The U.S. did indeed support Pol Pot. I am beginning to believe there is so much MISinformation among our more conservative posters that perhaps if you knew history, you might change your political affiliation? Well, I can only hope.
I am off to lunch now, but I will post one article (full of footnotes (reliable references). If you would like more, the Internet is just FULL of them. Please let me know.
The Khmer Rouge diligently documented its victims such as these,
who were presumably executed soon after they were photographed.
The Long Secret Alliance:
Uncle Sam and Pol Pot
by John Pilger
The US not only helped create conditions rhat brought Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge to power
in 1975, but actively supported the genocidal force, politically and financially. By January
1980, the US was secretly funding Pol Pots exiled forces on the Thai border. The extent of this
support - $85 million from 1980 to 1986 - was revealed six years later in correspondence between
congressional lawyer Jonathan Winer, then counsel to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, and the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. Winer said the information had
come from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). When copies of his letter were circulated, the
John Pilger, based in London, has won numero~ awards for his reporting from Indochina His 1979 TV documentary, Year Zero: The Silent
Death of Cumbodia, is credited with alerting much of the world to the horrors of the Pol Pot regime and the US bombing that preceded it.
No: 62
Reagan admmistration was furious Then land and to ensure that Khmer Rouge bases
wIthout adequately explaining why, Winer were fed. CVorkmg through “Task Force
repudiated the statistics, while not disput- 80” of the Thai .km~; which had liaison ofing
that they had come from the CRS. In ficers with the Khmer Rouge, the Amena
second letter ro Noam Chomsky, how- cans ensured a constant flow of UN supofficer
of a crandestine Special Forces goup
code-named “Daniel Boone,” Lvhlch KIS responsible
for the reconnaissance of the US
bombmg of Cambodia.> By 1980. Co1
Eiland was running KEG out of the US
ever, Winer repeated the original charge,
which, he confirmed to me, was “absolureiy
c0rrect.“1
plies, Two US relief aid workers, Linda
Mason and Roger Brown, later wrote, “The
embassy in
scribed as a
Washingron also backed
the Khmer Rouge through the
United Nations, which pro-
Lided Pol Pots vehicle of return.
Although the Khmer
Rouge government ceased to
exist in January 1979, when
the Vietnamese army drove it
out, its representatives continued
to occupy Cambodia’s
UN seat. Their right to do so
~vas defended and promoted
by Washington as an extension
of the Cold War, as a
mechanism for US revenge
on Vietnam, and as part of its
new alliance with China (Pol
Pot’s principal underwriter
and Vietnam’s ancient foe).
In 1981, President Carter’s
national security adviser,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, said, “I
encouraged the Chinese to
Khmer Rouge instruments of torture found at Tuol Sleng school.
Bangkok, where it was de-
“humanitarian” organization
Responsible for interpreting
satellite surveillance photos of
Cambodia, Eiland became a
valued source for some of
Bangkok’s resident CVestern
press corps, who referred to
him in their reports as a
“Western analyst.” Eiland’s
“humanitarian” duties led to
his appointment as Defense
Intelligence Agency (DI.4)
chief in charge of the Southeast
Asia Region, one of the
most important positions in
US espionage.
In November 1980, the
just elected Reagan admmistration
and the Khmer Rouge
made direct contact when Dr.
Ray Cline, a former deput)
director of the CIA, secretly
visited a Khmer Rouge operational
headquarters inside
Cambodia. Cline was then a
support Pal Pot.” The US, he added,
winked publicly” as China sent arms to
the Khmer Rouge through Thailand.z
US Government insisted that the Khmer
Rouge be fed the US preferred that the
Khmer Rouge operation benefit from the
With 50 CIA agents running
Washington’s Cambodia
operation from Thailand, the
dividing line between the
international relief operation
and the US war blurred.
credibility of an intemationally
known relief operation.“3
In 1980, under US pressure,
the World Food Program
handed over food worth $12
million to the Thai army to
pass on to the Khmer Rouge.
According to former Assistant
Secretary of State Richard
Holbrooke, “20,000 to 40,000
Pol Pot guerrillas benefited.‘14
This aid helped restore the
Khmer Rouge to a fighting
force, based in Thailand, from
which it destabilized Camboforeign
policy adviser on President-elect
Reagan’s transitional team. Within a year,
according to Washington sources, 50 CIA
agents were running Washington’s Cambodia
operation from Thailand. The dividing
line between the international relief operation
and the US war became more and
more confused. For example, a Defense Intelligence
Agency colonel was appointed
“security liaison officer” between the
United Nations Border Relief Operation
(UNBRO) and the Displaced Persons Protection
Unit (DPPU). In Washington, sources
revealed him as a link between the US government
and the Khmer Rouge.6
As a cover for its secret war against
Cambodia, Washington set up the Kampuchean
Emergency Group (KEG) in the US
embassy in Bangkok and on the Thai-Cambodian
border. KEG’s job was to “monitor”
the distribution of Western humanitarian
supplies sent to the refugee camps in Thai-
1. Letters from Jonathan Winer to Lany Chartienes, Vietnam
Veterans of America, citing Congressional Research
Service. Oct. 22,1%36. Letter from Winer to Noam Chomsb,
June 16. 1987. Telephone communication%ith author,
August 1989.
2. Elizabeth Becker, Men the U&r MS Over (New York
Simon and Schuster, lQ86), p. 440.
dia for more than a decade.
Although ostensibly a State Department
operation, KEG’s principals were intelligence
officers with long experience in
Indochina. In the early 1980s it was run by
Michael Eiland, whose career underscored
the continuity of American intervention in
Indochina. In 1969-70, he was operations
3. Linda Mason and Roger Brown, Rtie, Riualy and Poli-
112~ Managing Cambodian Relit# (South Bend, [N: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 135, 159.
4. Wtii Shawcms, The QuaMy of Metqy: Cmbmiiu,
Holocausl and hhiern Conscience (London: Andre
Deukch, 1%!4), pp. 289,345,395.
The UW as a Base
By 1981, a number of governments, including
US allies, became decidedly uneasy
about the charade of continued UN recognition
of Pol Pot as legitimate head of the
country. This discomfort was dramatically
demonstrated when a colleague of mine,
Nicholas Claxton, entered a bar at the UN
in New York with Thaoun Prasith, Pol Pot’s
representative. “Within minutes,” said
5.williamshawc~sideduno:Nizon,KicsingerundIhe
Dedbuetion QfCIrmbcdiu &ondonz Andre Deutsch, 1979).
6. The colonel’s role was %ade plain” at a meeting with
staffmembmsoftheSenateInte~~Commit&eeonFeb.
10,1990,accordingtoJohnPedler,~~atthemeeting
6 FALL 1997
Clayton, “the bar had emptied.”
Clearly; something had to be
done, In 1982, the US and China,
supported by Singapore, invented
the Coahtion of the
Democratic Government of
Kampuchea, which was, as Ben
Kiernan pointed out, neither a
coalition, nor democratic, nor a
government, nor in Kampuchea.’
Rather, it was what the CIA calls
“a master illusion,” Cambodia’s
former ruler, Prince Norodom
Sihanouk, was appointed its
head; otherwise little changed.
The Khmer Rouge dominated
the two “non-communist” members,
the Sihanoukists and the
Khmer People’s National Liberation
Front (KPNLF). From his office
at the UN, Pol Pot’s ambassador,
the urbane Thaoun
Prasith, continued to speak for
Cambodia. A close associate of
Pol Pot, he had in 1975 called
on Khmer expatriates to return
home, whereupon many of
them “disappeared.”
The United Nations was now
the instrument of Cambodia’s
punishment. In all its history, the
world body has withheld development
aid from only one Third
World country: Cambodra. Not
only did the UN - at US and
Chinese insistence - deny the government
in Phnom Penh a seat, but the major
international financial institutions barred
Cambodia from all international agreements
on trade and communications. Even
the World Health Organization refused to
aid the country At home, the US denied re-
Iigious groups export licenses for books
and toys for orphans. A law dating from the
First World War, the Trading with the Enemy
Act, was applied to Cambodia and, of course,
Vietnam. Not even Cuba and the Soviet
Union faced such a complete ban with no humanitarian
or cultural exceptions.
By 1987, KEG had been reincarnated as
the Kampuchea Working Group, run by
the same Col. Eiland of the Defense Intelligence
Agency The Working Group’s brief
was to provide battle plans, war materiel,
and satellite intelligence to the so-called
“non-communist” members of the “resistance
forces.” The non-communist fig leaf
allowed Congress, spurred on by an anti-
Vietnamese zealot, then-Rep, Stephen
Solarz (D-NY), to approve both -overt” and
7.InsideAsin, Feb.andJune1985.Kienxanisnowpmgram
director of Yale University5 Cambodian Genocide Program.
Khmer Rouge cadre in an undated photo.
“covert” aid estimated at $24 million to the
“resistance. * Until 1990, Congress accepted
Solar? specious argument that US
aid did not end up with or even help Pol
Pot and that the mass murderer’s US-supplied
allies “are not even in close proximity
with them [the Khmer Rougel.“s
of the US and Chinese position that the
Khmer Rouge be part of a settlement in
Cambodia. “It is journalists,” he said,
“who have made them into demons.“9
Weapons from West Germany, the US,
and Sweden were passed on directly by
Singapore or made under license by Chartered
Industries, which is
owned by the Singapore gov-
The “trial” of Pol Pot was a
wonderful Khmer Rouge
ernment. These same weapons
were captured from the
Khmer Rouge. The Singapore
connection allowed the Bush
theater-cum-media-event, administration to continue its
secret aid to the “resistance.’
but was otherwise worthless. ;;;et~y$p~e;;;;;;
gress in 1989 banrung even
indirect “lethal aid” ;o Pol
Pot. lo In August 1990, a former member of
the US Spe&l Forces disclosed that he had
been ordered to destroy records that
showed US munitions in Thailand going to
the Khmer Rouge. The records, he said, implicated
the National Security Council, the
9. BBC Shortwave Broadcast Summary, 199%
10. Cambndia: The B&n& Central Television, 1990.
Military links
While Washington paid the bills and the
Thai army provided logistics support,
Singapore, as middleman, was the main
conduit for Western arms. Former Prime
Minister Lee Kuan Yew was a major backer
8. New Yti Zmq May 14,19S9.
NUMBER 62 7
president's foreign policy advisory body.”
In 1982, when the US, Chinese, and
ASEAN governments contrived the “coalition”
that enabled Pol Pot to retain
Cambodia’s UN seat, the US set about
training and equipping the “non-communist”
factions in the “resistance” army.
These followers of Prince Sihanouk and
his former minister, Son Sann, leader of
the KPNLF, were mostly irregulars and
bandits. This resistance was nothing without
Pol Pot’s 25,000 well-tramed, armed,
and motivated guerrillas, whose leadership
was acknowledged by Prince
Sihanouk’s military commander, his son,
Norodom Ranariddh. “The Khmer
Rouge.” he said, are the "major attacking
forces“ whose victories were -celebrated
as our own." 12
The guerrillas’ tactic, like that of the
of that rum, American power would again
assert itself in Indochina.
The British - who have had special
military forces in Southeast Asia since
World War II --- also played a key role in
supporting Pol Pot‘s armed force. After the
“Irangate” arms-for-hostages scandal broke
in Washington in 1986, the Cambodian
training became an exclusively British operation.
“If Congress had found out that
Americans were mixed up in clandestine
training in Indochina, let alone with Pol
Pot,” a Ministry of Defense source told
Simon O’Dwyer-Russell of the London Sunday
Telegraph, “the balloon would have
gone right up, It was one of those classic
Thatcher-Reagan arrangements. It was put
to her that the SAS should take over the
Cambodia show, and she agreed.“13
Some of Cambodia’s refugees at a UN-run camp controlled by the KPNLF.
Contras in Nicaragua, was to terrorize the
countryside by setting up ambushes and
seeding minefields. In this way, the govemment
in Phnom Penh would be destabilized
and the Vietnamese trapped in an untenable
war: its own “Vietnam.” For the Americans
in Bangkok and Washington, the fate of
Cambodia was tied to a war they had technically
lost seven years earlier. “Bleeding the
Vietnamese white on the battlefields of
Cambodia” was an expression popular with
the US policy-making establishment. Destroying
the crippled Vietnamese economy
and, if necessary, overturning the govemment
in Hanoi, was the ultimate goal. Out
1 I. San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 12 and 15,199O.
12. In 1990 Ranariddh said that, in a proposed attack on
Pol Pot’s Washington
Impunity
Shortly after the start of the Gulf War in
January 1991 , President Bush described
Saddam Hussein as “Adolf Hitler revisited.“‘+
Bush’s call for “another Nuremberg”
to try Saddam under the Genocide Convention
was echoed in Congress and across
the Atlantic in London.
It was an ironic distraction. Since the
original Fuhrer expired in his bunker, the
Siem Reap, The Khmer Rouge will be the major attacking
forces,“Associated Press, Oct. 11,1990;Indochina Digest,
Oct. 6,199O. His separate Statement that Sihanoukists celebrated
Khmer Rouge victories as their own was reported
in theSunday Correspondent (London), Nov. 5,1989.
13. As told to O’Dwyer-Russell by a Defense Ministry
source, and relayed to the author.
US has maintained a network of dictators
with Hitlerian tendencies - from Suharto
in Indonesia to Mobutu in Zaire and a variety
of Latin American mobsters, many of
them graduates of the US Army School of
the Americas. But only one has been identified
by the world community as a genuine
“Adolf Hitler revisited.” whose crimes
are documented in a 1979 report of the UN
Human Rights Commission as “the worst
to have occurred anywhere in the world
since Nazism.“” He is, of course, Pol Pot.
who must surely wonder at his good fortune.
Not only was he cosseted, his troops
fed, supplied, and trained. his envoys afforded
all diplomatic privileges. but - unlike
Saddam Hussein - he was assured by
his patrons that he would never be brought
to justice for his crimes.
These assurances were given publicly in
1991 when the UN Human Rights Subcommission
dropped from its agenda a
draft resolution on Cambodia that referred
to “the atrocities reaching the level of genocide
committed in particular during the
period of Khmer Rouge rule.“!” No more.
the UN body decided, should member
governments seek to “detect, arrest, extradite
or bring to trial those who have been
responsible for crimes against humanity in
Cambodia.” No more are governments
called upon to “prevent the return to government
positions of those who were responsible
for genocidal actions during the
period 1975 to 1978.“”
Such guarantees of impunity for the
genocidists were also part of the UN ‘peace
plan” drafted by the permanent members
of the Security Council: that is, by the
United States. To avoid offending Pol Pots
principal backers, the Chinese, the plan
dropped all mention of “genocide,” replacing
it with the euphemism: “policies and
practices of the recent past.“18 On this,
Henry Kissinger, who played a leading part
in the mass bombing of Cambodia in the
early 1970s, was an important influence.!’
Western propaganda prior to the UN
“peace process” in Cambodia concentrated
14. The Guardian (London), Oct. 16,199l.
15. Cited by Penny Edwards, The Guardian, Nov. 4, 1989.
16.Agence France Presse report from Geneva, Aug.30.1990.
17. Ben Kiernan, The Cambodian Genocide: Issues and
Responses, p. 28.
18. Ibid, p. 29.
19. On June 5, 1990, The Times (London) reported Kissinger
a s s a y i n g , “ l w o u l d n o t b e s u r p r i s e d i f 1 0 y e a r s f r o m n ow,
China, even following its present course, will appear like a
freer country than Russia and a more prosperous one." In
July 1989, Kissnger, wha has strong business interests in
ChiqhadurgedEW-ttogivetheBeijingregime’mostfawed
nation” trading status, despite the bloody events in
Tiananmen Square only weeks earlier. He regards the Chineseleademhipasamoderatingin&
hmeinSou~kia
and supports China' "present course.”
8 FALL 1997
STEVE GRAWIIYPACT VISUALS
A display near Phnom Penh shows the remains of some 20,000 genocide victims from more than 200 burial sites.
on the strength of the Khmer Rouge, so as
to justify their inclusion. UN officials and
American and AustraIian diplomats talked
about 35-40.000 Khmer Rouge. “You will
understand,” they would say, “we can’t
leave a force as powerful as that outside the
tent.“ As soon as the Khmer Rouge had been
welcomed back to Phnom Penh and, in effect,
given a quarter to a third of the countryside,
they refused to take part in the elections.
The tune then changed. They were
now “finished,” chorused Western diplomats.
They were “weakened beyond hope.”
In the meantime, the Khmer Rouge was
establishing itself as the richest terrorist
group in history by selling off tracts of
Cambodia’s forests, as well as its precious
stones, to the Thai, whose government was
a signatory to the “peace accords.” No one
stopped them. They established four large
new bases inside Thatland, complete with a
field hospital. Thai soldiers guarded the road
that led to them. The “they are finished” line
remains in vogue to this day. Undoubtedly,
they have been numerically diminished by
defections and attrition, but their number
was always a false measure of their true
strength. It seems the State Department believes
they are far from finished. OnJuly 10
this year, the spokesperson Nicholas Bums
let slip that Khmer Rouge strength ran into
“thousands.“20
The real threat from the Khmer Rouge
comes from their enduring skill at deception
and infiltration. Before they seized power in
truth is that no one on the outside can really
say what these are, and that alone is a
measure of the organization’s strength and
resilience. The Cambodian leader Hun Sen,
for one, clearly retains a respect for the veracity
and menace of their ambitions.
The media relish Pol Pot
as a uniaue monster. That
Pol Pot’s patrons not only
cosseted him, fed, supplied,
and trained his troops, but
also guaranteed him impunity.
deserve proper recognition.
of,“,‘, ;S;;;;o;;~~;Ir;~;
is too easy and too dangerous.
It is his Faustian partners
in Washington, Beijing,
London. Banekok, Singapore,
and elsewhere who
verging aims in the region.
Eric Falt, the UN’s senior
1975, they had honeycombed Phnom spokesperson in Phnom Penh at the time
Penh. This process is almost certainly under of that manipulated organization’s “triway
again. As one resident of Phnom Penh umph” in Cambodia, told me with a
said recently, “They’re everywhere.” fixed smile, “The peace process was
The “trial” of Pol Pot this year was a aimed at allowing [the Khmer Rouge] to
wonderful piece of Khmer Rouge theater- gain respectability.“” Unfortunately,
cum-media-event, but was otherwise many ordinary Cambodian people share
worthless as an indication of the organiza- his cynicism. They deserve better. n
tion’s strength and immediate aims. The
20. State Department Brie&g transcript, US State De- 21. Interviewed by the author on tilm for Return to Year
partment, July 10,1997. Zero, Central Television, London, broadcast March 1992.
NUMBER 62 9 |
