Blowback - S5 Episode 7 - "Less Than Zero"

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

Cambodia slips into darkness, as the Khmer Rouge seize the country.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

After the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia, Chairman Mao Zedong of the People's Republic of China met with the country's newly victorious leader, Salasar, alias Pol Pot. Mao was nearing the end of his life, but remained lucid as ever. He could no longer see well enough to run. read, though he loved watching movies. Martial arts films from Hong Kong, best of all, writes his biographer, Rebecca Carl. Quote, Mao continued to attend party meetings, albeit now surrounded by medical staff and nurses, end quote. His voice was going,

his closest aides had taken to reading his lips to relay what he said to colleagues and visitors. In June 1975, Paul Pot visited Beijing for an audience with Chairman Mao. Quote, the Cambodian communists intrigued Mao, writes Paul Potts' biographer, Philip Short. The chairman spoke Chinese and snatches of English, citing Huxley, Kant, and the 4th century Buddhist missionary Kumar Rajiva. Quote, whether Paul felt intimidated in Mao's presence, or whether his interpreter was overwhelmed by the challenge of rendering into Khmer Mao's elliptical reasoning, the transcript shows that Poles said nothing of substance. Mao, on the other hand, had a lot to say, end quote.

He spoke in a swirl of dialectics, if not riddles. You have a lot of experience, Mao began. Have you made mistakes or not? I don't know. Certainly you have. So, rectify yourselves. Do rectification. The road is torturous. Quote, Mao's repeated references to criticism and mistakes at a meeting with a friendly

delegation were unusual, write short. By short's reading, Mao's call to do rectification was his way of saying that the time had come for the Cambodians to abandon their extremism and have an easier time of it. The chairman offered to give poll, quote, 30 books written by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin to study. Paul Pot remained all smiles during the exchange, as he often did. It's unlikely that he was persuaded by Mao's remarks. When he returned to Cambodia, he and his colleagues leading the Khmer Rouge pursued the most extreme policies imaginable. They would empty the cities, institute round-the-clock forced labor, and cut Cambodia off from the rest of the world.

Mao, short writes, was entranced by Pol's boldness in emptying the cities. That autumn, he asked Vietnam's leader, Le Duan, whether Vietnam could do the same. When Le Duan shook his head, Mao paused for a moment, and then agreed. No We couldn't do it either Season 5, episode 7 Less than Zero Up through now, we've seen the Americans wage war in Indochina

First in Vietnam, then Laos, and finally, in neutral Cambodia. We have seen the bombings, the invasions, and the resulting Khmer Civil War. which pit the U.S. backed Lawnal regime against the Khmer Rouge insurgents. Now, in mid-1975, with the wars finally over, the dead number in the hundreds of thousands, the refugees, and the millions. Richard Nixon has fallen from power, although his right hand, Henry Kissinger,

has only risen in prestige to become a powerful secretary of state under new president Gerald Ford. The Khmer Rouge are now entering the capital of Phnom Penh. This is the beginning of their new experiment, what they will call democratic Campuchia. Soon we will see tensions flare up with their one-time comrades in Vietnam, now a unified nation. And Hanoi is facing its own new struggles, including a high-stakes game of chicken with the United States, a desperate attempt to normalize relations, and to address poverty and destruction at home. This episode we will see Cambodia, already brutalized by years of war, enter one of the darkest

pits of the 20th century. The onset of their revolution has since been associated with the phrase year zero. Contrary to some sources, the Khmer Rouge themselves never used this term. it was coined by the Catholic missionary Francois Panchot for his book about the Khmer Rouge, but it is a fitting turn of phrase all the same. Paul Pot and his comrades would pound their society into dust, attempting to erase almost any trace of what had come before. They chased a figment, a dream that was just as much a return to ancient Khmer glory

as it was the dawn of a socialist utopian future. it was, somehow, less than zero. On April 17, 1975, the morning the Khmer Rouge broke into Phnom Penh, several officials of the Long Nal government were stranded in the city's Olympic Stadium. The helicopters that would take them into exile had engine. problems. Prime Minister Long-Borrett was one of the stranded officials, reports journalist Elizabeth Becker. Quote, 16 years earlier, he had been Cianuk's Minister of Information and had faithfully criticized Khmer Rouge Bigwig Q. Sampan. Now, Borat was captured by Sampan's cadre.

Reportedly, one of the first acts of the communists was to behead him on the lawns of the private Cirkel Sportif Country Club. As the leaders of the ex-government, it was expected that members of Lawnal's cabinet would be targeted. According to the historian Michael Vickery, quote, the precise fate of other Khmer Republic officials and officers who surrendered at the Ministry of Information on April 17th and 18 is unknown, although it is almost certain that they were executed, end quote. Lawnall himself had gotten out, and he would soon resettle for a time in Hawaii.

The chaos of the Khmer Rouge arrival in Phnom Penh was compounded by the Cambodian New Year, which was taking place at the same time. One seven-year-old girl living in Phnom Penh on April 17th had left to visit family for the holiday, just outside the city. Quote, my sisters were sent back to my house. because we had forgotten some gifts, she writes. But she would not see her sisters again for years. There were white flags everywhere and no bloodbath.

The Khmer Rouge commanders called on ministers and generals who have not run away, in their words, to help restore order and the city was formerly surrendered by the brother of La Nal, the country's former. president. Prince Noradam-Seanuk, Cambodia's chief of state, is in Peking, and he described the victory as the most beautiful page in Cambodia's history. He'll be returning to Phnom Penhap, but when he will, is not certain. Although there were exemplary killings, to use the phrase of Philip Short, quote, of long-haired youths, civilian looters, were the occasional man or woman

rash enough to defy a direct order, there were not systematic killings. Of the remaining 800 foreigners in Phnom Penh, who made their way to the French embassy, considered the final safe haven for them in the city, quote, some had been put in great fear for their lives, yet none was wounded, let alone killed. But by the afternoon

of day one under the new Khmer Rouge government, an order was coming down that suggested something darker to come. Camer Rouge militants in the black pajamas and red scarves told civilians, be it over a bullhorn, in person,

or at gunpoint, to evacuate the city. Just for a few days, they were told. Once the threat of a new American bombing campaign had subsided, this was the policy known as emptying the cities. While in Cambodia, we spoke to our interviewee, known as Auntie, about the first time she and her family saw the Khmer Rouge roll in after winning the war. We were terrified since we were labeled as new people.

It was terrifying because we were forced to evacuate from Phnom Penh and dye our clothes black. And the comrades were cruel every step of the way. At night while we slept, the Khmer Rouge comrades eavesdropped on us from under our house. The whole city, all 2 million people, including the wounded in the hospitals, and there were thousands of wounded, people in surgery having arms and legs amputated, moved off out of the surgery into the streets, to die in the streets. From a 1975, Dateline Report by ABC's Lee Rudichich. All the wounded from all the hospitals, all the civilians living in town, were sent out into

the countryside. Describing the scene in Phnom Penh's northern sector, the historian Vickery writes, quote, the inhabitants were to be given only 10 minutes to prepare provisions for two days and then were to start out of the city on the road northward. Then all the houses were to be searched for valuable goods, such as arms, radios, tape recorders, and bikes, which were to be collected and brought to headquarters. Locked buildings and shops were blasted open with rockies. and their contents carried away, or sometimes destroyed, in a manner which appeared to

be purely looting. Mei Kompat was a 37-year-old banker living in Phnom Penh. In a detailed account he provided to Becker, Kompat recalled the state of the city after one day with the Khmer Rouge at the helm. Quote, even though he had spent the better part of the afternoon counting notes in the quiet chambers of the bank, Kompat could feel the mood. of the city change. He walked out into the hot night, and his head began to swim. Laid before him was a ravaged city, an anxious, empty city. There were no people.

Compat and some relatives made a break for it, and were able to hide from the Khmer Rouge in a village near Phnom Penh, but soon enough they were discovered by soldiers. On day, days two and three of Khmer Rouge rule, writes Philip Short, quote, searches were stepped up for those trying to stay behind. The old and bedridden were simply killed. Forced to join other evacuees on a route out of the city, Compot found, quote, a thick sea of people jammed on the narrow highway, being marched to the countryside by the soldiers in the black pajamas.

The rich still had money and were buying full. food from roadside merchants asking absurd sums, $100 in Cambodian currency for a pound of rice, $50 for a fish caught in a canal. The poor had nothing and went without. The sick lay dying on the roadway. No one stopped to help a stranger. Every day at 4 p.m. they were told to sleep, spilling on top of each other. Before dawn, they woke and were told to march on. They stuck in cliques with people of their own class and background. Like this, Kompat marched for 10 days. We spoke to scholar Ben Kiernan about the human cost of emptying the cities.

I believe about 20,000 people died on those marches, on those forced marches out of the cities. The population of about 2 million people of Phnom Penh, about 20,000 people died in the next few weeks as they were being forced out. They weren't able to bring enough food with them or there were pregnant women and they died giving birth on the way. Many, many people died. 20,000 is my estimate for that. So you can say that wasn't intentional, that the Khmer Rouge weren't deliberately setting out to kill those 20,000 people, but certainly it's the responsibility of their decision to empty the cities without sparing even the hospital patients.

We know the hospitals were evacuated and the patients were expelled from the cities as well. Emptying the cities was a national policy that was meant to begin a national transformation. Cambodian industry would now be totally reoriented toward agriculture. Men and women from the urban areas would now be embedded in the countryside to become farmers and ditch diggers, living and working in cooperatives run by Khmer Rouge soldiers. Paul Pot had told his inner circle that agriculture was, quote, the key to both nation building and national defense. In many respects, as short points out,

Such a pivot to self-sufficient agriculture could have made sense. A 1976 plan drawn up for Thailand by Western social scientists bore, quote, more than a passing resemblance to the radical measures underway in Cambodia. It was not so much a matter of its content, even though this was far more extreme and unrelenting than anything its earliest proponents envisaged. The problem lay in the way it was to be implemented. not irrational or utopian, as a French specialist put it, just cruel and inhuman.

All the while, Paul Pott, Yangtari, and their comrades slipped into Phnom Penh. No celebration of the leader or the party, just a quiet resettlement in what was now a dead city. Good evening. Vietnam, once again, it is in the news. About a lifetime before Chairman Mao told Pulpott to correct himself, he said something else as a young revolutionary. Quote, A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery.

It cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained, and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence. by which one class overthrows another." This was certainly the case in Vietnam in 1975. The revolution that had been declared 30 years earlier would now resume in the aftermath of not one but two immensely destructive wars.

The American War, in particular, reigned around 4 million tons of bombs and half a million tons of napalm on Vietnam. This made for a rather limited foundation for abundant socialism. Quote, besides killing between 2 million and 3 million Vietnamese, and maiming roughly the same number, writes historian Mark Lawrence, quote, fighting had destroyed millions of acres of farmland,

pulverizing the country's industrial facilities. We spoke to an older gentleman, Mr. Nem, now, about what it was like in the years of struggle after the years, American war was over. After the American retreat, our lives were still struggling till then. After a long while, development started to slowly come back. Development meant rice fields production came back too. Before that, all we could eat were millet and cassava.

Difficult time. What's more, there was a vast reserve of bad blood. between the victorious North and the newly incorporated South. Quote, despite the joys of national reunification, bitterness ran just beneath the surface, Lawrence writes. Quote, in the end, North Vietnam simply imposed its rule on the South, permitting Southern revolutionaries a scant role in the government of the Unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam

after it was formally established on July 2, 1976. This would not be a dinner party. It is estimated that tens of thousands of Southerners, linked rightly or wrongly with the previous Saigon regime, they were executed, he writes. Quote, the regime sent at least 200,000 more to re-education camps, most for short periods, but some for several years. Fearing political persecution,

Southerners began to flee the country on rickety floats, and these became known as the boat people. And the Exodus was nothing near the number of refugees as the war itself, but the roughly one million boat people, quote, damaged Vietnam's international image, more than anything, write Grant Evans and Kelvin Rowley. The Exodus continues. They come ashore at the rate of 10,000 a month,

much faster than the United States or any other nation is willing to accept it. At the same time, there was progress. Hanoi's educational reform. and a mass literacy drive achieved near total literacy within a decade. Hanoi also built a health care system from the ground up, below the 17th parallel, bringing a modern and sophisticated system of medicine and treatment to the neglected and rural South. Most of them are not communists, i.e. members of the party, but most of them would feel genuinely that the system of government they have here is the one that they want.

A young guard who lost two brothers and a sister in the bombing explains the allegiance to the state and Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam's late communist leader. Ho Chi Minh tried to solve the problems of our people, to bring happiness to Vietnam. He gained independence for us from the imperialists. We remember his teachings, and both myself and the people love him dearly. With regard to foreign affairs, Vietnam quickly normalized,

relations, even with U.S. friendly governments and organizations. Quote, within one year, writes Becker, Vietnam had established diplomatic relations with 97 nations and belonged to 22 international organizations, including the World Bank, the IMF, and the Asian Development Bank. Ultimately, however, the new Socialist Republic of Vietnam was strapped for money and resources, and deeply desired a normalization with the U.S. and a taste of its attendant wealth. The Americans were not going to make it easy.

Above all, let's keep events in Southeast Asia in their proper perspective. The security and the progress of hundreds of millions of people everywhere depend importantly on us. The Vietnamese may have been the victors, Becker writes, but the spoils were hardly enough to rebuild the land ripped apart during the war. The Vietnamese did not have enough food to feed their own. people. Industries in the South were producing far below capacity, in part because of Hanoi's new economic programs, and also because of a trade embargo imposed by Gerald Ford's

prohibiting the sale of raw material or spare parts to Vietnam. The Americans were not only keeping their previously held embargo in place, they also refused to offer reparations for the war. What many did not know was that President Nixon had promised over $3 billion to Hanoi in secret communications, an entire year's worth of Vietnam's GDP. Hanoi insisted to Washington that this was a pledge that must be honored. The Americans dismissed it as an unofficial, tentative idea from a president who had since left the scene. Washington, meanwhile, became adamant about Vietnam playing ball on one issue that was now part of the culture war at home, the POWs, prisoners of war.

Today, the nation paused to remember on this national prisoners of war and missing in action recognition day. The defense P.O.W.M.I.A accounting agency. The P.O.M.M.I.A. flag. A P.O.M.M.A. bracelet. The president and First Lady have restored the P.O.W.M.M. MIA flag to its original location on top of the White House residents. President Ford said that he would play tough with Hanoi to secure normalization on American terms, and most importantly, to get back the MIAs, American soldiers who had not been declared dead or returned home. That is, missing in action.

This cause, that of the MIA soldiers in Vietnam, whose black and white flag you have probably seen flying over buildings, public, and private, is a well-documented national myth, and it was started by President Richard Nixon. Historian Rick Purlstein has details. One day in the first spring of Richard Nixon's presidency, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announced the existence of from 500 to 1,300 of what he termed P-O-W-M-IAs. Those three letters, M-I-A, are familiar to us now.

The term, however, was a new Nixonian invention. It had used to be that downed flyers not confirmed as actual prisoners were classified not as missing inaction, but killed inaction slash body unrecovered. This new term let the Pentagon and the State Department and the White House refer to these 1,300, later 1,400, as if they were, everyone, one of them actual prisoners, even though every one of them was almost certainly dead. That was part of an attempt to manipulate international opinion, to frame the North Vietnamese communists, as uniquely cruel, even though fewer men were taken prisoner or went missing in

Vietnam than in any previous American war. Upon the war's end, Operation Homecoming actually returned all 587 American prisoners of war. But, quote, Nixon had by then settled on the number 1600 as the number of Americans as P-O-W-M-I-A. So where were the other 1,013? The chairman of the Joint Chiefs promised, quote, We will not rest until all those still-known captive are safe and until we have achieved the best possible accounting for those missing in action. And so, the POWMIA organizations, merchandise, and political lobbying blossomed for decades, despite hearings in Congress that were meant to debunk the issue.

And Hanoi was well aware that the American right, in particular, was using the myth of the MIA POWs to torpedo any normalization with Vietnam. Quote, we have not come this far, said one Vietnamese official, to hold on to a handful of Americans. Meanwhile, writes Becker, the American Left, which blossomed during the anti-war movement, had faded quickly after 1975 and the war's end. One of the reasons the U.S. could retreat into silence about Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Most of those few who wanted to continue affecting national politics would end up absorbed by the Democratic Party that had propagated the war, end quote.

Having won the war, Hanoi faced a new struggle, now diplomatic, to secure some kind of relief from the United States as Vietnam's domestic situation became more and more desperate. Hanoi's leaders promised, quote, a better life in five or ten years,

and even a radio set, a refrigerator, and a TV set for each family. In a Hail Mary that was meant to boost productivity in the South, the government moved thousands of northerners to new economic zones in the South, a grim echo to some of the forced migration caused by the American Strategic Hamlets Program. But foreign capital was the key, the bottom line. As far as Hanoi was concerned, it had to be secured at all costs. The first stories of life under the Khmer Rouge came from Cambodians who had managed to slip

into Thailand. The stories sounded almost mythical, and in some sense they were. Quote, refugees said Cambodians wearing eyeglasses were killed, writes Becker, because the Khmer Rouge thought only intellectuals wore eyeglasses. They said all toys were banned. They said there were no dogs left in the country because starving people had killed them all for food. These were exaggerations, but they were exaggerations such as our fables, based on a truth too awful to explain. The eyeglasses fable reflected how the Khmer Rouge had targeted intellectuals as dangerous and killed thousands simply for having an education. The toys appropriately represented the loss of childhood for Cambodia's youngsters, who now had to work like

adults. End quote. What was it like this new reality in Democratic Campocia? The Khmer Rouge comrades separated the new people and old people. At night, the comrades would spy on the new people. Once the comrades identified their targets, the selected new people would be arrested and executed. Whole families would disappear. Firstly, a massive rearrangement of the economy. Evacuation and emptying of all the cities of Cambodia, deploying the labor force of the cities into the countryside to develop rice production and focusing totally on rice production.

One of the most, the easiest symbol was turning a basket upside down. So you turn the society upside down. There are no more relationships. They get rid of all. relationships. They close every house of worship, Buddhist temples, mosques, churches. They close schools. They close the marketplace. They break up families. They break up the military. Everybody goes off to the countryside, which is the pure countryside. Now remember, Cambodia has never had a problem with famines or food. So this is not solving a particular food crisis. This is following to the letter

some abstract radical ideas about what you do in mid-20th century if you're a radical communist revolution. From the first moment, this new society was one of secrets and silence. Not everyone even knew, for example, that Pulpott and his inner circle had taken over. There was no triumphant ceremony to inaugurate a new socialist nation based on Marxist-Leninist principles. In fact, the new constitution did not even mention communism. The authorities, be they local cadres, or the idea of the central government, were simply referred to as Anka, the organization. Anka abolished everything deemed incompatible with its bold vision of a breakneck march

to utopia. Money, markets, familial ties, religious expression, romantic freedom, cultural difference. society was divided into two categories, new people and old people. New people, the city dwellers or townspeople forcibly relocated, were treated more or less as serfs, often kept on a starvation diet. Old people, marked as slightly higher in status due to their connection to peasant life, received better rations. All were ordered to wear black pajamas.

If they did not own any, they had to have. had to dye their existing clothes. The country was divided into six zones, each governed by a party boss. The western zone, northwest zone, north zone, northeast zone, eastern zone, and southwestern zone. In the middle of the country was the center. Meanwhile, outside of Cambodia, all lines of communication went dead. Quote, the Khmer Rouge withdrew voluntarily from the international community, in fact from the 20th century, as had few revolutionaries before them, writes Becker. They cut off international telephone, telegram, and cable connections. There was no international mail service. All regular airline service, save occasional flights from Beijing and

Hanoi, halted. The borders were closed and mined. The maritime boundaries were patrolled. No one entered or left the country without permission under penalty of death. They forced us to work all the time. For children like me, they forced us to carry salt from one place to another. They forced us to work non-stop. We weren't allowed to have any free time. Democratic Cambodia has been described as a slave society. society. Everyone, man, woman, and child, worked all day every day. You would wake up at six

and work up to 12 hours, maybe longer. Your one day off was dedicated to political education. Because money was abolished, no one was paid. This was not out of the achievement of socialist abundance, quite the opposite. Quote, there were no wages, writes Philip Short. No one was able to decide what to eat, when to sleep, where to live, or even whom to marry. This was life every hour of every day. Failing to adhere to this system, or arguing any part of it, would cost you a ration, or, depending on the temperament of the local cadres, perhaps your life. The bank worker who had lived in Phnom Penh, Compat, had since been forced to drag himself around the province until settling in a village north of the capital.

In his cluster, Becker-Rillays, quote, Kompat was assigned to a production unit with 12 other adults and given his family's first monthly ration of food. 30 pounds of rice for every full-time worker. 15 pounds for those who worked part-time, nothing for the children who were expected to share the adult's rice. That was it. No fish, vegetables, oil, or meat.

Finally, Kumpot was utterly frightened. I decided to give it two years, he said. If nothing changed, I would commit suicide. The reason for such a labor system, according to Anka, was to create a new economy from the ground up. Work meant development. Development meant industry and abundant food, which meant a booming population,

and with that, a strong, independent Campuchia. One phrase used throughout the country had an oddly capitalistic sound to it, quote, If you keep this man, there is no profit, and if he goes, there is no loss. Compat learned the literalism of this phrase rather quickly. I finally understood what it meant to be called to go study. Those people were murdered. Those of us who were spared were to become work. animals. Penbun Piv, an ex-state pharmacist, gave an interview on life under Anka to Wilfred

Burchett. Quote, the work was insupportable. I was forced to produce natural manure, a mixture of human and animal excreter. My wife had to work on building dikes, my smaller brothers and sisters on building dams. Then I was yoked to a cart for transporting rice. Later, with five other companions, under the whips, threats, and strict surveillance of the Anka guards, I was yoked to a plow to till the soil in the rainy season of June 1976. But this brave new world envisioned by Anka was unlikely to be built by a population staggered by hunger, disease, and malnutrition. Here, the distinction between new people and old people was very significant.

Penbun Piv recalled, quote, despite the heavy nature of the work, all we got was a bowl of soup in which swam a few grains of rice, a ration of one kilogram for a hundred persons. Of his five companions under the whip, forced to plow in the rainy season, only Penn survived.

I was around 10 years old and I didn't have enough food to eat. They gave us very little rice, so we secretly picked water hyacinths, plants, to eat. We steamed the stalks and ate them with salt water. We ate them until all of us looked swollen and really sick. With poor rations and unaccustomed to the work, writes Becker, new people fell prey to malnutrition and disease far more easily than old people.

They died from diarrhea, dysentery, malaria, and typhoid. Epidemics were so widespread that first year that the Khmer Rouge broke their golden rule of self-sufficiency and asked for DDT from an American charity to help control mosquitoes carrying malaria. Location mattered as well. Even in the northwest where conditions were generally worst, reports short, there were villages where the new people had as much rice as they could eat.

At the same moment, 30 miles to the south, others were so desperate for food that cannibalism was rife, and a third of the deportees died before the year was out. Relatively few who died from overwork, disease, or political execution were rich, or traditionally bourgeois Cameras. Cambodia, after all, was still quite underdeveloped, and most victims were of humble origin, be they workers, teachers, fishermen, or, of course, political operators due for a purge. Anka destroyed virtually all hubs of existing education, from primary school up to technical institutes and academies. One party leader told Becker, quote,

The revolution rejected all engineers and technicians of the old society because they had not the consciousness to build the country for the needs of the people. end quote. The new revolutionary alternative was more work. Quote, barefoot children nervously trying to repair broken mechanical parts, memorizing how to thread wires in a dynamo. The old method of educating engineers was too timely and costly. They claimed that after the first six months of teaching these nearly illiterate children,

basic calculation and science, they would have the scientific training of a third class, class baccalaureate in Paris. Anka wanted to develop agriculture, Birchett notes, but they killed all the technicians and agronomists while closing factories one after another because of a lack of raw materials and workers. These are people with zero true experience running anything.

So they have no idea how their extremely radical program is going to be very, very hard to implement their incompetence. I cannot, for this whole thing, just remember they're incompetent. We will get to the leaders of Anka, who had not yet announced themselves. But who were the people on the ground carrying all of this out? Quote, every Camer Rouge cadre could automatically act in the name of Anka, said Kang Vansak, the expat professor who had once provided a young Salasar with an apartment in Paris.

He, or she, was absolved of any sense of personal responsibility for the murder and torture committed in Anka's name. Denise Afonko, a French woman married to a Sino-Kamare man in Cambodia, later told Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett that the attitude of the Khmer Rouge soldiers varied greatly. Some shared their food, and perhaps even a bottle of alcohol, while others were cold and brutal. Burchett himself supplies a darker portrait.

Quote, teenagers with murderous weapons in their hands were convinced that theirs was a just and historic mission. Their task was to track down and murder their own and their country's class enemies, end quote. Kang Van Sack was even blunter. Giving illiterate kids' guns after such indoctrination, can anyone be astonished at the results? Scared of anything which smelled of authority, overnight they became authority, with arms at

their disposal to enforce it, and no questions asked as to how or why they exercised their death-dealing power, end quote. Anka began their revolution at a stage most communist countries would consider extreme as a goal, much less as a starting point, writes Becker. Since they built their party and revolution without the active support, court or legitimacy of the communist world, much less the Cambodian population, they learned to trust no one. Everything was secret. With victory, their vigilance was heightened, not relaxed. One of the first confrontations the Khmer Rouge faced coming into power was not with the remnants of

the old regime. but long-simmering disputes with their wartime allies, the Vietnamese. As mentioned earlier this season, Vietnam was the crown jewel of France's colonies in Indochina, and the empire had on occasion redrawn local borders at the expense of Cambodia. One of the most infamous was the so-called Brevié line, running through the Gulf of Thailand, which lopped off islands close to Cambodian shores and ceded them to Vietnam. According to the journalist Nayan Chanda,

quote, within weeks of the capture of Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge units had fanned out to secure their land and sea border. Troops were dispatched to the Gulf of Thailand to take control of the islands that the old regime controlled or claimed. This triggered a crisis

in which Khmer Rouge forces attempting to secure territory from Vietnam ended up capturing an amazing. American merchant ship, the SS Mayaguez. Senator James Buckley, Republican from New York, summed up the hawkish view of what to do. This is an act of piracy, nothing more, nothing less, and there's only one kind of answer that will be understood

and keep this sort of thing from happening to the future, and that is immediate retaliation. So I've recommended that the president to order an immediate clinical airstrike against appropriate targets. Henry Kissinger, carrying on the tradition of madman theory, decided that America should be seen to lash out, hitting Cambodia with a mixture of bombing and a marine assault. But when the Cambodians who had captured the American ship attempted to dock it, Khmer Rouge guards demanded they move it somewhere else.

Evidently, they did not want their cities to once again become targets for American bombs. The boat was forced to dock at another island, and the Americans were set free. But by the time the Khmer Rouge had broadcasted a statement announcing the unconditional release of the American sailors from a different location, the Marines had already kicked off their assault on an island where no Americans were to be found. A completely meaningless fight in which no Americans were saved because they were not there and had already been released, claimed the lives of 41 U.S. military personnel, technically the last to die in America's war in Indochina.

It is unknown how many Cambodians died in this last fit of American bombing urged by Henry Kissinger. Despite the boasts of the Americans, writes Elizabeth Becker, it was not they who were the victors in the Mayaguez face-off, but the Vietnamese. The U.S. knocked out much of the Khmer Air Force and did considerable damage to its Navy. The Khmer Rouge had to shelve their plan to engage the Vietnamese in further battles for the offshore islands, end quote. The Cambodians apologized for the island disputes and signed a new economic deal with Vietnam later that summer. Pol Pot and company would step back and bide their time. And there's no question that Sianuk will be only a figurehead while Q Sampan and his friends will run things in Cambodia.

Prince Sianuk had returned to Cambodia in September 1975 to celebrate the liberation of his country. He was greeted by saffron-robed monks, among the last not to have been defrocked by the Khmer Rouge, writes Philip Short. Quote, Palms, black-clad Khmer Rouge girls scattered flowers at Sionuk's feet, a carefully selected crowd of revolutionary soldiers and workers, and representatives of Anka were led by Q Sampan. It was a moment to savor, and Paulepot himself came to watch, hidden behind the pack of welcoming officials. Sionuk did not see Pauld and was never told that he had been there."

After this visit in the fall of 75, in which he was treated like the prince that he was, Sienuk decided to return permanently to Cambodia from his exile in Beijing and Pyongyang. He knew the shape that Democratic Campuchia was taking. He knew the Khmer Rouge were making war against the old society that he had tried to build and sustain for practically his entire life. Yet at the end of the day, he felt he belonged in Kampioreau. Cambodia in this new chapter. Sionuk's figurehead status legitimized the Khmer Rouge and lended Pol Pot, Yeng Sari, and

Kusampan national prestige and credibility, just as it had during the war. For the prince, it was less of a win. Publicly, he had returned to the royal palace to once again oversee a free Cambodia. Privately, he was placed under house arrest by the true rulers in the Anka. still served a purpose. He was the face of the nation. He was a diplomatic presence to trot out at the United Nations, or to receive envoys from the communist bloc who favored him so much. But he had been on tours of the countryside. He heard whispers of atrocities, and he knew what was becoming of his country. It bowled me over, he later wrote. My people had been transformed

into cattle. Sionuk now lived in what he called a golden cage, enjoying banana flambes, short writes, while many members of his family were sent out into the countryside, never to return. Sionuk's former hosts in Beijing had by now become the only nation in the world with any true channels open to Democratic Campuchia. Philip Short writes, notwithstanding Mao's reservations about the system Paul wished to build,

held, reservations shared by Joe Inlai and Deng Xiaoping, China had already decided to give his regime all-out support, end quote. The main reason? Vietnam, which both Beijing and Anka were beginning to see as a powerful and dangerous enemy in their midst. Ho Chi Minh's Min's high-wire diplomacy, Wright Evans and Rowley, had sheltered Vietnam from the stormier blasts of the Sino-Soviet dispute. After 1975, this became impossible. Without giving up Soviet aid, Vietnam did make concessions to Chinese demands in 1975 and 6. At the same time, Vietnam and China disputed ownership of the Spratly and Paracel Islands, a rift that has persisted to this day. And then there was the issue of the Hoa, or Chinese nationals, in Vietnam.

In a policy meant to consolidate state control, Vietnam began to tighten controls over Chinese-run schools, Chinese papers, and lean on the Hua to register Vietnamese citizenship. Complicating this was the fact that commerce, especially in the South, was the purview of Chinese living in Vietnam. Evans and Rowley even refer to it as an oligarchy. As a move against the Hua, as many as 30,000 businesses were nationalized. Thus began a pointed struggle between China and Vietnam over the Hua. Vietnam claimed that it had the right to seize everyone's businesses

and apply citizenship to everyone living in Vietnam. China accused the Vietnamese of persecution. The Vietnamese, right Evans and Rowley, announced that China could take back all the Hua in Vietnam if it wanted. wanted. But Vietnam refused to agree that the Hua had been unjustly persecuted. Beijing, despite claiming to speak up for the Hua, began to refuse this repatriation, and they closed the border to those who were looking to move back to China. Quote, by this time, Hanoi was convinced that the whole affair was an attempt by China to destabilize Vietnam.

And so, quote, in the end, it was Real Politique. opposition to Vietnam, that brought China and Cambodia together, writes Philip Short. From then on, the two parties rarely discussed ideological matters, and when they did, they failed to agree, end quote. But Chinese support, military, economic, and diplomatic, was a key resource for the increasingly isolated Khmer Rouge. The one thing was, the Khmer Rouge still hadn't announced that it was a Marxist government. Quote, Paul would wait one year before announcing a new government, writes Becker. But even then, he would refuse to acknowledge that Cambodia was run by a communist party, or that the man called Paul Pot was the former Salasar, end quote.

And then, in September 1976, Mao Zedong died. From New York, this is ABC News. Now, Harry Reesner. Good evening. Mousadong, the most powerful influence on China since Confucius, has died at the age of 82. What finally brought the enfeebled old Lion Down was not announced. He's been very ill for years, and has not so far as is known, received any foreign visitors since June. Mao's death leaves only one man, Tito of Yugoslavia, of the group of 20th century revolutionaries

who were not only leaders, but cults near deities of their nations. A week after Mao's death, Pol Pot announced to the world that Anka was a Marxist-Leninist organization. Perhaps it was timed to appease Beijing, who had long called for the Khmer Rouge to announce themselves as socialists aligned with China. Or perhaps it was genuine confidence, for all their secrecy until this point. the Khmer Rouge believed they had already achieved the first stage of socialist revolution and were ready to launch their own super great leap forward.

Prince Sionuk, meanwhile, rolled his eyes at what he saw as a bunch of pencil-necks celebrating, quote, instant communism. For example, writes Sianuk. In these years, Q Sampan was fond of telling me that Kim Il-sung's North Koreans were, quote, on the wrong track, end quote. if they wanted to make their country truly communist. Kim Il-sung, the Khmer Rouge said,

had raised the standard of living and developed the economy too much. Now the North Koreans have fine houses and cars, nice cities. The people are too attached to their new life, Kempan said. They will never want to start or even fight in a new war, their only hope of liberating South Korea and reuniting their country, end quote. Another time, Sunokur Joe and Lai warn Q and Yang Sari's wife against their all-or-nothing approach, reports Wilfred Burchett.

Quote, Joe reiterated that China itself had experienced disastrous setbacks in the fairly recent past by trying to make a giant leap forward and move full speed ahead into pure communism. The great Chinese statesmen counseled the Khmer Rouge leaders don't follow the bad example of our great leap forward. forward. Take things slowly. That is the best way to guide Campuchia and its people to growth, prosperity, and happiness, end quote. In an eerie repeat of Paul's earlier conversation with Mao, the Khmer Rouge leaders just smiled. A mere year after their victory, the Khmer Rouge claimed they had eliminated capitalism and established socialism, and that they would build a thriving, rich society by the year 1990. With apparent confidence in the results, the shadowy Anka formed and announced an official government for democratic Kempuchia.

The official head of state was Kusampan. Once a brainy student getting clubbed off his bike by Sianuk's police, he had actually been presumed dead for several years, one of the so-called three ghosts. Now, with his big hair and slim figure, he was still a high-level player, though his post was largely ceremonial. Quote, Pol Pot placed growing trust in him, bright short. He was passive, but loyal, incorruptible, but small-minded, end quote. His two fellow ghosts, Houn, had briefly served in government. until disappearing into thin air once again, this time permanently. If there was a Kissinger to Paul Potts Nixon, it was Yang Sari.

He shared Kissinger's receding hairline and toothy grin, not to mention his ruthlessness. Quote, now he would address the United Nations and the world as foreign minister of Democratic Campuchia, writes Becker. Yang Sari had been born into a Khmer family from southern Vietnam. and he possessed the zeal of a fanatical member of the diaspora. Quote, he became identified with the xenophobia of Cambodia, refusing offers of aid and asserting Cambodia's complete non-alignment. When foreign affairs became more important in the later years of Democratic Campuchia,

Sari was deputized to create and carry out a plan to help save the country. He was one of the worst offenders of nepotism, writes Philip Short, systematically placing his children and nephews in high posts for which they were unsuited. He was not alone. Nuan Chia, second in command of the party, Paul Pot's right-hand man,

quote, authorized his mother, a devout old lady who lived in the northwest, to keep a Buddhist monk, almost certainly the only practicing monk in the country, to recite sutras for her. Still, compared to the other post-colonial ruling cliques, the Khmer Rouge leaders lived in relatively modest, if not austere, conditions. Quote, at less exalted levels,

cadre's positions in the hierarchy were reflected in the quality of the cramas they wore, silk or checkered cotton, or the number of pens in their breast pocket. And of course, first among equals was Paul Pot, who had now gone public as premier. One of his underlings would later recall, quote, He was very likable, a really nice person. He was friendly, and everything he said seemed very sensible. He would never blame you or scold you to your face.

Another remembers. He was serene, like a monk. Yangtari himself, would later say, even when he was very angry, you could never tell. His face was always smooth. He never used bad language. Many people misunderstood that. He would smile his unruffled smile,

and then they would be taken away and executed. Short finds Paul's enigmatic personality embodied the deadly paradoxes of Khmer Rouge policy. The verbal precaution with which he cloaked brutally simple policies lent his pronouncements in enigmatic quality. Thus, agricultural mechanization was the aim but to get there, it was necessary to use as little machinery as possible. New people were unreliable and in many cases unreformable,

yet it was wrong to treat them all as enemies, and so on. And while he spoke in vague universals, Paul was, in fact, a very particular control freak. Quote, he approved the menus for state reception, sent laundry lists of instructions to provincial officials receiving government guests, chose the announcers for Radio Penhompin and supervised the program's schedules, end quote. Meanwhile, Q. Ponari, Pulpott's wife and Yangt Suri's sister-in-law, was falling deeper into her chronic schizophrenia that manifested itself in violent,

paranoid outbursts against the ultimate other, the Vietnamese. And there was Democratic Campocia's head executioner known simply as, Dutch. He ran the state's infamous pit of torture and death, Toll Slang, to which we will return next time. In the early months of 1977, Hanoi published the text of the letter in which President Nixon promised Vietnam billions after the war. Quote, the U.S. government will contribute to to the post-war reconstruction in North Vietnam without any political conditions whatsoever. U.S. preliminary studies show that programs appropriate for a U.S. contribution will amount to about $3.25 billion in non-refundable aid, end quote. That's roughly $17 billion in today's

dollars, and, as mentioned earlier, would have been an entire year's worth of GDP for Vietnam. which was poverty-stricken at the time. The North Vietnamese told four American congressmen who visited Hanoi recently that President Nixon in a letter promised the North Vietnamese more than $3 billion worth of reconstruction health. The congressman said they never saw the letter, and today the White House said it wouldn't discuss any communications between Nixon and North Vietnam.

The public reading of Nixon's letter came in the middle of negotiations with the fresh-faced administration of President George. Jimmy Carter, who, upon arriving in January 1977, had begun to attempt a new Sunshine policy, a reset with Vietnam. Carter sent a mission from the U.S. government as a gesture of goodwill. Among its assessments, the mission determined that there were no remaining prisoners of war, or anyone falling under the Nixonian label of MIA. Already it was a far cry from President Ford, who had called the victorious Vietnamese government, quote, a bunch of international pirates.

But the liberal-minded delegation were displeased and even shocked to find that the Vietnamese would not back down on their request for U.S. reparations, or aid for reconstruction, as Nixon called it. Leonard Woodcock, one-time president of the United Auto Workers Union, and now liaison with China, was the negotiator. Woodcock, who is no stranger to negotiations from his time in the Union, told the Vietnamese, you are saying in a sense that you will sell us the remains of our MIAs in return for economic aid. No American president or Congress could approve such a deal.

If you are truly interested in better relations with the U.S., you must drop that demand, or the day of normalized relations will be put off by years. Woodcock came back with a report of moderate success, quote, promises of a new Vietnamese bureau for American MIA affairs, normalization of relations, and economic aid in future American Vietnamese talks, reports Becker. President Carter, perhaps getting ahead of himself, declared the mission a superb success and agreed to further meetings in May 77. stated their appreciation for the actions of the Vietnamese government in seeking a resolution of the issues concerning Americans missing during the war in Vietnam.

The Vietnamese representatives stated that due to the goodwill of their government, the issue is being resolved. A familiar face now enters the scene. The new U.S. negotiator, a name listeners may remember from seasons past. Richard Holbrook, who would go on to become a top U.S. diplomat in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. At this stage, Holbrook was a young gun, 35 years old, with a background in Southeast Asia. Holbrook had arrived with what the U.S. team thought was a showstopper, admission of Vietnam into the United Nations, regardless of what happened in Paris,

plus an end to the embargo. Quote, may we go out this afternoon? and announced normalization, Holbrook said. The U.S. has no preconditions. After our embassies are established, we'll lift the trade embargo. But the Vietnamese representative, his old colleague fan, threw cold water on everything. No. Without aid, it is impossible. It was at this moment that the Vietnamese read to the public Nixon's secret letter.

Polbrook soon returned to the negotiating table. Once again, the talks collapsed. But, Becker reports, Carter was true to his word, and in the fall, the U.S. voted to admit Vietnam to the United Nations. As winter fell, the Vietnamese realized they had perhaps overplayed their hand, that the Americans really might refuse to cough up the aid. You just whisper in my ear the amount you'll offer. fam pleaded to Holbrook, and that is enough. No dice.

The State Department and Richard Holbrook came back empty-handed. In a subtle echo of Nixon and anticipating another international crisis just over the horizon, President Carter turned things over to his national security advisor. Another familiar name to our listeners, Spignew Brzynski. Brzynski had a very different idea of how to handle Vietnam, one that would find a place for the Khmer Rouge. For all the unfathomable misery and upheaval inside Cambodia's borders, the first few years of Khmer Rouge rule marked a time of relative stability in the region. But the radicalism, incompetence, and continuing failure of the Khmer Rouge at ruling Cambodia brought Pulpott and his clique back to their roots.

Increasingly, they looked with burning eyes toward Vietnam, the neighbor next door that many of these men had always held responsible for the historical indignities suffered by the Khmer and them personally. 1976 was peaceful, but in late April 1977, two years after the takeover, the Khmer Rouge sparked back to life their feud with Vietnam. The New York Times later got part of the story. Quote, houses at the border crossing point of Tinbien on Highway 2 in southwest Vietnam were burned by forces crossing from Cambodia.

Most of the villagers were said to have fled to Chowdok. At about the same time, two mortar shells struck Chowdok, killing nine civilians in the town, a provincial capital of 40,000 people. The attacks didn't stop there. In the day after the first strike, other villages were shelled. More were evacuated to Chowdok. And within Cambodia, as we mentioned earlier, ethnic Vietnamese were being increasingly singled out for punishment, torture, and death.

With the second Indochina war, only just behind them, Cambodia, Vietnam, and indeed China, were now hurtling towards a new war. One fought among communist neighbors, who not that long ago had been allies. A recent past, now a distant memory. That border has been sensitive for years. Like Europeans during World War II, when you want to start pushing, you start bringing up those old resentments. But Pol Pot definitely needed to blame Vietnam for their problems. And all the documents show that they wanted to do it.

Now, the first time they did it, the Vietnamese pushed them back fine. Then in 78, they started again, and that's when the Vietnamese said enough. A few months earlier, the Khmer Rouge Defense Minister, Sonsen had sent word through the army. Before, Vietnam was our friend, but a friend with a conflict. Now it has become our real enemy. Thank you.