The Khmer Rouge diligently documented its victims such as these,who were presumably executed soon after they were photographed.

The Long Secret Alliance:Uncle Sam and Pol Pot

by John Pilger

T he US not only helped create conditions rhat brought Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge to powerin 1975, but actively supported the genocidal force, politically and financially. By January1980, the US was secretly funding Pol Pots exiled forces on the Thai border. The extent of this

support - $85 million from 1980 to 1986 - was revealed six years later in correspondence betweencongressional lawyer Jonathan Winer, then counsel to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) of the Senate Foreign Re-lations Committee, and the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. Winer said the information hadcome from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). When copies of his letter were circulated, the

John Pilger, based in London, has won numero~ awards for his reporting from Indochina His 1979 TV documentary, Year Zero: The SilentDeath of Cumbodia, is credited with alerting much of the world to the horrors of the Pol Pot regime and the US bombing that preceded it.

No: 62

Reagan admmistration was furious Then land and to ensure that Khmer Rouge baseswIthout adequately explaining why, Winer were fed. CVorkmg through “Task Forcerepudiated the statistics, while not disput- 80” of the Thai .km~; which had liaison of-ing that they had come from the CRS. In ficers with the Khmer Rouge, the Amen-a second letter ro Noam Chomsky, how- cans ensured a constant flow of UN sup-

officer of a crandestine Special Forces goupcode-named “Daniel Boone,” Lvhlch KIS re-sponsible for the reconnaissance of the USbombmg of Cambodia.> By 1980. Co1Eiland was running KEG out of the US

ever, Winer repeated the original charge,which, he confirmed to me, was “abso-lureiy c0rrect.“1

plies, Two US relief aid workers, LindaMason and Roger Brown, later wrote, “The

embassy inscribed as a

Washingron also backedthe Khmer Rouge through theUnited Nations, which pro-Lided Pol Pots vehicle of re-turn. Although the KhmerRouge government ceased toexist in January 1979, whenthe Vietnamese army drove itout, its representatives con-tinued to occupy Cambodia’sUN seat. Their right to do so~vas defended and promotedby Washington as an exten-sion of the Cold War, as amechanism for US revengeon Vietnam, and as part of itsnew alliance with China (PolPot’s principal underwriterand Vietnam’s ancient foe).In 1981, President Carter’snational security adviser,Zbigniew Brzezinski, said, “Iencouraged the Chinese to

Khmer Rouge instruments of torture found at Tuol Sleng school.

Bangkok, where it was de-“humanitarian” organizationResponsible for interpretingsatellite surveillance photos ofCambodia, Eiland became avalued source for some ofBangkok’s resident CVesternpress corps, who referred tohim in their reports as a“Western analyst.” Eiland’s“humanitarian” duties led tohis appointment as DefenseIntelligence Agency (DI.4)chief in charge of the South-east Asia Region, one of themost important positions inUS espionage.

In November 1980, thejust elected Reagan admmis-tration and the Khmer Rougemade direct contact when Dr.Ray Cline, a former deput)director of the CIA, secretlyvisited a Khmer Rouge opera-tional headquarters insideCambodia. Cline was then a

support Pal Pot.” The US, he added,winked publicly” as China sent arms tothe Khmer Rouge through Thailand.z

US Government insisted that the KhmerRouge be fed the US preferred that theKhmer Rouge operation benefit from the

With 50 CIA agents runningWashington’s Cambodiaoperation from Thailand, thedividing line between theinternational relief operationand the US war blurred.

credibility of an intemation-ally known relief operation.“3In 1980, under US pressure,the World Food Programhanded over food worth $12million to the Thai army topass on to the Khmer Rouge.According to former AssistantSecretary of State RichardHolbrooke, “20,000 to 40,000Pol Pot guerrillas benefited.‘14This aid helped restore theKhmer Rouge to a fightingforce, based in Thailand, fromwhich it destabilized Cambo-

foreign policy adviser on President-electReagan’s transitional team. Within a year,according to Washington sources, 50 CIAagents were running Washington’s Cambo-dia operation from Thailand. The dividingline between the international relief opera-tion and the US war became more andmore confused. For example, a Defense In-telligence Agency colonel was appointed“security liaison officer” between theUnited Nations Border Relief Operation(UNBRO) and the Displaced Persons Protec-tion Unit (DPPU). In Washington, sourcesrevealed him as a link between the US gov-ernment and the Khmer Rouge.6

As a cover for its secret war againstCambodia, Washington set up the Kampu-chean Emergency Group (KEG) in the USembassy in Bangkok and on the Thai-Cam-bodian border. KEG’s job was to “monitor”the distribution of Western humanitariansupplies sent to the refugee camps in Thai-

1. Letters from Jonathan Winer to Lany Chartienes, Viet-nam Veterans of America, citing Congressional ResearchService. Oct. 22,1%36. Letter from Winer to Noam Chomsb,June 16. 1987. Telephone communication%ith author,August 1989.2. Elizabeth Becker, Men the U&r MS Over (New YorkSimon and Schuster, lQ86), p. 440.

dia for more than a decade.Although ostensibly a State Department

operation, KEG’s principals were intelli-gence officers with long experience inIndochina. In the early 1980s it was run byMichael Eiland, whose career underscoredthe continuity of American intervention inIndochina. In 1969-70, he was operations

3. Linda Mason and Roger Brown, Rtie, Riualy and Poli-112~ Managing Cambodian Relit# (South Bend, [N: Uni-versity of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 135, 159.4. Wtii Shawcms, The QuaMy of Metqy: Cmbmiiu,Holocausl and hhiern Conscience (London: AndreDeukch, 1%!4), pp. 289,345,395.

The UW as a BaseBy 1981, a number of governments, in-cluding US allies, became decidedly uneasyabout the charade of continued UN recog-nition of Pol Pot as legitimate head of thecountry. This discomfort was dramaticallydemonstrated when a colleague of mine,Nicholas Claxton, entered a bar at the UNin New York with Thaoun Prasith, Pol Pot’srepresentative. “Within minutes,” said

5.williamshawc~sideduno:Nizon,KicsingerundIheDedbuetion QfCIrmbcdiu &ondonz Andre Deutsch, 1979).6. The colonel’s role was %ade plain” at a meeting withstaffmembmsoftheSenateInte~~Commit&eeonFeb.10,1990,accordingtoJohnPedler,~~atthemeeting

6 FALL 1997

Clayton, “the bar had emptied.”Clearly; something had to bedone, In 1982, the US and China,supported by Singapore, in-vented the Coahtion of theDemocratic Government ofKampuchea, which was, as BenKiernan pointed out, neither acoalition, nor democratic, nor agovernment, nor in Kampuchea.’Rather, it was what the CIA calls“a master illusion,” Cambodia’sformer ruler, Prince NorodomSihanouk, was appointed itshead; otherwise little changed.The Khmer Rouge dominatedthe two “non-communist” mem-bers, the Sihanoukists and theKhmer People’s National Libera-tion Front (KPNLF). From his of-fice at the UN, Pol Pot’s ambas-sador, the urbane ThaounPrasith, continued to speak forCambodia. A close associate ofPol Pot, he had in 1975 calledon Khmer expatriates to returnhome, whereupon many ofthem “disappeared.”

The United Nations was nowthe instrument of Cambodia’spunishment. In all its history, theworld body has withheld devel-opment aid from only one ThirdWorld country: Cambodra. Notonly did the UN - at US andChinese insistence - deny the govern-ment in Phnom Penh a seat, but the majorinternational financial institutions barredCambodia from all international agree-ments on trade and communications. Eventhe World Health Organization refused toaid the country At home, the US denied re-Iigious groups export licenses for booksand toys for orphans. A law dating from theFirst World War, the Trading with the EnemyAct, was applied to Cambodia and, of course,Vietnam. Not even Cuba and the SovietUnion faced such a complete ban with no hu-manitarian or cultural exceptions.

By 1987, KEG had been reincarnated asthe Kampuchea Working Group, run bythe same Col. Eiland of the Defense Intel-ligence Agency The Working Group’s briefwas to provide battle plans, war materiel,and satellite intelligence to the so-called“non-communist” members of the “resis-tance forces.” The non-communist fig leafallowed Congress, spurred on by an anti-Vietnamese zealot, then-Rep, StephenSolarz (D-NY), to approve both -overt” and

7.InsideAsin, Feb.andJune1985.Kienxanisnowpmgramdirector of Yale University5 Cambodian Genocide Program.

Khmer Rouge cadre in an undated photo.

“covert” aid estimated at $24 million to the“resistance. * Until 1990, Congress ac-cepted Solar? specious argument that USaid did not end up with or even help PolPot and that the mass murderer’s US-sup-plied allies “are not even in close proxim-ity with them [the Khmer Rougel.“s

of the US and Chinese position that theKhmer Rouge be part of a settlement inCambodia. “It is journalists,” he said,“who have made them into demons.“9

Weapons from West Germany, the US,and Sweden were passed on directly bySingapore or made under license by Char-

tered Industries, which isowned by the Singapore gov-

The “trial” of Pol Pot was awonderful Khmer Rouge

ernment. These same weap-ons were captured from theKhmer Rouge. The Singaporeconnection allowed the Bush

theater-cum-media-event, administration to continue itssecret aid to the “resistance.’

but was otherwise worthless. ;;;et~y$p~e;;;;;;gress in 1989 banrung evenindirect “lethal aid” ;o Pol

Pot. lo In August 1990, a former member ofthe US Spe&l Forces disclosed that he hadbeen ordered to destroy records thatshowed US munitions in Thailand going tothe Khmer Rouge. The records, he said, im-plicated the National Security Council, the9. BBC Shortwave Broadcast Summary, 199%10. Cambndia: The B&n& Central Television, 1990.

Military linksWhile Washington paid the bills and theThai army provided logistics support,Singapore, as middleman, was the mainconduit for Western arms. Former PrimeMinister Lee Kuan Yew was a major backer

8. New Yti Zmq May 14,19S9.

NUMBER 62 7

president's foreign policy advisory body.”In 1982, when the US, Chinese, and

ASEAN governments contrived the “coali-tion” that enabled Pol Pot to retainCambodia’s UN seat, the US set abouttraining and equipping the “non-commu-nist” factions in the “resistance” army.These followers of Prince Sihanouk andhis former minister, Son Sann, leader ofthe KPNLF, were mostly irregulars andbandits. This resistance was nothing with-out Pol Pot’s 25,000 well-tramed, armed,and motivated guerrillas, whose leader-ship was a cknowledged by P r inceSihanouk’s military commander, his son,Norodom Ranar iddh. “The KhmerRouge.” he said, are the "major attackingforces“ whose victories were -celebratedas our own." 12

The guerrillas’ tactic, like that of the

of that rum, American power would againassert itself in Indochina.

The British - who have had specialmilitary forces in Southeast Asia sinceWorld War II --- also played a key role insupporting Pol Pot‘s armed force. After the“Irangate” arms-for-hostages scandal brokein Washington in 1986, the Cambodiantraining became an exclusively British op-eration. “If Congress had found out thatAmericans were mixed up in clandestinetraining in Indochina, let alone with PolPot,” a Ministry of Defense source toldSimon O’Dwyer-Russell of the London Sun-day Telegraph, “the balloon would havegone right up, It was one of those classicThatcher-Reagan arrangements. It was putto her that the SAS should take over theCambodia show, and she agreed.“13

Some of Cambodia’s refugees at a UN-run camp controlled by the KPNLF.

Contras in Nicaragua, was to terrorize thecountryside by setting up ambushes andseeding minefields. In this way, the govem-ment in Phnom Penh would be destabilizedand the Vietnamese trapped in an untenablewar: its own “Vietnam.” For the Americansin Bangkok and Washington, the fate ofCambodia was tied to a war they had tech-nically lost seven years earlier. “Bleeding theVietnamese white on the battlefields ofCambodia” was an expression popular withthe US policy-making establishment. De-stroying the crippled Vietnamese economyand, if necessary, overturning the govem-ment in Hanoi, was the ultimate goal. Out

1 I. San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 12 and 15,199O.12. In 1990 Ranariddh said that, in a proposed attack on

Pol Pot’s WashingtonImpunity

Shortly after the start of the Gulf War inJanuary 1991 , President Bush describedSaddam Hussein as “Adolf Hitler revis-ited.“‘+ Bush’s call for “another Nuremberg”to try Saddam under the Genocide Con-vention was echoed in Congress and acrossthe Atlantic in London.

It was an ironic distraction. Since theoriginal Fuhrer expired in his bunker, the

Siem Reap, The Khmer Rouge will be the major attackingforces,“Associated Press, Oct. 11,1990;Indochina Digest,Oct. 6,199O. His separate Statement that Sihanoukists cel-ebrated Khmer Rouge victories as their own was reportedin theSunday Correspondent (London), Nov. 5,1989.13. As told to O’Dwyer-Russell by a Defense Ministrysource, and relayed to the author.

US has maintained a network of dictatorswith Hitlerian tendencies - from Suhartoin Indonesia to Mobutu in Zaire and a va-riety of Latin American mobsters, many ofthem graduates of the US Army School ofthe Americas. But only one has been iden-tified by the world community as a genu-ine “Adolf Hitler revisited.” whose crimesare documented in a 1979 report of the UNHuman Rights Commission as “the worstto have occurred anywhere in the worldsince Nazism.“” He is, of course, Pol Pot.who must surely wonder at his good for-tune. Not only was he cosseted, his troopsfed, supplied, and trained. his envoys af-forded all diplomatic privileges. but - un-like Saddam Hussein - he was assured byhis patrons that he would never be broughtto justice for his crimes.

These assurances were given publicly in1991 when the UN Human Rights Sub-commission dropped from its agenda adraft resolution on Cambodia that referredto “the atrocities reaching the level of geno-cide committed in particular during theperiod of Khmer Rouge rule.“!” No more.the UN body decided, should membergovernments seek to “detect, arrest, extra-dite or bring to trial those who have beenresponsible for crimes against humanity inCambodia.” No more are governmentscalled upon to “prevent the return to gov-ernment positions of those who were re-sponsible for genocidal actions during theperiod 1975 to 1978.“”

Such guarantees of impunity for thegenocidists were also part of the UN ‘peaceplan” drafted by the permanent membersof the Security Council: that is, by theUnited States. To avoid offending Pol Potsprincipal backers, the Chinese, the plandropped all mention of “genocide,” replac-ing it with the euphemism: “policies andpractices of the recent past.“18 On this,Henry Kissinger, who played a leading partin the mass bombing of Cambodia in theearly 1970s, was an important influence.!’

Western propaganda prior to the UN“peace process” in Cambodia concentrated

14. The Guardian (London), Oct. 16,199l.15. Cited by Penny Edwards, The Guardian, Nov. 4, 1989.16.Agence France Presse report from Geneva, Aug.30.1990.17. Ben Kiernan, The Cambodian Genocide: Issues andResponses, p. 28.18. Ibid, p. 29.19. On June 5, 1990, The Times (London) reported Kissingera s s a y i n g , “ l w o u l d n o t b e s u r p r i s e d i f 1 0 y e a r s f r o m n o w ,China, even following its present course, will appear like afreer country than Russia and a more prosperous one." InJuly 1989, Kissnger , wha has strong business interests inChiqhadurgedEW-ttogivetheBeijingregime’mostfa-wed nation” trading status, despite the bloody events inTiananmen Square only weeks earlier. He regards the Chi-neseleademhipasamoderatingin&hmeinSou~kiaand supports China' "present course.”

8 FALL 1997

STEVE GRAWIIYPACT VISUALS

A display near Phnom Penh shows the remains of some 20,000 genocide victims from more than 200 burial sites.

on the strength of the Khmer Rouge, so asto justify their inclusion. UN officials andAmerican and AustraIian diplomats talkedabout 35-40.000 Khmer Rouge. “You willunderstand,” they would say, “we can’tleave a force as powerful as that outside thetent.“ As soon as the Khmer Rouge had beenwelcomed back to Phnom Penh and, in ef-fect, given a quarter to a third of the coun-tryside, they refused to take part in the elec-tions. The tune then changed. They werenow “finished,” chorused Western diplo-mats. They were “weakened beyond hope.”

In the meantime, the Khmer Rouge wasestablishing itself as the richest terroristgroup in history by selling off tracts ofCambodia’s forests, as well as its preciousstones, to the Thai, whose government wasa signatory to the “peace accords.” No onestopped them. They established four largenew bases inside Thatland, complete with afield hospital. Thai soldiers guarded the roadthat led to them. The “they are finished” lineremains in vogue to this day. Undoubtedly,they have been numerically diminished bydefections and attrition, but their numberwas always a false measure of their truestrength. It seems the State Department be-lieves they are far from finished. OnJuly 10

this year, the spokesperson Nicholas Bumslet slip that Khmer Rouge strength ran into“thousands.“20

The real threat from the Khmer Rougecomes from their enduring skill at deceptionand infiltration. Before they seized power in

truth is that no one on the outside can re-ally say what these are, and that alone is ameasure of the organization’s strength andresilience. The Cambodian leader Hun S e n ,for one, clearly retains a respect for the ve-racity and menace of their ambitions.

The media relish Pol Potas a uniaue monster. That

Pol Pot’s patrons not onlycosseted him, fed, supplied,and trained his troops, butalso guaranteed him impunity.

deserve proper recognition.of,“,‘, ;S;;;;o;;~~;Ir;~;

is too easy and too danger-ous. It is his Faustian part-ners in Washington, Beijing,London. Banekok, Singa-pore, and elsewhere who

verging aims in the region.Eric Falt, the UN’s senior

1975, they had honeycombed Phnom spokesperson in Phnom Penh at the timePenh. This process is almost certainly under of that manipulated organization’s “tri-way again. As one resident of Phnom Penh umph” in Cambodia, told me with asaid recently, “They’re everywhere.” fixed smile, “The peace process was

The “trial” of Pol Pot this year was a aimed at allowing [the Khmer Rouge] towonderful piece of Khmer Rouge theater- gain respectability.“” Unfortunately,cum-media-event, but was otherwise many ordinary Cambodian people shareworthless as an indication of the organiza- his cynicism. They deserve better. ntion’s strength and immediate aims. The

20. State Department Brie&g transcript, US State De- 21. Interviewed by the author on tilm for Return to Yearpartment, July 10,1997. Zero, Central Television, London, broadcast March 1992.

NUMBER 62 9