Blowback - S5 Episode 6 - "Dream Warriors"

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

The short-lived reign of the Khmer Republic; the end of Nixon.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

By the fall of 1973, Henry Kissinger, not for the first time, threatened to quit. Nixon's omniscient and omnipotent National Security Advisor demanded that he be made Secretary of State. Dick could not afford for Henry to walk. Because while Henry Kissinger ascended, President Nixon's fortunes only dimmed. By now, some in Congress were just as scandalized by the ongoing, bombing of Cambodia as they were by the Watergate break-in. By the spring of 73, writes Carolyn Woods-Eisenberg, there was a strong impetus in Congress to call for a halt to military involvement in India China. And though Nixon initially resisted,

he did reach a deal with Congress. The bombing of Cambodia would cease by August 15th of that year. I announced the resignation of Secretary of State William Rogers. In factive, September the 3rd. In the end, Nixon gave Henry both jobs, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. As his successor, I shall nominate and send to the Senate for confirmation the name of Dr. Henry Kissinger. Dr. Henry Kiss. Dr. Henry Kiss. Dr. Henry, Dr. Henry, Dr. Henry, Dr. Henry, Dr. Henry, Dr. Henry, Dr. Henry, Dr. Speaker, Dr. Speak about this outside. Speak about this luncheon. Speak about this lush sun!

Welcome to Blowback. I'm Brendan James. I'm Noah Colwyn. And this is Season 5, Episode 6, Dream Warriors. Last episode, the Nixon administration finally locked in a peace agreement for the war in Vietnam in 1973, four years after the Nixon came. campaign had secretly sabotage talks, offering almost the exact same terms. Those four years following the sabotage not only extended the war in Vietnam and Laos,

but dragged neutral Cambodia into the meat grinder. Civil war now raged there, with the American strongman La Nalle in one corner, and in the other, the Viet Cong and their local counterparts, the Khmer Rouge. But now, with the Paris agreement signed, the Vietnamese and Cambodian communists are drifting apart. The Viet Cong had done the heavy fighting in Cambodia, but now they're pulling back, focusing instead on finishing the job of retaking Saigon and leaving the Khmer Rouge to fight its own civil war. And the target of that war is the capital, Phnom Penh, which is now a city bursting with refugees under a government that is teetering on collapse.

The United States has officially withdrawn from Vietnam, although infamous covert operations such as the Phoenix program carry on. And although the U.S. also promised to end its assault on Cambodia, 1973 would mark the most savage bombing yet. While Cambodia is pulverized, and as the North Vietnamese move on Saigon, the Khmer Rouge will claw that. their way to the capital.

The country was in the final throes of a nightmare, only to wake up inside yet another. Well, I was drawing a long bow that night. I found that out later. But that night, I just... Wondered? In that Redwood Forest, all by myself, you understand what they told me? They told me that the China plan would be my Excalibur.

A plan for peace is what they told me, a plan for good, for greatness. My Camelot! With the signing of the Paris Peace Agreement, in January 73, Nixon's worst problems should have been over. But in fact, they were only beginning. While Vietnam and Cambodia were the issues that were the issues that were, brought millions of people into the streets over the years, what caused Nixon's fall from grace had almost nothing to do with foreign policy. It was instead about how he conducted his White House, his penchant for secrecy, for so-called

dirty tricks or rat-fucking, and then the matter of a June 1972 break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters located at the Watergate Hotel. Democratic officials today held a series of meetings to talk about tighter security at their national headquarters here in Washington. They admit there isn't much they can do about the break-ins, but they hope to come up with something. But what we're really talking about now, this seems to be turning and where things are going. And what we're aiming at, what the grand jury is obviously aiming at, is the operation of the plumbers, of very strange groups set up secretly by President Nixon inside the White House. March 1973, James McCord, a former CIA man, breaks rank with his fellow burglars.

He writes a letter to the presiding judge in the Watergate burglary case, saying that the trail leads straight to Nixon. April, advisor John Ehrlichman, Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman and White House Counsel John Dean are all kicked out, an attempt at damage control. May, the Watergate Committee of the Senate, led by North Carolina's Sam Irvin, begins televised hearings, and a special prosecutor is appointed. June. John Dean, now ex-White House counsel, testifies before the Senate that the president himself demanded a cover-up of the Watergate burglary, which he ordered Dean to carry out. July, a Nixon military aide, Alexander Butterfield, discloses under questioning the existence of the Nixon White House taping system.

This triggers a fight over handing over the tapes to investigators, which Nixon refuses to do. Also in July, after privately learning from a Pentagon official about secret B-52 raids over Indochina, the Senate Armed Services Committee rapidly convenes its own public Nixon scandal hearing. The subject is the bombing. of Cambodia. When Richard Nixon announced the U.S. invasion of Cambodia in 1970, he told one particular

lie over and over again. America had, until now, left Cambodia's territory alone and respected its neutrality with regard to the Vietnam War. But as we have seen, the United States had repeatedly bombed Cambodia, sporadically during the administration of Lyndon Johnson, and secretly during Nixon's first year as president, Operation Menu. And as we've also seen, to keep a lid on things, the White House set up a false reporting system. Fake missions replaced real ones on the logbooks. Paper was burned. Kissinger ran the operation himself. Scuttlebutt of the bombings was leaked to the New York Times in 1969, technically making them public. And this sent Kissinger into a witch hunt, though that was premature.

The Times revelations were forgotten almost instantly. Still, the White House had never stopped treating Operation Menu like a dirty state secret, even after they had invaded Cambodia outright, even after they kept on bombing the country through most of 1973. But in July, blockbuster reporting by Seymour Hirsch and scorching testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee revealed the totality of Operation Menu, revealed the falsified records, revealed the lies that had sucked Cambodia into the Vietnam War. To borrow the phrase of columnist Mary McGrory, Operation Menu in Cambodia looked a lot like, quote, the Southeast Asia Division of Watergate.

And Time Magazine wrote somberly of what is being called the Cambodian cover-up. The testimony came from a half-dozen different officers and enlisted men who were part of secret operations in Laos and Cambodia. The star among the witnesses was an ex-air force major and Memphis resident named Hal Knight, whom we introduced a couple episodes back when he was questioning his orders to burn the records of the bombing missions. Republican Senator Strom Thurman question Knight's motives.

Well, as a matter of fact, I say you didn't object from that standpoint, from the fact that we did bomb over that to save American lives. Oh, no, sir. I was very much in favor of it. Very much in favor of it. No, sir, I did not object at all.

The only thing you objected to was making the false report. Yes, sir. And you participated in that yourself. Yes, sir. And you didn't complain about it at the time? I questioned it, but complained, no, sir. Knight was not alone.

Two former Air Force men testified that more records were falsified. Is it your contention that strikes were made in one area of Cambodia? What reports would indicate another area of Cambodia had in fact been struck? That's correct, sir. Did you know they were false when you made them? yes sir why did you make them after having thought about it for some time sir i was in the position of falsifying a report to someone who had not only told me to falsify the report to him but had told me what to put

in it at that point i figured that he probably knew as much about what he wanted as i knew and i should go ahead and submit the report conformance with his objectives Another ex-air force pilot, Gerald Grevin, gave a firsthand report from the aftermath of a secret attack. Quote, the bomb patterns were unmistakably from B-52s. This was visually the most destructive raid I had ever witnessed, end quote. From Hal Knight, Grevin, and others, the American press was beginning to put together some of the Cambodia picture. Hidden history of U.S. moves in Cambodia emerging went a headline in the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco examiner called it, quote, the war nobody knew. Wide holes torn in official reports. For the Khmer Rouge, 1973 should have been a year of consolidation. Instead, it was the bloodiest yet. The Paris Accords led to the quick withdrawal of most Vietnamese communist troops from the interior of Cambodia, reports journalist Elizabeth Becker. Quote, they returned to Vietnam or clustered along the common border and thereafter left most of the fighting to their Khmer Rouge allies, end quote.

Meanwhile, the last of the original Cambodian communists, who had fought the French decades earlier and had been sheltering in Hanoi ever since, they came back to Cambodian. And the Khmer Rouge regarded these fighters not with admiration, but with suspicion, as if they had been infected by their time in Vietnam. Paul Pott, Yangt Suri, and Qusampan, the new vanguard, no longer regarded these returnees as true Cambodians, let alone true communists. The Khmer Rouge even had a phrase for that. Quote,

Vietnamese minds and Khmer bodies. This paranoid term encapsulated the intense xenophobia of the Khmer Rouge, which viewed its own countrymen as body snatcher-like aliens. It would be shorthand in the years to come for those who fell under suspicion. It was the same basic jingoistic impulse that motivated their arch enemy, Lon Nal, writes Becker. quote, Poulpot and the Khmer Rouge began to make similar claims on behalf of the Khmer race and nation, but they spoke to a far more receptive audience, the peasantry, the visceral basis of their revolution.

Whatever dark turns were occurring within the Khmer Rouge, their peasant support, or at least acceptance, was becoming very important. By March 73, write Shawcross, The Lonnell government had reached its nadir. There was a general strike and a requisite series of crackdowns. Oil ran short, food ran short. By now, Lonnall shut down all opposition parties, papers, and organizations, and, quote, arrested all the princes and princesses left in town, including his one-time partner in coup, Prince Sirik Matak.

Acts of rebellion were reaching almost absurd levels. quote, the lover of one of Prince Sianuk's daughters, a former pilot, hijacked an Air Force fighter bomber, roared off the runway, and swooped down onto the presidential palace. He missed La Nalle, but killed 43 members of the palace entourage and their families, and flew off to the liberated areas of the Khmer Rouge. After the Paris deal, the U.S. agreed to a cease. ceasefire agreement for Laos. After a decade of pummeling that country, the smallest in Indochina, American bombing ended there in February. Cambodia was now the only arena left for

American bombers to drop their payloads. And so in that same month, showers of explosive bombs began to fall from American aircraft. The North Vietnamese had warned the Khmer Communists of this possibility, writes Becker, but Paul Potten Company shrugged it off. The day after the Paris Agreement, La Nalle, obeying Kissinger deputy Alexander Haig, had grudgingly offered a ceasefire. But the Khmer Rouge refused to negotiate, quote, on the assumption that a suspension of hostilities in Cambodia would rob them of their chief strategic advantage, the semi-isolation of Phnom Penh, end quote.

The Vietnamese urged their ally to reconsider, and when they refused, quote, the North Vietnamese began to restrict supplies of their arms. apparently to stop them from fighting. One top Khmer Rouge leader, Kusampan, told Prince Sianuk that, quote, Hanoi has dropped us. China, which had now become the prime backer of the Khmer Rouge, attempted to signal these problems to the West. For example, Shawcross reports on one state dinner in Beijing.

Quote, during the toasts at the end of the dinner, Chinese Premier Joe N. Lai walked across the great room to the table at which French diplomat Etienne Monach was sitting. He took Monarch aside and told him that the longer the war in Cambodia continued, the more extreme and harsh the final victory would be. Would the French try to persuade Henry Kissinger of this? Kissinger and the White House in general were not listening. The Americans still believed that the Khmer Rouge

were mere puppets of Hanoi, and could thus be cajoled into negotiations any time the Vietnamese so chose. And so, there would be a new bombing campaign. American and Cambodian authorities are today still trying to determine exactly what happened at Nick Long. A spokesman for the American embassy in Nompin admitted American responsibility. But he wouldn't say what kind of aircraft were involved, or indeed whether more than one aircraft was involved. Besides the broken record of peace with honor, there was

no actual military logic for the bombings. What was the reason then? William Colby, one time chief of the Phoenix program, and soon to be director of the CIA, later answered, quote, Cambodia was the

only game in town. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, William Sullivan, when asked by Senate aides, put it yet another way. Quote, it's interesting you should ask that. I've got a couple of lawyers working on it. I guess what I would say is the re-election of the president. Many would go on to point out that since this new campaign was transparently for show and not a quote-unquote military necessity, that qualified it as yet another breach of international law. Article 6 of the International

tribunal, for example, prohibits, quote, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity, end quote. Again, Beijing tried to pressure the Americans to ratchet things down. Joe and Lai complained about the bombing to a group of American congressmen, write Shawcross. When their leader, Senator Warren Magnuson of Washington, suggested that the Cambodians, be patient. Joe asked with obvious anger, How can a man be patient when bombs are falling on his head?

He added, for good measure, that China's patience was not unlimited. Meanwhile, the Cambodian communists themselves declared that there was still nothing on the agenda but victory. The Khmer Rouge surged forward in a suicidal drive toward Phnompan. The war did not begin to strangle the lives of everyone, farmer and city dweller alike, reports Elizabeth Becker, until 1973, when the U.S. launched a new and massive bombing campaign. At its height, the number of bombing runs hit 81 per day. This eclipsed the 60-per-day norm of Vietnam. In the first week of August, in the early hours of the morning,

American bombers unleashed a rope of bombs straight through the quiet town of Neklong, a town by the water on the Vietnamese-Cambodian border. The raid destroyed shops, homes, and the hospital, killing and injuring hundreds. The New York Times, Sidney Schoenberg, reported from the site. Big chunks of the center of town have been demolished, including two-story concrete buildings reinforced with steel.

On Monday evening, the United States Embassy described the damage as, quote-unquote, minimal. Yesterday afternoon, a Cambodian soldier could be seen sobbing uncontrollably on the riverbank. All my family is dead, he cried, beating his hand on the wooden bench, where he had collapsed. Take my picture, let the Americans see me. His name is Keochan, and his wife and ten of his children were killed. All he has left is the youngest,

an eight-month-old son. In the spring of 2024, we traveled to Neklung ourselves and spoke to a woman whose family fled the bombing. I want to say that during the Law-Nole War, it was the Americans who dropped the bombs in Cambodia. I witnessed those planes myself. I saw them from a distance. I heard the sounds of bombs dropping and people running all over the place.

The bombing was continuous. When the bombs dropped on houses, whole families died. The bombs instantly killed wherever it dropped. Each bomb was enormous and created an enormous. crater. An American airman in Cambodia in 73 wrote a letter to Senator William Fulbright, which he then inserted into the Congressional Record. It said, quote, I write to you today with much despair in my heart.

We have become once again involved in a civil conflict, and as a result of our involvement have escalated the death and destruction on a massive scale. Another veteran pilot did more than write a letter. In mid-June, Donald Dawson, a 26-year-old native of Danbury, Connecticut, flying B-52 missions over Cambodia from Thailand, Dawson told his superiors that he was now refusing to fly. Within a couple weeks, his impending court-martial was national news. In Cambodia, writes journalist Philip Short, quote,

The U.S. dropped three times the total tonnage of bombs dropped on Japan, in World War II, atom bombs included. Hundreds of thousands of villagers fled to the cities in Cambodia where they began eking out a precarious existence on the edge of starvation, end quote. Penhamp's population swelled during this time

from 650,000 to 2.5 million by 1975. Quote, hundreds of thousands of others fled in the opposite direction, into the forests, the eternal refuge of Khmer peasants in times of war and desolation, end quote. The hellfire from the air and the scarcity of food on the ground would only help the Khmer Rouge undermine America's crumbling friendly government in Phnom Penh. Elizabeth Becker spoke to us about the effects of the bombing in 73, which she witnessed as a reporter.

I cannot exaggerate how unprepared Cambodians were for this. Many of them didn't know what an airplane was. I had multiple people telling me, why is their fire coming from the sky, the destruction. But it's not an industrial country, but still, the livestock, homes, so on and so forth, we'll never know how many people were killed. By this point, the United States did not believe in body counts. It was it made the country, Phnom Penh particularly very bloated. And it gave the Khmer Rouge a sense of their invisibility.

They're surviving these bombings. And they had the tactic of, they got very close to the Lonnar Army so that they could avoid it. And so they have this outsized sense of invisibility. Freed from the reigns of Hanoi, but still under the fire of American bombs, how did the Khmer Rouge fight their war? The forces of Laun Nalle were so puzzled by this question that it frightened them. For every one of their forces that died in battle, the Khmer Rouge would sacrifice a dozen more. Lonnall's troops began to mythologize what they saw as fearless communist hordes.

Some of the officers of the Republic believed that the Khmer Rouge smoked massive amounts of marijuana, writes Becker, drugging themselves to boost their courage. Others were convinced that the Khmer Rouge had tapped an evil spirit that gave them powers that were beyond mortal men, end quote. And perhaps hoping to get on the level of these supposedly drugged out demons. The Republic soldiers took to smoking more marijuana before entering battle or relying on prayers to Buddha. In reality, the Khmer Rouge communists still based much of their strategy on what they had learned from the Viet Cong. But they also hemmed as close as possible to enemy troops to avoid being struck by the brunt of American bombings.

The bombings themselves had a powerful impact on the Khmer Rouge, writes Becker. perhaps more psychological than physical. They told the Chinese and the Vietnamese that no revolutionary army had suffered as they had during the U.S. bombing campaign. Vietnam's lay duck toe retorted dryly that, quote, the amount of U.S. bombs dropped in Laos and North Vietnam was much more than that dropped in Cambodia. But Khmer Rouge psychology had pivoted too long on the notion that no Communist Party had suffered the pain and neglect they had. The Khmer Rouge certainly had one thing to boast about, a dysfunctional enemy.

Penhens' policy towards civilians was criminal neglect. The capital was a seedy city in which army officers and subordinates fleeced refugees at roadblocks set up at the city's entrances, right short. They confiscated anything of value and bought young girls, asking for virgins to stock their brothels. things of value included everything from cars to clothes to jewelry to food itself and this becker writes is how the Khmer Rouge won the rice war quote the communist cooperatives kept track of the rice and goods available and the party tried to distribute them as equitably as circumstances allowed the overall impression was that everyone was in the war together this system stood in stark contrast to

Phnom Penh, where greed and corruption created a hungry, nearly starving refugee population, living next to a fat and rich elite and to a middle class that stumbled along. This control over provisions, however, consided with extreme measures to control people's lives. We saw last time how, in the middle period of the war, from around 1971 to 1972, the Khmer Rouge introduced moderate collectivism. and earned goodwill from the peasant population. Now, their territory became a series of garrison states, as dedicated to keeping people in as much as keeping the enemy out.

Quote, the Khmer Rouge sealed off their zones by creating miles wide tracks of no man's land, writes Becker. In the cooperatives, people soon began to disappear. Those caught attempting to cross from either direction, without permission, we're not seen again. Becker sums up. The choice was posed in extremes. Risk starvation as a refugee in the Khmer Republic,

or give your soul to the Khmer Rouge in exchange for the assurance of being fed something. Run away from the forced collectivization of the countryside so your child can starve to death in Phnom Penh. Have, as anybody in the Air Force since you were ordered to come before this committee, coached you on your testimony? Cokes me, sir? Yeah, advised you what you should or shouldn't say. No, Mr. Chairman, nobody has coaxed me or told me what to say or not to say.

And you're under oath, and so you're giving us exactly what the truth is, Captain. I was advised her to follow my conscience and to tell the truth, sir. Days after the Senate testimony of Hal Knight, there was a breakthrough in the case of the pilots who were refusing to serve in Cambodia. Federal Judge Oren G. Judd of Brooklyn, a Republican, ruled on the side of Captain Donald Dawson and his fellow pilots. Quote, Judd issued a permanent injunction barring the Defense Department and the Air Force from supporting military activities in Cambodia, reported the New York Times the following day. The DOJ's lawyers appealed the case and want to stay, so the plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court.

The court was in recess, and so after appealing to a sympathetic but indecisive Justice Thurgood Marshall, the ACLU appealed to another Supreme Court liberal, Justice William O. Douglas, who was at the moment enjoying the tranquility of his cabin in the mountains of Goose Prairie, Washington State, a five-hour drive from Seattle. Receiving one of the ACLU's lawyers who had made the journey, Douglas agreed to hear the case. Quote, on August 3rd, the post office in the River Valley town of Yakima opened as a hearing room, writes Shawcross. Several hundred local people crowded in, and Douglas came down from the hills in an ill-fitting suit, listened and then retired to his cabin. Douglas ruled in favor of Donald Dawson.

The judge cited an event covered on this show before from season three, President Truman's attempted seizure of the steel industry during the Korean War, which the Supreme Court had ruled at the time was unconstitutional. If Truman could not seize the steel in violation of the Constitution, Douglas wrote, I do not see how any president can take life in violation of the Constitution. But the Justice Department, in a bit of legal trickery, successfully convinced Justice Marshall to canvass the opinion of the full court. Although the law stated that only an in-person meeting of the Supremes could overturn

Douglas' post office ruling, Marshall, quote, telephoned his colleagues to find a consensus, writes Shawcross. All but Douglas, who protested that such a telephone poll was alien to the court's procedures, agreed that Marshall should reimpose a stay. The bombing continued, end quote. But only for a matter of weeks. In mid-August, as the deal with Congress had set, the bombing of Cambodia came to an end.

An explanation of what he did and didn't do about Watergate and suggestions about what the country ought to do now were offered by President Nixon this week. And the U.S. bombing of Cambodia came to an end with a presidential warning, both to Hanoi and to the Congress. The bombing had ended, even if the dissidents couldn't win at the Supreme Court. On July 31st, Jesuit priest and Democrat from Massachusetts, Representative Robert Drennan, introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives,

calling for the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Cambodia had pushed Drinan to say the word on everyone's minds. I suggested only four areas in which I think there's basic, serious questions. I indicated very clearly there may be other questions. I raised this question. There were 3,630 airstrikes in 14 months prior to April 30, 1970. And on that date, when President Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia, he stated categorically that we have observed scrupulously the neutrality of

Cambodia over the past five years, and I raised the basic question, what authority did he utilize to have these airstrikes, and why is it that he told the American people that we have, in fact, observed the neutrality? While the United States and the People's Republic of China made amends, the split between Beijing and Moscow had taken further twists and turns. In its contest with China for leadership of the Third World, the Soviet Union had gone from the Khrushavite peaceful coexistence strategy of the early 1960s to a much more revolutionary foreign policy under Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. Beijing, meanwhile, had increased its aid for Asia and Africa, but at the same time had gone

from preaching strict ideological adherence to Leninist and Maoist principles to now accepting a much more diverse array of allies. China's aid offensive, writes Jeremy Friedman, was accompanied by an equally impressive diplomatic offensive as a parade of foreign leaders came to Beijing in the early 1970s, from countries all across the political spectrum. Haile Selassie, Joseph Mobutu, Isabella Peron, and the Shah of Iran were just some of the high-profile and political.

and politically eclectic cast of characters who made the pilgrimage to Beijing. Chinese policy was now clearly focused on building the broadest possible base of support and the widest front of third world unity to oppose Soviet hegemony, end quote. Beijing no longer privileged or even funded much at all the Latin American and Asian Maoist groups. It was a far cry from a discussion just two years earlier, when Zhou Inlai told the Vietnamese, quote, We hold that support to the people's revolutionary struggles cannot be sacrificed for the sake of relations between governments. Only traders do that. But China's foreign realignment spurred on by new, friendlier relations with America, soon had its own consequences.

There was its recognition of the Pinochet regime that overthrew the elected socialist president Salvador Allende in Chile. And finally, there was China's support for the pro-American, pro-South African side of the civil war in Angola. Beijing was opposing that country's socialist movement known as the MPLA, and which was supported by the Soviets and the Cubans. Quote, the image of the PRC, siding with the U.S. apartheid regime and Pretoria was unforgivable, writes Friedman, and the last straw in the eyes

of many. The increasingly anti-Soviet obsessions of the People's Republic of China not only drove a rift between Beijing and Hanoi, which was still enjoying major support from the USSR, but it also brought China closer with the anti-Vietnamese Khmer Rouge. One day in spring 1974, a White House official, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, in fact, saw the following incident while traversing the West Wing. I'd reached the basement near the Situation Room, and just as I was about to ascend the stairway, a guy came running down the stairs two steps at a time. He had a frantic look on his face, wild-eyed, like a madman. And he bowled me over, so I kind of lost my balance.

And before I could pick myself up, six athletic-looking young men leapt over me, pursuing him. I suddenly realized that they were secret service agents and that I'd been knocked over by the President of the United States. After Father Robert Drenan introduced the motion to impeach Nixon at the end of July 73, a senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, advanced it further. It was supposed to investigate whether Nixon had violated the Constitution of the United States by secretly bombing and then invading Neutral Cambodia, a crime deemed worthy of impeachment.

Some Democrats were all for this investigation, but others, such as Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, had in fact been aware of the secret bombings when they, they occurred. And still others, such as committee chair, Peter Rodino, were trying to keep moderate Republicans on board with the impeachment proceedings. What's more? Quote, unlike the articles concerned with specific domestic crimes, according to Shawcross, Article 4 of the impeachment proceedings threatened to indict an entire system of policymaking, end quote. Besides, they said, Nixon's White House was already crime.

In mid-October, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned on charges of tax evasion. Only ten days later, Nixon mounted the infamous Saturday Night Massacre, in which he ordered the firing of the Watergate Special Prosecutor, but had to fire an attorney general and his deputy to get the job done. While all this was going on, Congress passed the War Powers Act, requiring the office of the president to notify and consult with Congress before launching military action. Nixon vetoed it, but a bipartisan majority overcame the president and forced the bill into law. Journalist I.F. Stone, friend of the show, later called this, quote,

Nixon's bitterest defeat in foreign policy. The president's polling began a downward slide from which it never recovered. An outright majority of the country told Gallup, we disapprove of Nixon. Two months later, the impeachment hearings began. Throughout the summer of 74, Conyers and other liberals fought to keep alive Article 4 about the bombing in Cambodia.

But there were enough lawmakers who believed, as Shawcross puts it, that what happened in Cambodia, quote, had been wartime, that the president was fulfilling his obligation to protect American lives, that Sienuk had acquiesced that some members of Congress had been told, and that previous presidents, particularly Johnson, had been as deceitful, end quote. In the end, it was this narrow and simple view that prevailed.

The article of impeachment against Nixon for crimes in Cambodia, which had been the first motion for impeachment, introduced by Father Dronin, a year earlier, was abandoned. Its supporters lost by a margin of 26 to 12. Representative William Hungate, Democrat from Missouri, remarked, quote, It's kind of hard to live with yourself when you impeach a guy for tapping telephones and not for making war without authorization, end quote.

To consecrate my office, my energies, and all the wisdom I can summon to the cause of peace among nations. I've done my very best in all the days since to be true to that pledge. The effort to indict American policy in Cambodia was defeated, but so was Nixon. Earlier in July, the Supreme Court ended the standoff over his White House tapes. Nixon was ordered to hand them over. Staring down an imminent conviction in Congress, on August 8, 1974, Nixon became the first president to resign the office, announcing it on live TV. As a result of these efforts, I am confident that the world is a safer place today,

not only for the people of America, but for the people. of all nations. The day before Nixon had met with Henry Kissinger, Wright, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Quote, Kissinger walked into the alcove. There was the president in his chair, as he had seen him so often. Kissinger really didn't like the president. Nixon had made him the most admired man in the country, yet the secretary couldn't bring himself to feel affection for his patron. The president was drinking. He said he was

resigning. It would be better for everyone. The president broke down and sobbed. Henry, he said, you are not a very orthodox Jew, and I am not an Orthodox Quaker, but we need to pray. Nixon got down on his knees. Kissinger felt he had no alternative but to kneel down too. The president prayed out loud, asking for help, rest, peace, and love. Later, amongst his assistants, Kissinger said the president was definitely resigning. The phone rang. It was the president. Kissinger's longtime confidant Lawrence Eagleburger picked up an extension to listen. That was the custom. Kissinger rarely took a call alone.

The Eagleburger was shocked. The president was slurring his words. He was drunk. He was out of control. It was good of you to come up and talk, Henry, the president said. I've made the decision, but you must stay. You must stay on for the good of the country. Eagleburger could barely make out what the president was saying.

He was almost incoherent. It was pathetic. Eagleberger felt ill and hung up. The president at one last request. Henry, please don't ever tell anyone that I cried. That I was not strong. And that all of our children have a better chance than before. Of living in peace rather than dying in war.

Nixon's replacement was Gerald Ford, former House minority leader who had been elevated to vice president. After the swapping out of presidents, the New York Times Sidney Schoenberg published a story with a question in the headline. Will Ford follow Nixon in support of the Law-N-Aul regime? The other day, Seanberg wrote, On a road northwest of Phnom Penh that is lined with the skeletons of former towns and hamlets, a young soldier looked around him at the clumps of rubble and ash and shrugged.

The soldier said, By the time we find out who is right and who is wrong, everything in Cambodia will be broken into little pieces. In Hanoi, however, the finish line was coming into view. To test the intentions of the new president Ford, Wright's historian Mark Lawrence, North Vietnam launched a major attack northeast of Saigon in December. The operation brought doubly good news for the communists.

An entire province fell to them, while Ford, hemmed in by Congress and wary of embroiling his presidency in Vietnam, did nothing, end quote. With the new American president clearly gun-shy, North Vietnam began planning for new offensive, to push south. Cambodians spared nothing inventing their rage.

There was no Pol Pot, no Khmer Rouge at this time. This was the work of L'Anol soldiers and their victims, they said, were Viet Cong. All of these bodies were cut open and the liver's eaten. By this ritual,

Cambodians believed they would gain the strength of their By the top of 1974, the Khmer Rouge were close enough to Phnom Penh to unleash waves of artillery fire into the city. To compare it with past events on this program, their approach to liberating the capital looked less like the Cuban rebels fighting for Havana, and a lot more like the Afghan Mujahideen shelling Kabul. By now, the fall of the Capitol was no longer a question of if but when. Phnom Penh was, quote, rotting from within. La Nall, once a feared strongman, was by now a basket case, prone to weeping, presiding over a rump state. The Capitol had shriveled into a nest of opium parlors, brothels, and houses full of slave

boys for army commanders and criminals, sometimes the same men. Sick and starving children were everywhere. Sidney Schaumburg reported again from Neck Long, east of the capital. Every child in Neck Long is in some stage of malnourishment. Some have swollen bellies, some are shrunken. A 10-year-old girl has dehydrated to the size of a four-year-old. Harsh bronchial coughs come from their throats, marking the beginnings of pneumonia and tuberculosis. All have dysentery. Their noses run continuously. Their skin has turned scaly. Every scratch on their legs and arms becomes an ulcer. Although the American Congress had pushed through a package of aid to be delivered, many would die before it arrived. A conscription act led to army men plucking young men and boys

from movie theaters. They ripped them from their towns and shoved them in front of the terrifying black-clad legions of the Khmer Rouge. The economy was at a breaking point with inflation hitting around 250% year over year. All the charts, exports, production, employment, went down.

The government often cut out the electricity in cities to save power and money. As much as 96% of all income came from the United States. Unlike, say, Soviet support for Cuba, reports William Shawcross. The trade was not favorable. None of the rice from the United States was provided for free, and food prices were rising catastrophically high. Through the last 18 months of the war, most people in the cities were slowly starving. One journalist noted, for the few privileged elite, the good life of tennis, nightclubs, expensive French meals,

and opulent brandy-drenched dinner parties went on, almost to the very end, while the vast majority of Phnom Penh's swollen population sank into deeper and deeper misery. As the squalor of Phnom Penh became more extreme, so did the radicalism of the Khmer Rouge. Quote, until August 1973, the refugees tended to cite American bombing as the main reason for their flight. through 1974, they spoke of the increasing violence of the Khmer Rouge, end quote. By 1974, write Grant Evans and Kelvin Rowley. Pol Pot was organizing purges of active Sianukists from the ranks of the front. Between them, Lonnall and Pulpott smashed the institutional structure of the traditional

monarchy and wiped out many of its key personnel. The Khmer Rouge started to destroy schools built in the same. Cianook, period, Shawcross adds, and the prince, surveying all this, saw what was coming. Cianook himself told the Italian journalist Oriana Falachi that Pauld and his comrades would, quote, spit me out like a cherry stone before long. Inside the Cammar Rouge areas, the moderate and partial reforms from the past few years gave way to sweeping and ruthless dictates from the party. Here came the beginning of Pulpotification.

Vietnamese were not allowed to buy Kameo produce. There was no contact with the outside world. The rights of speech and travel were abolished. Money was abolished. Religion was suppressed. Flirting was banned and punished as severely as

gambling. Bright clothes, jewelry, any extravagance of dress were forbidden. Everyone was made to dress in loose, simple, black pajamas. If you did not have any, you dyed your existing clothes black. Terror was not an unprecedented policy for revolutionaries in wartime, or under urgent political

conditions. In the heady days of the Chinese Civil War, Chairman Mao had written, quote, When the local bullies and evil gentry were at the height of their power, they killed peasants without batting an eyelid. How can one say that the peasants should not now rise and shoot one or two of them and bring about a small scale reign of terror. But Becker finds something different about the terror of the Khmer Rouge. Quote, during the revolutionary wars of China and Vietnam, political executions were done openly, the accused forced to stand before peasants

and admit guilt, the peasants who were assigned to punish, sometimes forgiving them. Khmer Rouge terror was of another order, and certainly not about to find its way into an official document. Salath Saar, Paul Pot, and his cohort, called it, quote, the work of God, too imposing for mere humans. This was not the usual picture of people's courts or tribunals. The orders given out didn't even necessarily come from the central leadership. The Khmer Rouge system was becoming instead an odd hybrid, a bottom-up anarchistic execution of a top-down authoritarian dogma. Everything was done secretly, sometimes wordlessly.

The party was simply referred to by one phrase, Ankar, the organization. The war in Vietnam ended officially in January last year. American troops were seen to go home. Mr. Nixon said it was peace with honor at last. From John Pilger's 1974 documentary, Vietnam, still America's War. On the streets the Americans appear to have gone. They haven't.

The Pentagon has thousands of men in Vietnam. They include senior officers, pilots, and technicians. Many of them disguised as civilians and embassy officials. The Paris Agreement had ended direct American military involvement in Vietnam. North Vietnam released all 591 U.S. servicemen, it held as prisoners of war, writes Mark Lawrence. Quote, the last few thousand U.S. troops in South Vietnam went home as well, usually to much cooler receptions.

By the end of March 1973, only a small detachment of Marines remained to guard the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, end quote. But the Paris Accords did not end the basic contest between North and South Vietnam as to who would take the other's capital, unifying the country and ending the war. Saigon, enraged that northern troops have been allowed to stay in parts of South Vietnam, refused any negotiations with the North. All the while, President II violated the ceasefire by launching attacks

to extend his control into areas dominated by the communists. The United States kept backing South Vietnam despite these violations of the Paris deal. The communists, meanwhile, were hardly keeping to the letter of the agreement. Hanoi still very much intended to win the war. However, quote, the North limited themselves to small-scale operations designed to consolidate authority in areas controlled by a parallel revolutionary government in the South. Otherwise, the communists concentrated on political agitation

against President 2. The disintegration of the Nixon regime seemed to presage the decline of South Vietnam. Quote, in late 1973 and early 74, North Vietnam and Viet Cong attackers mauled South Vietnamese forces in several areas, retaking former communist strongholds and demolishing Saigon's pacification efforts.

Precisely, as Hanoi had hoped and too dreaded, Washington steadily distance itself from Vietnam following the Paris Agreement. We attach very great importance to the views of our old friends from Saudi Arabia. From our point of view, the conversations have been conducted in a very friendly and warm atmosphere. For 14 months after the bombing ended in August 1973, writes Shawcross, Kissinger made no effort to end the war in Cambodia. End quote. After sending a new ambassador to Phnom Penh, one state department official says that,

quote, Henry shot the dove off his shoulder, telling the ambassador, your job is to improve the military situation, to enable us to negotiate from strength. I don't want to hear about Laos-type compromises, end quote. The French, having just elected rather than impeached a president, attempt to hear about Laos type compromises, end quote. The French, having just elected, rather than impeached a president, attempt to to broker talks. They had tried to play peacemaker since 1970, though not exactly from anti-war principles or solidarity with Indochina. Quote, in order to protect substantial commercial interests in Cambodia, the French recognized law in all, but reduced their mission in Phnom Penh below ambassadorial level, and at the same time attempted to remain on friendly terms with Sienuk, end quote.

The French diplomat Etienne Monach, who had served as a confidant of the Chinese Premier Joe Nlai, believed that Beijing would much prefer the return of their guest, Prince Sianuk, rather than a takeover by the Khmer Rouge. But it was clear to Monarch as it was to other diplomats that Chinese policy had changed in the spring of 74, reports Chalk Ross. Manach was convinced that this was because of Henry Kissinger's apparent lack of interest in either Sianuk or negotiations. He describes the results.

In early April 74, Q Sampan, Vice President of Sionuk's shadow government, and himself a high-ranking Khmer Rouge commander, had come to Beijing. At a formal banquet given in Sampan's honor, he attacked, quote, all such vicious maneuvers as sham ceasefire, sham talks and sham peace, and he ruled out all compromise.

He presented Joe Inlai with a grenade launcher. It was a critical moment which symbolized an important shift in Chinese policy away from a political solution and toward a military end to the Cambodian crisis. In talks with the Chinese government, the Khmer Rouge commander requested a major commitment of military supplies from Beijing. that request was granted. Momentum was running against a peaceful settlement. Monach's proposal floated to all parties in November of 74,

offered Siyanuk as head of a new government, formed in coalition with the undoubtedly well-armed and well-organized Khmer Rouge. Even with Beijing's latest arms deal with the Khmer Rouge, Manak thought he could still sell it. By mid-December, the French chance for peace was delicate, but still possible, so long as it could be kept secret. Unfortunately, a clumsy attempt to rush a diplomatic communique leaked the early terms of negotiation that looked all too similar to early unacceptable terms from Kissinger. Beijing, Sienuk, and the Khmer Rouge, they all balked.

The chance had indeed been delicate. And now, it could not be put back together. In Vietnam, the U.S. was defeated, and now in Cambodia, Cambodian communists would have their hour. In the last days of the La Nall regime, the U.S. ambassador hollered at a British reporter. Quote,

You guys think you know everything, but I've got orders to fight to the last Cambodian, end quote. In March of 1975, Khmer Rouge forces captured the city of Udong, north of Phnom Penh, and forced 20,000 of its inhabitants into the countryside, writes Paul Thomas Chamberlain. The communists executed those they identified as class enemies, and sent the rest into forced labor. The stage was set for the final offensive of the Khmer Rouge against Phenompen. Life in the Capitol had become totally surreal, writes Philip Short. Those with money and connections scrambled for seats on the last planes out.

The 2.5 million others in the city existed in suspended animation. In these chaotic days, Cianook requested a meeting with the Americans. Cianook's deputy met with the deputy of the chief liaison office, a man named George H.W. Bush. Bush. He asked Bush's office to please retrieve a collection of film of pre-war Cambodia that he'd produced back in the day, as they were important parts of Khmer culture. Kissinger told Bush get the films, but also hit Sianuk up for a meeting. No conditions, not anymore. Out of pure desperation, Kissinger wanted to see if Sianuk would fly to Padam Pen

and serve as a new American-backed head of state. A day late, a dollar short. The prince declined, and the Khmer Rouge crept closer. Early in 1975, the Khmer Rouge began their final drive for Phnom Penh. Camer Rouge ordinance came crashing down across the country, most of all northeast of Phnom Penh. All roads were cut off. The very last convoy of U.S. aid had come and gone.

The same day, Khmer Rouge forces retook the village of Neklong. Strongman Lon Nal fled the capital. A week and a half later, the U.S. embassy was evacuated, and just a few days later, the Khmer Republic's final defenses in the city were overrun. The war was over. The estimated body count of the war in Cambodia is, as always, merely an estimate. Ben Kiernan places the death toll from American bombing at around 150,000 people killed. Taking into account the Cambodian Civil War in general,

it is estimated that as many as 275,000 to 300,000 people were killed. Things were playing out far more dramatically in South Vietnam, as the North's forces barreled toward Saigon. President Gerald Ford asked Congress for nearly $1 billion in military and humanitarian aid. Already, much of the Vietnamese Central Highlands had fallen to the communists. But the legislature gave the president the cold shoulder. Quote, given the situation in Vietnam, I think we would just be wasting the money, said one senator.

This is now what is left of the American involvement in Vietnam. South Vietnamese President 2 saw the writing on the wall and resigned. As thousands upon thousands of American civilians, military personnel, and their South Vietnamese compadres evacuated the city, the North Vietnamese prepared for their final assault on Saigon. which launched on April 29th. The U.S. Embassy behind me has been completely looted. Television cameras captured scenes of chaos.

Some Americans who pushed towards the bus tried to pull their Vietnamese wives and children along with them. The South Vietnamese obviously are angry at the American withdrawal. Many of them have said that they were left out. in the evacuation. As Americans were being lifted from the roof of the American embassy, recalls Henry Kissinger in his memoirs. President Ford, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, and I,

briefed the congressional leadership. After that, all was silence. I sat alone in the National Security Advisor's Corner Office in the West Wing, enveloped by the eerie silence that sometimes attends momentous events. Helicopters were landing on the roof and inside the compound as we walked to the back of the embassy. We had to push and shove our way through a crowd of several hundred Vietnamese trying to scale the walls, only to be knocked back by U.S. Marines. By the following afternoon, the communists had seized the presidential palace.

They renamed Saigon, now the largest city in the unified country of Vietnam. now be known as Ho Chi Minh City. Henry Kissinger was the only political survivor of Nixon's inner circle. Though he'd been directly implicated in some of the worst excesses uncovered during Watergate, Kissinger managed to avoid the docket. Washington and the press preferred to pin it all on his former boss. This is perhaps why Kissinger, so often high-strung and emotional, was in these days rather calm. He could afford to savor an eerie silence, as he had called it,

as the government of South Vietnam, which he had considered doomed, a decade prior, fell into history's trash heap. William Shawcross surveys the achievements of Nixon and Kissinger, both positive and negative. Quote, poor young Americans were at last no longer dying in Indochina. Nixon had visited Beijing and ended more than 20 years of destructive hostility toward China. He had visited Moscow as well, and although both he and Kissinger had oversold the process, they called detente, American Soviet relations were certainly now conducted more rationally than ever before. It was hard to quarrel with Kissinger's basic premise that the peace of the world and the lives of

hundreds of millions of people depended on the stability of that relationship. The first salt arms control treaty that he had negotiated with considerable skill undoubtedly helped secure those lives. But, of course, Shawcross continues, there was the continuing, extended war in Indochina where no real peace had ever been sought and where detente had failed to produce real benefits. There was the fundamentally careless acquiescence

in General Yaya Khan's attrition of East Pakistan and the tilt away from India on the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971. There was the deliberate attempt to destabilize the government of Salvador Ayende in Chile, a tolerance for the white minority regimes of Southern Africa. Nixon and Kissinger insisted that U.S. policy must be a full alliance with Israel against the Soviet Union, errors of judgment that had led to the Yomkippur war.

Quote, Kissinger would lose little of his immense public standing as he careened from crisis to crisis, many of them self-inflicted as Secretary of State. none undermined Kissinger's basic credibility. South Vietnam finally fell in the face of the long-awaited attack by the North, and America would watch on the nightly news as its ambassador helicoptered from the besieged American embassy in Saigon. There were few television reports about the fall of the Law-N-Aul government in Phnom Penh. To the rag-tag and crazed troops. of the Khmer Rouge.

I think it's tragic for a nation to come at this stage and to have lost so many lives, so many properties, and to have to go back so many years in history. So for me, it's a saddest day of my life. Some remember an eerie silence, others the ongoing thumping of artillery. Either way, by the dawn of April 17, 1975, the Khmer Republic was no more. Quote, the young men who appeared from nowhere in the center of Phnom Penh, soon after First Light, did all the things that victorious rebels are supposed to do.

writes Philip Short. They drove in jeeps, flying a strange flag, a white cross on a blue and red field, acknowledging the cheers of the crowds as they passed. A mood of euphoria took hold. One young woman remembered neighbors dancing and singing in the streets. An almost physical sense of relief

led to rejoicing, wrote another observer. No more rockets. The black-clad fighters, seized control of key installations, including the information ministry and the radio station, and they fraternized with government troops who threw away their weapons and waved white flags and surrender. People began kissing and hugging each other,

the French missionary Francois Pancho remembered. But within a few hours, the atmosphere of celebration fizzled out. Something was off about the incoming soldiers. They did not smile, they did not speak. The official resistance radio station was blaring through loudspeakers across the capital, a traditional sign of a revolution's victory. The voices of the local opposition to La Nau appealed to the population of Phnom Penh, short reports, calling for law and order and inviting government troops to lay down their weapons and accept peace.

But then that voice on the loudspeaker cut out, a new voice cut in. We are not coming here to negotiate, it said. We are entering the capital through force of arms. After that the radio went dead. Thank you.