

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SUSAN STAMBERG, HOST: This is MORNING EDITION. I'm Susan Stamberg in for Bob Edwards.

Pol Pot, the former leader of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, is dead.

Pol Pot led a movement that killed, starved or worked to death some two million people between 1975 and 1979. After a power struggle last year, he was put under house arrest, and his followers have been on the run in recent months in the jungles of the Thailand-Cambodia border. And it is there that he died last night.

Nate Thayer is on the line with us from the Thai-Cambodian border. Mr. Thayer reports for the Far Eastern Economic Review.

You were shown a body today. And people claim that it is the body of Pol Pot. Tell us -- describe the scene for us.

NATE THAYER, REPORTER, FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW: Well, there is no question that Pol Pot died. He died last night. He died apparently of heart failure as the direct cause, but also clearly contributing causes of fleeing through the jungles for the last 20 days as the government has taken much of the Khmer Rouge area. We were brought to Pol Pot's house. Pol Pot was lying in a bed, a very spartan room. He had some very crude temporary embalming techniques. And he was dead. There's no question that Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge for the last 38 years, died about 16 hours ago.

STAMBERG: Who was it who brought you to that house?

THAYER: We were brought into the jungles of northern Cambodia, into some of the last jungle enclaves of the remnants of the Khmer Rouge. We were met and spent several hours with Ta Mok, the leader of the rump of the Khmer Rouge guerrilla forces. It was his soldiers who brought us to the house of Pol Pot, a house that was surrounded by mine fields. It had newly dug trenches.

There was heavy fighting going on near -- in nearby front lines. And we met both his wife and his daughter and saw the body of Pol Pot, which is -- will be cremated, they say, in about 48 hours.

STAMBERG: What was -- what's the last time that you saw Pol Pot, Mr. Thayer? THAYER: A few months ago, I was the journalist who attended the people's tribunal of Pol Pot when he was purged because of internal disputes last July. I then interviewed him at length several months ago and then again went in just a number of weeks ago. We knew Pol Pot was very sick. Clearly, the trauma of the advancing government forces, which had forced the Khmer Rouge out of their productive zones and into these very rugged jungles and mountain escarpments along the Thai border, probably was a significant contributing factor to Pol Pot's demise last night, which is claimed to be through heart disease. His wife told us that he was feeling dizzy and laid down, and he -- she heard him gasp and went over, and when she touched him he was dead. And that was at 10:45 p.m. Cambodian time last night, about 16 hours ago.

STAMBERG: And dead at the age of 73. How would you describe what Pol Pot's legacy is, Mr. Thayer?

THAYER: Well, there's no question that Pol Pot caused unspeakable suffering to millions of people who didn't deserve it.

And there's no question that his death leaves really many unanswered historical questions as well. He went to his grave believing that he had contributed more to his country than the suffering that he inflicted. Pol Pot was considered to be a patriot and a nationalist fighting a historical enemy by those who supported him. And he refused to the end to take responsibility for the terrible, terrible reign of three years in the late 1970s that crippled his country, the effects we still see today.

STAMBERG: Thank you very much, sir.

Nate Thayer of the "Far Eastern Economic Review," speaking with us from the Thai-Cambodian border.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Transcribed by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. under license from National Public Radio, Inc. Formatting copyright (c) 1998 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information please contact NPR's Business Affairs at (202) 414-2954

Khmer Rouge wants Pol Pot to face war crime trial.

Khmer Rouge wants Pol Pot to face war crime trial.

Daily Mail (London)

April 15, 1998

LEADERS of the Khmer Rouge want to hand deposed dictator Pol Pot to an international tribunal to stand trial for war crimes against the Cambodian people.

They want to surrender their 73-year-old former leader in exchange for food and medicine, according to the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review.

Executions, forced labour and disease killed up to two million Cambodians from 1975, when Pol Pot's forces captured the capital Phnom Penh, to 1979, when the Khmer Rouge was defeated by invading Vietnamese forces. The Khmer Rouge has been opposing the government army from its jungle camps ever since.

Pol Pot has been held under house arrest close to the Thai border since June last year when he was overthrown in an internal power struggle. There have been calls for him to be brought before the International Court of Justice in The Hague to stand trial for crimes against humanity.

General Khem Nuon of the Khmer Rouge reportedly asked reporter Nat Thayer to put him in touch with 'the right people' so a handover could be arranged.

Thayer is said to have suggested they contact the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Confined, Pol Pot Tells Of Feeling 'Bit Bored': New York Times

Confined, Pol Pot Tells Of Feeling 'Bit Bored'

New York Times

By SETH MYDANS
Published: October 24, 1997

 Confined to a wooden hut with nothing to read and nothing to do, Pol Pot, the man who created the Khmer Rouge ''killing fields'' in Cambodia in the 1970's, says he is getting bored.

Old, sick and weary, he said in an interview published today that he often did not have the strength to get out of bed or even to listen to one of his favorite radio stations, the Voice of America.

''I feel a little bit bored, but I have become used to that,'' he said in the interview, conducted last Thursday by Nate Thayer, a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review. It was the first interview Pol Pot had given in nearly 20 years.

''You know, I can't even play with my daughter or my wife anymore because in the morning, even after I wake up, I can't get out of bed,'' he complained. ''I stay still while my wife occupies herself with gardening and sewing. My daughter gathers wood and works in the kitchen.''

Pol Pot, who said he is 72, has spent the last 19 years in the jungle, since fleeing a Vietnamese invasion that ended his four-year rule of terror in which at least one million Cambodians died.

In July his Khmer Rouge followers turned against him and condemned him to live out his days under house arrest in a small hut in their stronghold of Anlong Veng, where the interview was conducted.

Pre-publication excerpts made public on Wednesday showed him to be unrepentant, telling Mr. Thayer that he may have had made some ''mistakes'' but that ''my conscience is clear.''

In the full interview, Pol Pot offered a glimpse into his feelings about his place in history as well as his small joys and daily irritations.

Rejected by his comrades and confined to his home with his wife and 12-year-old daughter, he said: ''For me it is over. Over politically and over as a human being.''

He complained that his hut is infested with mosquitoes and other insects, that his books have been taken away and that ''I have nothing to do now.''

The interview came at a time of renewed suffering in Cambodia, where Pol Pot's legacy of violence, political chaos and shattered lives continues to overwhelm attempts at re-establishing a civil society.

After a coup in July, the country's latest strongman, Hun Sen, has quashed and sometimes killed his opponents and frightened away foreign businesses, driving Cambodians further into the poverty Pol Pot bequeathed them.

From 1975 to 1979, Pol Pot systematically dismantled Cambodian society, destroying industry, civil service, education, religion, commerce and culture in a radical attempt to impose a collectivist agrarian utopia. At least one million and as many as two million Cambodians died of torture, execution, starvation, disease and overwork.

At one point in the interview, Mr. Thayer wrote, Pol Pot turned to one of his captors and murmured, ''I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country.''

Mr. Thayer reported that Pol Pot went so far as to propose that the bones and skulls of his victims that still lie in heaps around Cambodia were actually placed there by the Vietnamese to discredit him.

One of Pol Pot's notable characteristics as a leader was the secrecy -- often described as paranoia -- that led him to hide his identity and frequently change dwellings.

''Since my boyhood I never talked about myself,'' he told Mr. Thayer. ''That was my nature. I was taciturn. I'm quite modest. I don't want to tell people that I'm a leader.''

His birth date has been a matter of dispute. Pol Pot told Mr. Thayer he had been born in January 1925, but had lied about the date to remain eligible for a scholarship.

Like many an old man, his own failing health seemed to interest him as much as his monumental deeds of the past, and Mr. Thayer said Pol Pot steered the conversation in the direction of his illnesses. ''You look at me from the outside, you don't know what I have suffered,'' he said. ''If you allow me, I would like to tell you about my sickness.''

Then he described in intimate detail a frightening night in late 1995 when he suffered what was apparently a stroke.

''One night I got up to go to the bathroom,'' Pol Pot said. ''My left eye was closed. I thought that maybe nothing was wrong. But when I came back my eye just did not work anymore. Now my left side from my head to my toe does not work. And my left eye is 95 percent blind.''

Mr. Thayer reported that Pol Pot spoke of his daughter with ''genuine fatherly affection.''

''She is a good daughter, a good person; she gets along with the others quite well,'' Pol Pot said.

Asked if he thought she would be proud, when she is grown, to say she is the daughter of Pol Pot, he responded: ''I don't know about that. It's up to history to judge.''

AN AILING POL POT SHOWS NO REMORSE

 

AN AILING POL POT SHOWS NO REMORSE

Albany Times Union (Albany, NY)

October 23, 1997

Byline: KEITH B. RICHBURG Washington Post

HONG KONG -- The elusive Pol Pot, who presided over Cambodia's killing fields of the late 1970s, has conceded, in his first interview in 18 years, that his notorious Khmer Rouge movement ``made mistakes'' during its brutal reign, but he declared, ``My conscience is clear,'' according to excerpts of the interview in the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Review correspondent Nate Thayer, who conducted the interview last week at the guerrilla group's jungle stronghold at Anlong Veng in northern Cambodia, reported that Pol Pot was unrepentant when questioned repeatedly about accusations that he was responsible for the deaths of more than a million Cambodians. ``I came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people,'' Pol Pot said, according to the Review's advance excerpts. ``Even now, and you can look at me: Am I a savage person?''

For nearly two decades, Pol Pot, whose real name is Saloth Sar, has remained an enigma, moving only in the shadows of Cambodia's tortured politics. Never seen publicly and only rarely photographed, his name alone was enough to elicit terror and loathing.

Not until July, when Thayer emerged from the malaria-ridden jungles of Anlong Veng, was there proof that Pol Pot was still alive. And now, for the first time, the man who lived a life shrouded in mystery has spoken in his own words to an American reporter about the movement he led for 37 years, the killings that took place under his regime, his regrets (apparently few) and his own view of Cambodia's genocide and why it happened.

Thayer is the American journalist who first photographed Pol Pot July 25, when the Khmer Rouge leader was denounced by his own colleagues in a jungle show trial reminiscent of a Chinese-style Cultural Revolution ``struggle session.'' Since then, Pol Pot reportedly has been detained under house arrest, stripped of the leadership of the movement he founded and headed, although until now there had been no sightings to confirm that he was being held captive.

Thayer's full report on his two-hour interview will be published in today's edition of the Hong Kong-based weekly Far Eastern Economic Review.

In the interview, according to the two-page press release the Review faxed to news organizations Wednesday, Pol Pot conceded that ``our movement made mistakes'' in the execution of perceived political opponents and others. But he added, ``We had no other choice. Naturally we had to defend ourselves. The Vietnamese . . . wanted to assassinate me because they knew without me they could easily swallow up Cambodia.''

Pol Pot came to power in 1975 after a civil war and embarked on a radical Maoist agrarian experiment in which as many as 1 million Cambodians died of starvation, forced labor, malaria or execution before Vietnam invaded and ended Khmer Rouge rule early in 1979. In the excerpts, Pol Pot defends his purge of internal opponents to his rule, but blames many of the deaths on Vietnamese agents inside Cambodia. He denies the accepted estimate of 1 million Cambodian deaths while he was in power.

``To say that millions died is too much,'' he is quoted as saying.

The press release says that Thayer also interviewed Ta Mok, the brutal Khmer Rouge military leader known as ``the butcher.'' Ta Mok, Thayer reports, also denied that millions of Cambodians died during Khmer Rouge rule.

``I don't agree with the American figure that millions died,'' Ta Mok is quoted saying -- ``but hundreds of thousands, yes.'' No senior Khmer Rouge leader was previously known to have commented publicly on the scale of the atrocities committed by the group.

Ta Mok overthrew Pol Pot after a bloody internal power struggle last June that saw Pol Pot order the murder of his own defense chief, Son Sen, along with Son Sen's wife and children. Their bodies reportedly were run over by trucks.

Thayer reported that Pol Pot regrets killing his former defense chief, but denies he ordered the deaths of the children. ``The babies, the young ones, I did not order them to be killed,'' he said. ``For Son Sen and his family, yes, I feel sorry for that. That was a mistake of when we put our plan into practice.''

Thayer said he found Pol Pot, believed to be about 70, ill and perhaps near death, afflicted with a variety of ailments. He suffered an apparent stroke in 1995. ``In Khmer, we have a saying,'' Pol Pot told Thayer, ``that when one is both quite sick and old, there remains only one thing, that you die.''

Pol Pot is said to be confined to a hut with his wife and a 12-year-old daughter. Ta Mok, now leading the rebels, recently offered to turn Pol Pot over to an international tribunal if Hun Sen, the Cambodian strongman now in charge in Phnom Penh, is also put on trial for his alleged ``crimes.'' Hun Sen has declined the offer.

COPYRIGHT 2009 Albany Times Union. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights or concerns about this content should be directed to Customer Service. For permission to reuse this article, contact Copyright Clearance Center.

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."

Portrait Le 7 août 1997 à 7h47 Nate Thayer, journaliste américain plutôt idéaliste, a «eu» le leader Khmer rouge qu'il guettait depuis dix ans. L'homme qui a vu Pol Pot :Liberation

Liberation

Portrait

Le 7 août 1997 à 7h47

Nate Thayer, journaliste américain plutôt idéaliste, a «eu» le leader Khmer rouge qu'il guettait depuis dix ans. L'homme qui a vu Pol Pot

Commenter

Par LEBAS Alain

Nate Thayer, auteur d'un des plus grands scoops du journalisme,

entre dans l'Histoire au bord de la crise de nerfs: à l'image de celui qu'il traque depuis des années, Pol Pot, dirigeant historique des Khmers rouges.

Recevant à Bangkok, dans le bureau local du Far Eastern Economic Review, un trois pièces transformé en salle de rédaction, ce grand gaillard au crâne rasé et au physique d'Indiana Jones fond en larmes comme un gamin. «Les journalistes sont pires que les Khmers rouges», lâche-t-il «100 000 dollars la photo! 400 000 dollars la vidéo! On a dit que j'avais touché ça, mais pour l'instant ce n'est encore qu'un rêve"» Les confrères le disaient riche depuis la vente aux enchères du film et des photos exclusives d'un Pol Pot humilié et condamné à perpétuité par ses anciens compagnons d'arme. Nate Thayer a plutôt l'impression de s'être fait blouser par ses confrères américains d'ABC News. «Ils sont arrivés à Bangkok par un vol direct de New York, en première classe. Ils ont visionné mon travail et une fois qu'ils ont eu mis la main sur la cassette, ils ont fait ce qu'il voulaient.»

Si quelqu'un mérite ce scoop sans purgatoire, c'est pourtant bien Nate Thayer. Voilà quatorze ans que le jeune Américain pourchasse l'énigmatique Pol Pot. De passage à Phnom Penh, les journalistes avaient pour habitude de lui demander: «Alors, tu vas l'avoir, ton gibier?» La persévérance a payé. «Le Pulitzer l'attend», prédisent aujourd'hui ses copains à Bangkok. L'étudiant en sciences politiques de l'université de Cambridge débarque en Thaïlande en 1984. Il se passionne vite pour les guérillas qui sévissent dans les pays voisins, et en particulier les Khmers rouges au Cambodge. Il fait ses premiers reportages, comme pigiste (payé à l'article), pour l'Agence France Presse. En 1988, il s'installe à Aranyaprathet, un petit bourg thaïlandais adossé à la frontière cambodgienne. Toujours pigiste, mais cette fois-ci pour l'agence américaine Associated Press et le Far Eastern Economic Review.

Seul journaliste occidental à couvrir là une guerre civile oubliée, il en profite pour gagner la confiance des différents mouvements de lutte armée cambodgiens. «37 voyages clandestins à l'intérieur du Cambodge, dont un de deux mois et 200 kilomètres de marche», résume-t-il. Sans oublier une malaria cérébrale qui, depuis quatre ans, le tue à petit feu. Il a été hospitalisé seize fois, rapatrié d'urgence à plusieurs reprises aux Etats-Unis: Nate Thayer a un itinéraire de martyr de l'info. En 1990, il saute, à bord d'un camion, sur une mine antichar. Ses voisins meurent sur le coup. Lui s'en sort avec 35 éclats dans le corps et quatre côtes brisées. «La chance, raconte-t-il avec une pointe de fierté, est du côté des Thayer depuis des générations.» Nate est issu d'une grande famille américaine de Boston. Ses ancêtres dînaient à bord du Titanic en compagnie du capitaine lorsque le paquebot géant coula presque à pic. Ils en réchappèrent. Leur descendant en short et chemisette est un grand garçon américain, post-Hemingway, qui a bricolé sa liberté individuelle dans un pays à feu et à sang dont le destin le fascinait. «Mon fils a un caractère haut en couleur et un esprit indépendant. Il est aussi un peu casse-cou», reconnaît son père, diplomate américain de carrière, ancien ambassadeur en poste à Singapour. Jeune, Nate Thayer aimait l'aventure, les voyages, et particulièrement les armes à feu. Avec les années, s'y ajoute un goût prononcé pour l'alcool et le chanvre indien. «A Phnom Penh, pour retrouver Nate et sa bande de copains, il suffisait de suivre l'odeur de son joint», se souvient un journaliste. Généreux, Nate aime partager ses passions. Un jour, il invite la petite communauté de correspondants à Phnom Penh chez lui pour goûter sa fameuse soupe au chanvre indien. Certains restent KO pendant deux jours. Facétieux, mais sérieux et fidèle quand il le faut. Il a choisi son ami d'enfance de Boston, le cameraman Mac Kaige, dont les qualités professionnelles sont reconnues par tous, pour l'accompagner voir Pol Pot. Sans l'avouer réellement, Nate Thayer porte une certaine fascination à son gibier. «Voir ce vieil homme malade, montré du doigt, humilié, avec ses joues tremblantes, en train d'essayer de sauvegarder certains vestiges de dignité, alors que ses derniers fidèles se retournaient contre lui" Face à ça, j'ai éprouvé, comme n'importe quel autre humain je pense, de la sympathie pour Pol Pot. De la pitié aussi.» Les convictions de toute une vie se teintent ainsi, en deux heures de procès, d'une douloureuse ambiguïté. Les convictions du journalisme à l'américaine s'effondrent, elles, en l'espace d'une émission télévisée.

Lendemain de scoop. Les offres d'emploi s'empilent sur son bureau. De chasseur, Nate Thayer est devenu gibier. Il reçoit en moyenne 500 à 600 appels par jour. Il fuit ses confrères, se cache dans un hôtel, change tous les trois ou quatre jours son numéro de portable. «Un type a appelé le bureau, se faisant passer pour mon frère, et prétendait que ma mère était malade», raconte-t-il en grimaçant de mépris. Reporter idéaliste, Thayer se défend d'avoir voulu faire de l'argent sur les malheurs du Cambodge. Il insiste sur le fait qu'il a donné l'exclusivité à son magazine pour le tarif de 2000 dollars. «2000 dollars, c'est normal pour un reportage dans le Far Eastern Economic Review, et c'est ce que j'attends de mon employeur.» Collaborateur de longue date de ce journal fameux, il pensait que la chaîne américaine ABC respecterait son engagement verbal: ne diffuser les images du prétendu «procès public» de Pol Pot qu'après la publication du scoop par son journal. «Ils ont volé le travail de toute une vie» se plaint-il. Pire, accuse-t-il, ABC News aurait aussi envoyé les photos sur l'Internet et distribué des copies de la vidéo à des journaux américains. Pour l'instant, il n'a rien reçu en retour. Négociation en cours? Rapport de force? Thayer a été pris dans une tourmente d'intérêts qui le dépassent. Pour Tom Bettag, le producteur d'ABC chargé du dossier, «il ne fait aucun doute que cet extraordinaire journaliste aura ce qui lui est dû». Le problème, précise-t-il, «c'est qu'aucun contrat n'est encore signé, l'avocat de Nate Thayer ayant réclamé des dommages-intérêts d'environ un million de dollars pour les images diffusées, dit-il, sans son accord. Or, ajoute-t-il, l'accord original, qui était verbal, ne portait que sur 350 000 dollars». En attendant, Thayer a refusé une belle proposition: 1 million de dollars des Japonais de la chaîne NHK, contre une exclusivité totale au Japon. «Cette histoire, dit-il, doit faire le tour du monde».

(Lire aussi en page monde) Nate Thayer en 6 dates 21 avril 1960. Naissance à Boston.

1984. Ecrit ses premiers articles pour l'Agence France Presse à Bangkok 1988. Premier voyage a l'intérieur du Cam-bodge avec la résis-tance anti-vietnamienne.

1991. Collaborateur du «Far Eastern Economic Review» à Phnom Penh.

1996. Menacé de mort après une enquête sur la drogue, il quitte Phnom Penh.

25 juillet 1997. Il est le premier observateur indépendant depuis dix-huit ans à voir Pol Pot vivant.

ALBRIGHT SKEPTICAL ABOUT POL POT TRIAL

 

ALBRIGHT SKEPTICAL ABOUT POL POT TRIAL

Albany Times Union (Albany, NY)

July 30, 1997

Byline: Associated Press PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Cambodians saw,

for the first time Tuesday, footage of toppled Khmer Rouge chief Pol Pot, even as the United States was cautious about its authenticity.

In Singapore, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said she was not yet convinced that Pol Pot, who led the murderous Khmer Rouge reign in Cambodia, was the man convicted during a jungle show trial filmed by American reporter Nate Thayer.

``I haven't seen any of the footage and I think we don't know'' if it's really Pol Pot, Albright said.

She said U.S. officials believe he should be brought before an international tribunal to face charges as a war criminal, but no progress has been made in figuring out how to do that. The United States is working with Canada and the Netherlands, which have extradition laws that could allow their governments to bring Pol Pot, linked to the deaths of nearly 2 million Cambodians, to trial.

TV monitors were erected by ABC News first at Phnom Penh's central market, then at the historic temple, Wat Phnom. ABC News purchased the historic footage of the trial from Thayer, a reporter for the Far Eastern Economic Review magazine who was allowed into the Khmer Rouge's northern Cambodian redoubt of Anglong Ven to witness it.

The footage showed a humiliated, broken Pol Pot being tried by his former Khmer Rouge comrades Friday and sentenced to house arrest for life.

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia from 1975-79, killing scores of people by starvation, overwork and systematic execution in a quest to transform the nation into a Marxist agrarian utopia. Invading Vietnamese forces eventually ousted Pol Pot, sending him and his followers into the jungles to continue their guerrilla war.

Albright spoke about the footage while addressing Singapore leaders following three days of meetings at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

CAMBODIA RECALLS A NATIONAL NIGHTMARE CITIZENS TAKE THEIR FIRST LOOK AT POL POT IN 18 YEARS

CAMBODIA RECALLS A NATIONAL NIGHTMARE CITIZENS TAKE THEIR FIRST LOOK AT POL POT IN 18 YEARS

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

July 30, 1997

Huddled shoulder to shoulder, some on tiptoes, market vendors, shoppers and taxi drivers crowded around the TV monitor to look at the man blamed for the deaths of as many as 2 million Cambodians.

Boys and girls stood open-mouthed, eyeing the feeble, white-haired man - a bogeyman from horror stories suddenly become real.

Those old enough to remember him cried out in amazement: ``That's him! That's him!''

The footage of toppled Khmer Rouge chief Pol Pot, obtained by a cameraman with American journalist Nate Thayer, was broadcast yesterday on TV monitors in Phnom Penh's central market and at the historic temple Wat Phnom.

ABC, which purchased the film, set up the monitors for its ``Nightline'' show to watch how ordinary Cambodians reacted to their first sight of the secretive guerrilla Pol Pot in 18 years.

The footage showed a humiliated, broken Pol Pot being tried by his former Khmer Rouge comrades Friday and sentenced to house arrest for life.

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia from 1975-79, killing hundreds of thousands of people by starvation, overwork and systematic execution in a quest to transform the nation into a Marxist agrarian utopia. Invading Vietnamese forces eventually ousted Pol Pot, sending him and his followers into the jungles to continue their guerrilla war.

Most passers-by ignored the show yesterday, inured to the 69-year-old guerrilla leader by years of conflicting rumors about his whereabouts and even his death, and more worried about survival in a country still suffering from his reign of terror.

The emotions of those who did stop ranged from surprise to desire for a real trial rather than the spectacle the Khmer Rouge held to publicly distance themselves from their longtime chief.

``I hate him. I wish they would just kill him,'' declared a taxi driver, who identified himself only as Savoeun.

Hem Savi, 41, recalled awakening from a Khmer Rouge interrogation session two decades ago to find that her parents and six siblings had been killed and thrown into a pit.

``I feel no pity for Pol Pot watching this,'' she said.

Ke Chandara, 35, a motorcycle taxi driver, said he was surprised anyone could catch and try Pol Pot, a nightmare figure of magical stature to most Cambodians.

Ke Chandara, who said his father's fingernails were torn out by the Khmer Rouge, agreed with others that the trial and punishment were not legitimate and that Pol Pot should be tried by a U.N. tribunal.

``There's no nation on earth that killed its people in such a cruel way as Pol Pot,'' he said.

Vannareth Ky, a Cambodia native who lives in Seattle, said he was excited to see Pol Pot's face.

``He has not been seen for so long,'' Ky said. ``I am longing to ask him why he killed his own people. For what?''

Ky, who lost two older brothers and one child under the Khmer Rouge regime, said surviving family members and five other families escaped the killings and hid in a swamp around Tonle Sap Lake, about 90 miles from Phnom Penh.

At night, he said, ``We came out to the farm to steal potatoes, pumpkins, watermelons and rice and went back to the jungle.''

Before he fled to the jungle, Ky was under Khmer Rouge control. During that time, the cadre gave him and seven other people one can of rice and one can of maize to share for each meal. Ky said he and his wife shared the same house but rarely saw each other because they were assigned to work at different job sites and different shifts.

``I almost died of hunger,'' said Ky, 50. ``I could walk only about 5 meters at a time.''

In the U.S. broadcast of the Pol Pot footage on ``Nightline'' Monday evening, Thayer, the American journalist, told host Ted Koppel that the Khmer Rouge guerrillas who tried Pol Pot debated beforehand whether to execute him - the usual fate of Pol Pot's own opponents.

Thayer, who works for the Far Eastern Economic Review, a Hong Kong-based newsweekly, was allowed into the Khmer Rouge's northern Cambodian stronghold of Anglong Ven to witness the trial.

In Washington, D.C., State Department spokesman Jim Foley said the Khmer Rouge's sentence of life imprisonment was inadequate punishment for Pol Pot. ``In our view, this is not a bringing to justice,'' Foley said.

``Pol Pot and his henchmen must be turned over to the legitimate judicial authorities and tried according to the laws of Cambodia and/or international law,'' he added.

Most of Pol Pot's remaining troops reportedly turned against him in June after he ordered the killing of his defense minister. The Khmer Rouge infighting came during peace talks with Prince Norodom Ranariddh, then Cambodia's co-premier.

The Cambodian government's disputes over how to handle the Khmer Rouge holdouts ended with the other premier, Hun Sen, deposing Ranariddh in a bloody coup July 5.

A government committee said yesterday that the coup and subsequent looting by Hun Sen's victorious troops caused at least $76 million in damage to Phnom Penh businesses.

Also yesterday, Hun Sen's efforts to win international legitimacy by naming a new co-premier suffered a blow when Ranariddh's father, King Norodom Sihanouk, announced he will not recognize Hun Sen's choice to succeed his son.

The nominee, Foreign Minister Ung Huot, told the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that Hun Sen wanted the group's help to return stability to the country.

ASEAN has postponed Cambodia's entry as a full member, scheduled for last week, to protest the coup.

Swashbuckling reporter gets story on show trial: He chews tobacco, has a five-o'clock shadow, and knows his weapons.

Swashbuckling reporter gets story on show trial

The Boston Globe

July 30, 1997

By Ellen O'Brien  

He chews tobacco, has a five-o'clock shadow, and knows his weapons.

Nate Thayer is a swashbuckling reporter who has a reputation for landing himself in the middle of the action -- and at the center of his stories.

At 37, Thayer already had a long list of foreign adventures on his resume before Friday, when he became known around the world as the guy who saw Pol Pot. Yesterday Thayer, who attended the University of Massachusetts at Boston years ago, spent the day in his Bangkok hotel writing the exclusive story of the Pol Pot sighting. Along with a cameraman, Thayer was allowed to witness a court proceding in which the Khmer Rouge denounced the mysterious leader and sentenced him to life under house arrest. It was the first time a journalist had seen Pol Pot in nearly two decades. And no one who knows Thayer was surprised that he was the one who landed the big story. "Only one reporter -- Nate -- could have gotten that story," said Frederick Brown, associate director of the Southeast Asia Studies School at Johns Hopkins University. Thayer is currently a research associate at the school's Advanced International Studies program, having received a grant from the US Institute of Peace, a Washington-based think tank. He is working on a book on the Khmer Rouge and living in a Washington suburb when he isn't traveling to Cambodia in search of the next big scoop. "He has that ability to conduct three or four conversations at the same time, from all over the world. He's always got a phone buzzing," said Brown, who was with Thayer earlier this week in Cambodia. Thayer got a taste for international travel while his father, Harry E. T. Thayer, was a career diplomat. A former US ambassador to Singapore, Thayer's father said yesterday his son often visited, and lived with him abroad. "He's pretty well known as a colorful character, rather independent-minded, a bit of a risk-taker," said Thayer's father. The family lived in Boston and Philadelphia, and Thayer graduated from the school now known as Cambridge Rindge and Latin. Thayer said his son's college career in political science was interrupted by foreign trips to Cambodia, where he interviewed Khmer Rouge victims as one of his first projects. He lived in Boston and Somerville, and worked as a disk jockey for a radio station at Tufts University. Interviews with Thayer's colleagues and his father yield a portrait of a man with local roots who has risked his life for his passion abroad. He is a distance swimmer who used to compete in races in Boston, and now wins river races in Cambodia. He has battled several illnesses while traveling, including malaria and typhoid disease. He collects guns, and has written for Soldier of Fortune, a magazine for military buffs. And he has always had a taste for adventure, his father said. He lost the hearing in one of his ears while covering a firefight in Burma, and had a brush with death from a landmine in Khmer Rouge territory. Thayer's story will be published tomorrow, when 85,000 copies of the Far Eastern Economic Review hit the newsstands. Owned by Dow Jones, the weekly magazine has exclusive rights to Thayer's story, but Thayer, who was working as a freelance writer for the magazine, owns the photographs that go with it.

LIFE, NOT DEATH, FOR POL POT.(Editorial): Rocky Mountain News

 

LIFE, NOT DEATH, FOR POL POT.(Editorial)

Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)

July 29, 1997

Nicolae Ceausescu was a murderous tyrant, and on Dec. 25, 1989, Romanian freedom fighters took him out and shot him. The rebels deserved low marks for judicial procedure but high ones for closure. As regards the judgment of Cambodia's Pol Pot, an incalculably worse tyrant, nearly the opposite appears true.

Last week, according to U.S. journalist Nate Thayer - the first Westerner in 18 years to see the monster and live to tell the tale - Pol Pot received a full (if not exactly fair) trial from the tattered remnants of the Khmer Rouge he once led. When the last denunciation had sounded, a people's court sentenced the ``traitor'' to life imprisonment - a pale penalty for the genocide Pol Pot inflicted upon Cambodia in the 1970s.

Worse, he will serve his time in shrouded limbo. At a minimum, no international tribunal will judge Pol Pot, denying the world a fuller cataloguing of his crimes, ruling out a public spelunking into the dark caves of a maniacal mind and shielding other Khmer Rouge from incrimination.

The inconclusiveness doesn't stop there. Thayer called the jungle proceeding a ``show trial,'' a political ritual in which the defendant had no chance of acquittal. The show, however, could have been staged for outside consumption, allowing the Khmer Rouge to delouse itself while Pol Pot controlled the movement's machinery offstage.

And the ragtag ``Red Khmers'' have no Alcatraz, no stationary facility in which Indochina's Hitler can be observably incarcerated. For reports on the killer's status, the world must rely upon the unreliable - the word of the bloody Khmer Rouge.

There would be considerable satisfaction in making Pol Pot answer for his atrocities before civilization. But in one sense it is perhaps apt that his fate is to be left alive with just a few knowing for sure where he is. He thus serves as a reminder that the spirit of evil is always at large.

THE FACE OF EVIL; Killing Fields dictator Pol Pot --- at his own show trial.

 

THE FACE OF EVIL; Killing Fields dictator Pol Pot --- at his own show trial.

Daily Mail (London)

July 29, 1997

Byline: RICHARD SHEARS

Turn to Page 7, Col.1 THIS is the first photograph in 18 years of Pol Pot, the butcher of Cambodia.

The reviled leader of the infamous Khmer Rouge - responsible for murdering two million of his people during a four-year reign of terror depicted in the film The Killing Fields - is now a frail, white-haired 69-year-old.

The photo was shown on American TV last night, three days after Pol Pot's former Khmer Rouge comrades reportedly sentenced him to life imprisonment at an 80-minute show trial.

The only Western journalist to witness the scene, American Nate Thayer, said: 'The events of his purge and trial were so traumatic that I thought he might die during the process.

'You could see the anguish on his face as he was denounced by his former loyalists.

He was close to tears.' Dressed in simple peasant clothes, Pol Pot sat in silence on a makeshift stage, head bowed, while his former brothers in arms shouted: 'Crush, crush, crush, Pol Pot and his clique.' He had to be helped away after the sentence was pronounced at the trial at Anlong Veng, about 200 miles north west of the capital Phnom Penh.

Cambodian co-premier Hun Sen said the trial was a 'trick', however. He claimed Pol Pot still controlled guerilla forces in northern Cambodia.

The U.S. State Department said it could not confirm Thayer's report. But the journalist insisted: 'This is not a hoax.

This is not a ruse. Pol Pot is finished. The Khmer Rouge as we have known them no longer exist.' No Western journalist - and few outsiders - had seen Pol Pot since 1979. He was frequently rumoured to be dead.

Born Saloth Sar on May 19, 1928, Pol Pot, known as Brother Number One, led his Cambodian peasant army to victory against the American-backed Lon Nol republic in 1975, or Year Zero, as the Khmer Rouge called it.

They immediately embarked on a bloody restructuring of society.

His guerillas emptied Phnom Penh at gunpoint, forcing the sick from their beds.

Women, children and the old were ordered into the countryside and put to work in vast labour camps. More than a million were executed, while the same number again died from disease, starvation or overwork until the Vietnamese invasion launched on December

Under a tree, Pol Pot faces the open-air court of the Khmer Rouge Continued from Page One 25 1978 drove the Khmer Rouge from power. They fled to the border near Thailand where they continued to wage a guerilla war until the movement began to fragment as they began defecting to the government in 1996.

Shortly after he was ousted from Phnom Penh, a smiling Pol Pot said several thousand Cambodians had died 'due to some mistakes' in implementing his policies, but denied committing crimes against humanity.

At his trial, seven Khmer Rouge members accused him and his men of murder, destroying national reconciliation and stealing money from the party.

Pol Pot was born into a reasonably prosperous rural family and spent part of his youth as a novice monk at a pagoda in Phnom Penh, where relatives worked in the royal household.

Awarded a scholarship to study in France, he became so involved in radical student politics that he failed his exams and returned home.

He joined an underground movement opposed to the French colonialists. In 1963 he fled the capital for the countryside because of police suspicions against him.

He became party secretary in 1963 and in 1968 his Maoist guerillas launched their first attacks on army and police posts.

Eight years later he swept to power and unleashed his reign of terror, turning the country into a massive agricultural labour camp and purging all opposition.

THE TRIAL OF POL POT ABC Nightline ABC Nightline July 28, 1997 | TED KOPPEL

THE TRIAL OF POL POT

ABC Nightline

July 28, 1997 | TED KOPPEL

00-00-0000
ANNOUNCER: July 28, 1997. TED KOPPEL, ABC News: (voice-over) His regime will have a place as one of the bloodiest in the history of man and yet a few faded pictures have provided our only glimpse of him these past 18 years. Most Americans are only familiar with the terror he unleashed because of a Hollywood movie, "The Killing Fields." But the Cambodians who died because of his insane policies may have been as many as two million. For a moment a few weeks ago, it appeared that this man might actually be brought to justice before an international tribunal. But still, he remained invisible, until tonight. An ABC News exclusive -- the trial and sentencing of Pol Pot. ANNOUNCER: This is ABC News Nightline. Reporting from Washington, Ted Koppel. TED KOPPEL: It's not that words fail, but that we've devalued them through over use and careless application. We've exhausted some of their meaning and we journalists, with our screaming headlines, are more to blame than most. There are, for instance, differences between bad and evil, mass murderer and genocide. But in our competition for your attention, we tend toward the extreme so that now when such words are needed, they are less potent than they ought to be. We should have saved a special word or two in this century of ours for the exterminators of millions, for Hitler and Stalin and Mao and the most elusive and mysterious of them all, the only one still alive, the man you will meet tonight, Pol Pot. He worked at something of a disadvantage because his country, Cambodia, was so small to begin with, perhaps seven or eight million people when Pol Pot led his Khmer Rouge guerrillas out of the jungle to seize Cambodia's capital of Phnom Penh. Still, he did what he could. During the mid and late `70s, the Khmer Rouge began a killing rampage during which they shot and hacked, beat and tortured, worked and starved between one and two million of their follow Cambodians to death. Those were truly evil times and Pol Pot was the principal architect of that evil. He needed help, of course, and he got it. Some were more enthusiastic than others, but Cambodia remains a country teeming with killers, their accomplices and their accessories. When word came, then, just a few weeks ago, in early June, that Pol Pot had been arrested by some of his former comrades in the Khmer Rouge, reaction was mixed. There was widespread skepticism that the event had happened, even some suggestion that Pol Pot himself might have staged it. But if it was true, then surely there should be a trial, an international war crimes tribunal in which Pol Pot could testify as to what he had done and why and with whose help. That last point bothers a lot of people. Pol Pot had a great deal of assistance and his accomplices are not eager for his testimony. But there was a trial of sorts and tonight you will see it. (voice-over) Such as it was, the trial was held under a shed in the Anlong Veng region of Cambodia in the northern part of the country last Friday. It is not a place for westerners to visit uninvited. DAVID McKAIGE, Asiaworks Cameraman: As far as I know, no other westerners have been there before and gotten out alive. Some westerners have been captured in the past by the Khmer Rouge in that area and we have reason to believe they've all been killed. TED KOPPEL: (voice-over) So these are the Khmer Rouge you find yourself thinking, women and children, a few scattered men in uniform, gathered for what looks a lot more like a village meeting than the trial of a genocidal killer. Nor, if the truth be told, does the crowd seem particularly conscious of participating in an historic event. They have the look of people conditioning by hundreds of political indoctrination sessions. (Clip from trial) TED KOPPEL: (voice-over) The man at the microphone issues a denunciation and they chant "Crush! Crush! Crush!" followed by the regimented clapping of hands. Thirty years ago, we saw millions of Chinese during the Cultural Revolution participate in similar robotic demonstrations. Nor is this in any sense what we in the west would recognize as a trial. Some of the indictments refer only obliquely to Pol Pot himself. But the onlookers know what is expected. The administrative head of the region complains that Khmer Rouge territory keeps diminishing, getting smaller and smaller and the crowd chimes in on cue, "Crush, Crush the Pol Potists!" they chant. The reporter from whom we acquired this video, the man invited by the Khmer Rouge to witness the event, is Nate Thayer, who writes for "The Far Eastern Economic Review." (interviewing) When you were first brought to the scene and you first spotted Pol Pot, just take me through what was happening in your head at that moment? NATE THAYER, "Far Eastern Economic Review" :I was shocked. In fact, I was sitting as far away, standing as far away as I am from you and I couldn't believe it. I had to talk even closer and then I had to turn around and leave and come back and at the point we arrived, the show trial began and it was an extremely surreal historic moment. TED KOPPEL: (voice-over) Sitting on a chair, not part of the crowd but not removed from them either, is a white- haired old man who seems vaguely disinterested in the proceedings, alert, but not expected to play an active role. This grandfatherly figure is Pol Pot, who ordered policies that led to the deaths of more than a million Cambodians back in the 1970s. The microphone has been taken over by the new chief of staff of the Khmer Rouge military. The men he has replaced, three generals who remained loyal to Pol Pot, are also seated, but they are handcuffed. Although this video was shot only three days ago, these men may already be dead. The new military head is cataloging the violence that broke out only weeks ago after Pol Pot ordered the murder of his own defense minister, Son Sen, and his entire family. Women were raped. Adults and old people, even children, were killed, four or five every night. The catalog of horrors is a small scale version of the mass killings in the `70s. The military chief could be reading from an agricultural report. "Trucks were ordered to roll over them, breaking their arms and legs. Gasoline was poured on them and they were set on fire." The three handcuffed generals looked impassive, but their fidgeting fingers give them away. Pol Pot gives no sign of listening, but his former followers are announcing the end of everything he has tried to created over the past 35 years. "We have sacrificed everything for the movement," says the military chief, "but in the end, we are killing one another. Why?" The political judgment is about to be rendered. He is about to deliver the reason for this show trial, the reason that a reporter and a cameraman have been invited to bear witness. "From now on," he said, "international opinion cannot accuse our resistance movement of being something it is not." There is no Pol Pot. And so the message cannot be missed, he spells it out again, even more explicitly. As Pol Pot sits resting on his cane, his movement is dissolving in front of him. "The world should understand," says the new defense chief, "that we are not Khmer Rouge. We are not followers of Pol Pot." (Commercial Break) TED KOPPEL: (voice-over) He is 72, suffers from bouts of malaria, has high blood pressure and a weak heart. Still, his record of survival and cunning is such that Pol Pot's rivals consider him quite capable of staging this trial himself. For two hours last Friday, Pol Pot was bombarded with words, but he did not appear to have been physically mistreated in any way. "I saw it with my own eyes," says this man, "the Pol Pot regime is the real killing regime. We no longer want any bloodshed." And from another man, "We've all undergone tough lives full of massacres. Hundreds of thousands of people were injured and killed. Why? (interviewing) It's a morality play. It's a commercial message, in a sense." NATE THAYER: It was also a public humiliation, a public denunciation and this is a part of the psychology of not just communism, but also of Cambodian political culture. It wasn't just a sentencing. It was to denounce and humiliate those that they accused themselves, Pol Pot's top loyalists, of unspeakable crimes against his own people. TED KOPPEL: (voice-over) The sentence, when it came, was strikingly mild. These are criminal acts, he says, and the betrayal by Pol Pot and his clique of people, armed forces and cadre. In conclusion, we have all decided to condemn and sentence his clique to life imprisonment. As Pol Pot is led away, he does, for the first time, seem like a feeble old man. But is he, indeed, the man we believe him to be? The two western journalists on the scene, both old hands in this region, were convinced, as was cameraman Klaus Bracht (ph), who shot the last interview with Pol Pot in 1979. KLAUS BRACHT: I'm sure that, you know, I had a black and white photograph and I compared the video to that photograph. The shape of the nose the same, the shape of the ear, the eyes. I have no doubt. TED KOPPEL: (voice-over) What about the relatively mild sentence, though? This remains, after all, one of the worst killers of our time. Nate Thayer was told that there was sharp disagreement among those who sentenced Pol Pot. NATE THAYER: They said very clearly that many of the top leadership wanted to execute Pol Pot and the other three under detention and it was a debate within the top leadership that had been taken before, a decision that had been taken before this trial that we're seeing today to not execute him but to denounce him and to sentence him to basically life under house arrest, under detention, a life that I believe is, in fact, a very short one given my impression of the state of his very precarious health. TED KOPPEL: (voice-over) The world has been waiting 18 years to see this man again, to see him arrested, to see him brought to justice. Nate Thayer has invested an enormous amount of energy in tracking down Pol Pot. NATE THAYER: I witnessed history. I did. TED KOPPEL: You're emotional about it? NATE THAYER: I am. (Commercial Break) TED KOPPEL: In 1978, two American journalists, Dick Dudman (ph), of the "St. Louis Post Dispatch," and Elizabeth Becker, of " The Washington Post," accepted an invitation from the Khmer Rouge to tour Cambodia. After two weeks and 1,000 miles, they were granted an interview with Pol Pot. We asked the two of them, Dick Dudman, who's now retired, and Elizabeth Becker, who's now the deputy Washington editor of the"New York Times" to screen and comment on the material we've shown you. ELIZABETH BECKER, "New York Times":That's, that is Pol Pot. He has a lot more age spots. His skin has collapsed under his neck, but that's exactly the same face. I thought there would be some question but, from the initial reports I read, but there' s no doubt whatsoever. I was surprised that he looked as well as he did, quite frankly. He had a couple of the features, the combing back of the hair, the small minute use of the hands. A defeated man, but that's Pol Pot, no question. DICK DUDMAN, "St. Louis Post Dispatch" :What a crazy trial it was. I was looking for a cheerleader who told those people when to clap and when to shout. It was so obviously orchestrated. Another question that came to my mind while I was watching it is was who are these people who were watching the trial? How many of them participated in this orgy of killing in that country? One man can't kill a million people. ELIZABETH BECKER: Can I just say that I have no doubt that he's responsible and that I have no doubt that he's a monster and going through the Tusuling (ph) archives and all the works that scholars and journalists have done for the last two decades, there is no doubt that that man is chiefly responsible for what's called the auto genocide. What I thought was interesting was to see him now at the end of his political life, having been privileged to see him at the pinnacle and now see him at the end, that what the audience was so young, to see this man with gray hair, terribly aged with all these, his, the people who are denouncing him are generations younger. He has killed off his contemporaries. And even the three generals, I was surprised, the three generals are decades younger than him. It's a show trial in the sense that this was the way to make a political pronouncement and the announcement is Pol Pot has been denounced and declared no longer the leader of this political movement. DICK DUDMAN: He was in the jungle totally secreted. He wasn't like any other revolutionary leader. They usually build themselves up, Castro and the rest. ELIZABETH BECKER: I cannot exaggerate what a secretive man he was. It's not, it's indicative that we were the only two journalists to see him, that his own people didn't see him. Very few Cambodians, you can go to Cambodia today and it's very hard to find someone who actually saw Pol Pot. I thought he would commit suicide, quite frankly, and I think the only reason probably that he has allowed himself to be captured is because he probably is too old to flee and he is -- he no longer is of use to anyone. You know, if one is looking for the scheme behind the scheme behind the scheme, you know, the Chinese puzzles, it's more who is going to get out of being tried, the fear that if Pol Pot were to be brought to justice, other people would be implicated and I think that's the end game right now, how to avoid, if you're a person of some rank, how do you avoid being pulled in with Pol Pot and that's what makes me the angriest is that, you know, it's obvious this Pol Pot should be in an international trial. He shouldn't be in the shack, in the shed in the jungle and the, you know, I wish the democratic process were working better and that Hun Sen had not made his power grab. But it's amazing that they are pulling out of it and it is a different country. DICK DUDMAN: I agree it's a different country. They're in a bad patch right now, though, that they've got to get through. There's a streak of nasty, nasty cruelty that's still going on and we can hope that it's going to be over soon, but there's that struggle for control is in progress right now. ELIZABETH BECKER: Americans need to care about Pol Pot because he ranks as not -- as among a dozen or so of the worst tyrants of the century. His power grew out of the Indochina wars that our country took part in. He took a small country of about seven million people and he decided that he would make it perfect and from the first day of his victory in 1975 he threw the country upside down. He threw everyone out of the cities. He decided that you take the most romantic notions and turn them into a maniac's nightmare and that's what he did, that everyone would be out of the cities, that everything that people worry about modernity was going to be gotten rid of, no money, no marketplace and he got rid of all sort of like there was no spontaneity, no passion. It was one large labor camp. And so it's, if you want to know about the craziness of the worst of those idealistic dreams, of the ability of a country to be destroyed in this, in a few years, four or five years and done so by cutting people off from each other and cutting the whole country off from the world, he was, in some ways, the worst expression of communism. He took it to the worst degrees. And if you're going to understand the 20th century, the ideological wars of communism versus capitalism, how one fed the other, of, if you're going to understand the sense we have of Asia, of the cruelty that came out of that communism and the hopes now of a different Asia, you should understand Pol Pot. TED KOPPEL: Retired newsman Dick Dudman and "New York Times" editor Elizabeth Becker. I'll have a closing comment in a moment. (Commercial Break) TED KOPPEL: It' s not enough, this shadow play in the jungle, this farce of a trial. A million, perhaps as many as two million people died because of that mild looking maniac. If the Cambodian nation had been offered the chance to put Pol Pot on trial, if an independent court had chosen to exercise mercy, that would have been a fine expression of justice. But the fate of Pol Pot is actually incidental to what a real trial would have accomplished. We've seen Pol Pot now, but we should have heard from him. Well over half the population of Cambodia today is under the age of 25. They are too young to remember and too much of the older population was wiped out. Some answers should have been provided. And now it appears that Pol Pot will never even be asked. Tomorrow, I'll be reporting from the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. That's our report for tonight. I'm Ted Koppel in Bangkok. For all of us here at ABC News, good night.

Transcribed by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. under license from American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information please contact ABC's Office of the General Counsel.

Scoop of a lifetime: a Pol Pot interview

Scoop of a lifetime: a Pol Pot interview

The Independent (London, England)

July 28, 1997 | Matthew Chance Bangkok

The mystery surrounding the whereabouts of Pol Pot may finally be over. An American journalist yesterday announced he had travelled to the Khmer Rouge's remote stronghold in northern Cambodia and had met - and filmed - Pol Pot himself, a figure not glimpsed by the outside world for past 18 years.

If his story is true, Nate Thayer is the first reporter to have met Cambodia's murderous former dictator since a Japanese television crew in 1979. That was shortly after the collapse of his genocidal regime in which about two million Cambodians were killed.

"I did see Pol Pot in Anlong Veng," said Mr Thayer, of the Far Eastern Economic Review. But that was all he would divulge. The world will have to wait for details of the thoughts, health and plans of one of this century's most hated figures. Now, writing in his Bangkok hotel room and refusing to take calls, Mr Thayer is proving elusive. A statement from Dow Jones and Co, which owns the Review, said the story will be published in the next edition of the magazine on Thursday. But television pictures of the historic encounter, shot by an accompanying cameraman, David McKaige, could be seen before then, as soon as deals with networks are finalised. The decision to allow a reporter to walk out of Anlong Veng alive is in itself astonishing; the Khmer Rouge were infamous for kidnapping and eliminating Westerners who strayed into their territory. It may be a sign that the movement is now willing to appease international curiosity, and even to hand over Pol Pot for trial for genocide, in exchange for a chance to return to mainstream politics. For Mr Thayer, a Cambodia specialist, it was "the end of a long journey, full of dangers", he told friends. Voja Miladinovic, a photographer who has been stalking Pol Pot for 14 years, said: "Apart from the almost immediate recognition . . . he's also about to get very rich. He stands certain to make hundreds of thousands of pounds, perhaps even millions."

KHMER ROUGE GIVE POL POT LIFE IN PRISON

KHMER ROUGE GIVE POL POT LIFE IN PRISON

The Columbian (Vancouver, WA)

July 28, 1997 | KER MUNTHIT

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The Khmer Rouge leader whose reign of terror left nearly two million Cambodians dead sat silently, nearly in tears while his former comrades denounced him during a "show trial," the first Western journalist to see Pol Pot in 18 years said today.

The white-haired, 69-year-old leader, wearing baggy black trousers, a gray shirt and blue scarf, sat on a makeshift stage while his comrades shouted at him, according to Nate Thayer, a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review.

For the man who ruled Cambodia with a brutal and absolute hand from 1975-79, the shock of being turned on by his own men appeared to be too much. After the 80-minute outdoor trial -- and sentence of life in prison -- Thayer said Pol Pot needed to be assisted by men gripping his arms. "The events of his purge and trial were so traumatic that I thought he might die during the process," Thayer said in a press release received today in Bangkok. "You could see the anguish on his face as he was denounced by his former loyalists. He was close to tears." Pol Pot and three top commanders were put through a "classic, 1960s Cultural Revolution-style show trial" Friday in the guerrilla stronghold of Anlong Veng, Thayer said. Thayer, a former reporter for The Associated Press, was permitted to enter Anlong Veng, about 200 miles northwest of Phnom Penh, on Friday. There, he said, he saw Pol Pot, who is seriously ill and from time to time had been rumored to have died. Cambodian leader Hun Sen today called the reported trial "a political game by the Khmer Rouge." "Pol Pot is in Anlong Veng and is leading the forces," Hun Sen told reporters in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. Thayer, however, said a crowd of 500 Khmer Rouge guerillas and civilians -- many of whom were missing an arm, leg or an eye from Cambodia's decades-long civil war -- chanted "Crush, crush, crush, Pol Pot and his clique." Seven Khmer Rouge leaders testified that Pol Pot, whose real name is Saloth Sar, and his men were guilty of murders, destroying national reconciliation and stealing money from the party. They said the "drunk and corrupt" commanders had raped the wives of their comrades. The Khmer Rouge said, however, he would not be turned over to international courts. Most of Pol Pot's remaining Khmer Rouge guerillas turned against him in June after he murdered his defense minister Son Sen and 10 members of Son Sen's family. Pol Pot executed Son Sen for allegedly betraying him during peace negotiations the Khmer Rouge was holding with First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh, who was deposed July 5 in a coup by his co-premier, Hun Sen. Pol Pot fled through the jungles, carried on a stretcher, until he was captured by his former men. Most of the information about the demise of Pol Pot came from Cambodian government sources, and many observers doubted whether the reports were credible. "This is not a hoax, this is not a ruse. Pol Pot is finished," Thayer said. "The Khmer Rouge as we have known them no longer exist." The Khmer Rouge swept to power in April 1975, and to implement their radical Maoist version of communism immediately emptied out cities, and turned the country into a massive agricultural labor camp. As many as 2 million Cambodians perished as they brutally purged all opposition. Many died from overwork, starvation and disease before a Vietnamese invasion ousted the Khmer Rouge in early January 1979. The Khmer Rouge fled to the border near Thailand where they continued to wage a guerilla war until the movement began to fragment as guerrillas began defecting to the government in 1996.

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Holly Harris will spin her blues on 'BOS

 

Holly Harris will spin her blues on 'BOS

The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)

January 8, 1993 | Susan Bickelhaupt, Globe Staff

Holly Harris is an ambassador for the blues in Boston, whether she's listening to music at a blues club, emceeing a blues festival or spinning blues tunes on the radio.

Starting this weekend, Harris has a new home at WBOS-FM (92.9), where she'll host Blues on Sunday at 10 p.m. For the past decade, Harris has mostly found a nitch on noncommercial radio, hosting a Sunday morning show on WMFO-FM (91.5) and subbing for Mai Cramer on WGBH-FM (89.7). Last year she signed with WCGY-FM, doing "Rockin' Blues" on Sunday night.

Harris, from upstate New York, said she's not that musical herself, although she's been surrounded by it. Her father has a doctorate of music from Columbia University, and his father was Al Jolson's No. 1 trumpeter.

Her jolt for the blues came when she was 16 and heard B. B. King. "It just hit me as the most beautiful music I'd ever heard," Harris recalls.

She ended up in Boston at Suffolk University in the early '70s, and listened to all the radio shows in town. WMFO's Sunday Morning Blues caught her ear, and when host Nate Thayer asked her to fill in when he left to travel, she gladly did. It's been her show since 1982, and she plans to keep doing it.

Harris, a school counselor during the week, was content with the three-hour show on Sunday (11 a.m.-2 p.m.), but when WCGY-FM (95.3) approached her last spring about doing a blues show on the rock station, Harris was receptive.

"I thought a commercial station would be a great forum, and it is," she said. "I think the blues is finally coming into some respect it always deserved."

Harris' latest gig will be hosting a show that has been on WBOS for a year and a half. Up to now it has had rotating hosts, Bill Smith and David O'Leary, both of whom have full-time jobs at the station.

She said she probably won't make the show as rock-based and consistently uptempo as the one at WCGY, and will play a variety of tempos. She also wants to take listener requests.

"I'm really big on local features, too, and want to spotlight one local group every week," Harris said.

No stranger to the Boston blues scene, Harris frequently emcees shows at clubs, and served as a consultant for the new House of Blues. Harris and Rick Russell founded the Blues Society in 1988.

Harris is a fan of Cramer's show on WGBH on Friday and Saturday nights, but is encouraged that commercial stations are starting to take the nod. WBCN-FM (104.1) now has a Sunday morning blues show.

Steve Becker, the program director at WCGY, said he intends to continue with the program and is already on the lookout for a new host.

Khmer Rouge leader returns, is beaten by Cambodian mob

Khmer Rouge leader returns, is beaten by Cambodian mob

Chicago Sun-Times

November 27, 1991 | Nate Thayer

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia An angry mob screaming "Dog!" and "Murderer!" today surged past police and beat a top leader of the Khmer Rouge, the Communist guerrilla group whose reign of terror in the 1970s left hundreds of thousands dead.

The government ordered in armored personnel carriers to evacuate Khieu Samphan, the right-hand man to top Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, as the crowd prepared to lynch him. Khieu Samphan and Son Sen, another Khmer Rouge leader, and their aides were flown back to Bangkok, Thailand.

Bleeding from the head and chest, Khieu Samphan cowered in a bedroom as security officers prevented him from being strung up by a wire tied to a ceiling fan.

"Please help me, please don't leave me," he pleaded, asking three foreign photographers to say in the room.

Only hours earlier, Khieu Samphan ended his exile and returned to Phnom Penh to take part in a UN-backed plan to end 13 years of civil war between the Khmer Rouge, its two non-Communist guerrilla allies and the government Vietnam installed after invading Cambodia in 1978.

The attack delayed what would have been the first meeting of a national reconciliation council and appeared to jeopardize a UN-brokered peace accord signed last month in Paris by all four warring factions.

The government, in a statement carried by its official news agency, said it remained fully committed to the peace pact. Under the accord, a Supreme National Council led by Prince Norodom Sihanouk would help pave the way for elections in 1993.

More than 10,000 angry demonstrators converged on the villa housing the Khmer Rouge delegation today after the 60-year-old Khieu Samphan's return. Khieu Samphan was one of the prime architects of the Khmer Rouge's murderous regime, which killed hundreds of thousands of people as the group tried to turn the country into a vast rural commune. Khieu Samphan is now the group's president.

After storming and ransacking the villa, the mob broke into the second-story room where Khieu Samphan was hiding. Reporters saw him huddled against a wall, wearing a steel helmet and bleeding profusely. He apparently had been struck by a rock.

As thousands of protesters ringed the house, six government armored personnel carriers moved into position outside. One backed into the front entranceway and Khieu Samphan, with several other members of his delegation, clambered onto the back of the vehicle.

MIA-POW ISSUE SLOWS U.S.- VIETNAM ACCORD

MIA-POW ISSUE SLOWS U.S.- VIETNAM ACCORD

Albany Times Union (Albany, NY)

July 29, 1991

Byline: Nate Thayer Associated Press

The United States will not establish diplomatic ties with Vietnam until the issue of Americans missing there is resolved and a Cambodian peace accord is signed, a U.S. official said Sunday.

The official, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Solomon, is in Bangkok for discussions with Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister Le Mai on the diplomatic issue. The two are to meet on Tuesday.

Vietnamese officials are expected to argue that recent progress toward a peace settlement in Cambodia makes this issue no longer relevant to the question of U.S.-Vietnamese relations.

But Solomon, in an interview, said Washington would not change its long-held position.

"The three primary issues for normalization are a solution to the Cambodian problem, the MIA-POW issue and the people still held in re-education camps in Vietnam," he said. MIA-POW refers to servicemen in the Vietnam War who are listed as missing in action and prisoners of war.

The recent release of a grainy photo that purportedly shows Americans still held captive in Indochina has renewed the debate on 2,274 Americans unaccounted for from the wars in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Meanwhile Sunday, Senate Republican leader Bob Dole urged President Bush to appoint a presidential commission to investigate whether the three missing Americans are still alive in Southeast Asia.

Appearing on NBC-TV's "Meet the Press" in Washington, D.C., Dole was asked about a statement Friday by National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft that he is convinced no Americans missing from the Vietnam conflict are still living.

"I don't know, and I don't think Brent Scowcroft knows," Dole said. "I think what we should do, and what I would like to see happen this week, is for the President to say, 'I'm going to have a presidential commission. We are going to take another look.'"

"Let's raise this to the highest level to see if we can't address it," the Kansas senator said. "That might in effect help some of the families who are distressed."

In addition, Dole said, "We might be able to weed out some of these people who, I think, have got something pretty good going here. They indicate to families that they can find their sons or husbands. A lot of money is being spent."

American officials say they have serious doubts about the authenticity of the photo, but a vocal lobby in the United States contends that the Vietnamese continue to hold American prisoners.

Kenneth Quinn, a deputy assistant secretary of state, traveled to Vietnam and Laos last week to investigate the photo.

The third issue on the American agenda is the imprisonment of former officials of the pro-American government in re-education camps. Washington has long criticized this, but most of the former officials reportedly have been released.

A senior U.S. government official familiar with Quinn's talks in Hanoi said the Vietnamese were worried that the purported MIA photo would damage efforts to normalize relations.

Now the Vietnamese are going out of their way to open up as never before and this could make it easier to resolve the MIA issue, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Before the photo was released, analysts said Vietnamese-U.S. relations were improving, and hopes were high for peace in Cambodia and progress on the MIA issue.

The United States and Vietnam now are conducting their 14th joint search for Americans missing in Vietnam. On Thursday the United States is to open an MIA liaison office in Hanoi.

REPLACEMENT OF RIDE CONTRACTOR DEMANDED: The Boston Globe

REPLACEMENT OF RIDE CONTRACTOR DEMANDED

The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)

September 30, 1988 | Maria Alvarez, Contributing Reporter and Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff

Three days after a Newton woman died in a crash involving a Ride taxi, nearly 150 people with disabilities yesterday demanded again that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority replace the contractor that runs the troubled door-to-door van service for disabled people.

"The crisis of the last two months has reached such proportion that the disabled community of Boston is saying enough is enough," said Nate Thayer, transportation coordinator for the state Office of Handicapped Affairs.

Also yesterday, the MBTA released statistics from a recent survey showing that 39 percent of Ride users are "less satisfied" with the Ride now than they were a year ago. But MBTA officials said the survey also indicated that service is improving.

The Ride has been a target of criticism since a Virginia firm, Transportation Management System Inc., took over the contract to run it in June. Several riders have been injured in crashes and falls attributed to inexperienced drivers, and the firm was fined $57,000 for poor service.

On Monday afternoon, 80-year-old Ride subscriber Bertha Kowalsky of Newton died after the Veteran's Taxi in which she was riding accelerated out of control and crashed in Brookline. Veteran's Taxi, a Newton company, is a TMSI subcontractor.

At a packed meeting at the state Transportation Building yesterday, almost 150 Ride users unanimously voted to demand that the T place the Ride in receivership and run it until a new contractor is chosen.

"This is by far the biggest meeting and the biggest vote," Thayer said.

However, Anne Bickford, MBTA deputy director of operations, said the fatal accident will not result in any immediate action. "We are not prepared to take any action that will affect the rest of the riders," she said.

T officials said no penalties will be imposed on the taxi service or TMSI because of the accident.

"Veteran's Taxi has done a good job. This is an isolated incident," said Timothy F. Gens, the T's director of development and public affairs.

Police investigating the accident said the taxi driver, Robert Moriarty, 26, who was released from the hospital Tuesday after treatment of injuries, may have had a seizure.

In the survey of 400 Ride users, conducted by Atlantic Research Co., 19 percent said they are more satisfied with the service since TMSI took it over, 21 percent said they were equally satisfied, and 22 percent said they were undecided.

However, another survey question asked users to rate their experience with the Ride, "taking everything into consideration," and 60 percent of the 400 riders called it somewhat or very satisfactory.

"Those aren't terrific numbers," said Michael Meuhe, a member of the T access advisory committee. "I'm discouraged by those numbers. It's mediocre at best."

Meuhe said he believes the results reflect the "unpredictability and wildly varying experience" of people who use the Ride.

Gens said the survey "does not suggest there are no problems" but does provide evidence of what he called continuing improvements in the service.

The survey found, for example, that 90 percent said drivers are generally or always courteous, 77 percent expressed satisfaction with the reservation system, and 90 percent said drivers usually or always drive safely.

Gens, acknowledging "persistent start-up problems" since TMSI took over, said it would be a mistake to switch again.

"Given the imposing problems that riders would encounter with any transition, it really is incumbent on us to make the service work," Gens said.

A follow-up survey involving only those who expressed negative opinions in the initial survey showed that 49 percent are growing increasingly dissatisfied. None said they are more satisfied about drivers or more satisfied that drivers are improving safety.

HANDICAPPED CRITICIZE MBTA ON VAN SERVICE FREQUENT DELAYS, FAULTY EQUIPMENT CITED

HANDICAPPED CRITICIZE MBTA ON VAN SERVICE FREQUENT DELAYS, FAULTY EQUIPMENT CITED

The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)

September 16, 1988

By Joe Ferson

A group of handicapped people told a meeting of the MBTA's access advisory committee yesterday that the door-to-door service known as The Ride is unreliable and dangerous.

The Ride is operated by Transportation Management System Inc. under contract from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

Promises to improve the service have not been met, one participant said. "They're making an effort, there's no question on that, but it's not enough," Ralph Steele told the panel.

Steele mentioned reports of injuries due to incompetence, and added, "Are they waiting for someone to die before they take action?"

Timothy Gens, a spokesman for the MBTA, said the service provided by Transportation Management has improved since July 1, when the Virginia company took over the service from THEM Inc. of Cambridge.

"There has been significant improvement since the transitional period, when one would expect a certain amount of confusion," Gens said.

But according to Nate Thayer, transportation director for the state Office of Handicapped Affairs, criticism has been pouring in since Transportation Management took over operation of The Ride.

"There's a serious crisis facing the 9,000 handicapped individuals who depend on The Ride -- and right now, because right now it's not working," he said.

Thayer said his office has received 1,000 complaints concerning The Ride since July 1.

Thayer noted there was "not one complaint regarding service" during the time THEM Inc., a nonprofit agency, ran the service.

"It's like a leaking ship with 70 holes in it," Thayer said of Transportation Management. "The only solution is to get a new ship, a new contractor for The Ride."

Carolyn Stack said she came to the meeting, which was attended by about 25 handicapped people, to present the case of her 80-year-old father, Arthur Conway.

"My father goes to dialysis three times a week, and we've gotten calls from hospital workers asking us to come pick him up because The Ride didn't show up," she said.

Thayer said one woman was late for a dialysis treatment and was told by her doctor upon arriving that she was in serious risk of a stroke because of the delay.

"TMSI was warned specifically about this woman," Thayer said. "Either they don't know what they're doing or they don't care."

Thomas McKenne, who works at Ferguson Industries, told the committee: "The trouble with all these meetings is, they always pass the buck -- back and forth."

McKenne said The Ride drivers are polite and try to do their job, but that there is a lack of communication from management. He said some vans have faulty lift equipment, leaving the drivers hard-pressed to do their job.

Because of delays in The Ride, McKenne added, he's been arriving late for work by an hour or more for the last three weeks.

McKenne said if delays continue, he could be docked the hour's pay, adding that he's frustrated by the company's lack of sensitivity.

"A lot of these people are making money off the handicapped," he said. "But they don't give a damn so long as they collect their big fat salaries."

McKenne said that on a recent day he was picked up late by a van that had a broken gas gauge, no brake lights and no arm rest on his seat.

"Someone could fall out of their seat real easy," he pointed out.

Lorraine Greiff, assistant director of public affairs for the Office of Handicapped Affairs, said many handicapped people who use The Ride live at the whim of the company's scheduling.

"You make plans to go somewhere and then you discover at the last minute you're not going anywhere," she said.