Milton Osborne, Before
Kampuchea
(London: Allen & Unwin, 1980), p.
Manufacturing Consent - Chomsky
171.
3. On this period, see, among others, Haney, "U. S. Involvement in Laos"; Noam Chomsky, At War with Asia (New York: Pantheon, 1970; hereafter A WWA); Nina S. Adams and Alfred W. McCoy, eds. , Laos: War and Revolu- tion (New York: Harper & Row, 1970); Charles Stevenson, The End ofNowhere (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972).
4. Howard Elterman, The State, the Mass Media and Ideological Hegemony: United States Policy Decisions in Indochina, I974-'75-Historical Record, Gov- ernment Pronouncements and Press Coverage (Ph. D. diss. , New York University, 1978), p. 198.
5. Fall, Anatomy of a Crisis.
6. A request to the (very cooperative) American embassy in Vientiane to obtain their documentation would have quickly revealed to reporters that the claims they were relaying on the basis of embassy briefings had little relation to the facts, as one of us discovered by carrying out the exercise in Vientiane in early 1970. For a detailed review of the available facts concerning foreign (North Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese Nationalist, and U. S. ) involvement through the 1960s, and their relation to what the media were reporting, see A WWA, pp. 203-36; and Noam Chomsky, For Reasons ofState (New York: Pantheon, 1973; hereafter FRS), pp. 178-79. See also chapter 5, p. 177, and note 22.
7. In Adams and McCoy, Laos; excerpts in AWWA, PP. 96-97.
8. On attempts by former Times Saigon bureau chief A. J. Langguth to explain
away the suppression of the bombing of northern Laos by obscuring the crucial distinction between the bombing of the civilian society of the North and the bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail in the South (acceptable within the doctrinal system in terms of "defense of South Vietnam against North Vietnamese aggression"), see Noam Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War (New York: Pantheon, 1982), p. 402.
9? Elterman, State-Media-Ideological Hegemony, pp. 332ff. and appendixes. 10. The report states that "until early this spring, when North Vietnamese troops began a series of advances in northeast Laos," the war had been "lim- ited," U. S. bombing had been aimed at "North Vietnamese supply routes" and "concentrations of enemy troops," and "civilian population centers and farm- land were largely spared. " Extensive refugee reports were soon to show that this account was inaccurate, as Decornoy's eyewitness reports had done fifteen months earlier.
II. See references cited above, and, shortly after, Fred Branfman, Voices from
the Plain ofJars (New York: Harper & Row, 1972); and Walter Haney, "A Survey ~fCivilian Fatalities among Refugees from Xieng Khouang Province, Laos," m Problems of War Victims in Indochina, Hearings before the [Kennedy] Subcommittee on Refugees and Escapees, U. S. Senate, May 9, 1972, pt. 2: "Laos and Cambodia," appendix 2. There were some 1970 reports in the media: e. g. , Daniel Southerland, Christian Science Monitor, March 14; Laurence Stern, Washington Post, March 26; Hugh D. S. Greenway, Life,
April 3; Carl Strock, New Republic, May 9; Noam Chomsky, "Laos," New York Review of Books, July 23, 1970, with more extensive details (reprinted in
AWWA).
12. Haney, PP, V. See FRS, pp. 176f. , on Sullivan's misrepresentation of
Haney's conclusions.
13? Refugee And Civilian War Casualty Problems in Indochina, Staff Report for
the [Kennedy] Subcommittee on Refugees and Escapees, U. S. Senate, Sep- tember 28, 1970.
14? One of the authors participated in a public meeting of media figures in New York, in 1986, at which a well-known television journalist defended media coverage of the bombing of northern Laos on the grounds that there was a report from a refugee camp in 1972. One wonders how much credit would be given to a journal that reported the bombing of Pearl Harbor in
1945?
15? T. D. Allman, Manchester Guardian Weekry, January I; Far Eastern Eco- nomic Review, January 8, 1972 (hereafter FEER); see FRS, pp. 173f. , for a lengthy excerpt. Robert Seamans, cited by George Wilson, Washington Post- Boston Globe, January 17, 1972; see FRS, pp. 172f. , for this and similar testi- mony before Congress by Ambassador William Sullivan. John Everingham and subsequent commentary on the Hmong (Meo) tribes, cited in Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, Political Economy of Human Rights (Boston: South End Press, 1979; hereafter PEHR) II, II9f. ; Chanda, FEER, December 23,
1977; see PEHR, II, 131f. , 340, for these and other direct testimonies, far from the mainstream, with a few noteworthy exceptions cited. Bangkok World, cited by Haney, "U. S. Involvement in Laos," p. 292, along with a Jack Anderson
column in the Washington Post (Feb. 19,1972). On postwar experiences of U. S. relief workers, see PEHR, pp. 132f. , 340 .
NUl"~ Tv "AGI! S 202-263 3113
16. McCoy's emphasis, in a letter to the Washington Post; cited by Haney, "U. S. Involvement in Laos," p. 293.
17. Television commentary reprinted in Christian Science Monitor, June 10,
1975?
18. See A WWA, pp. II9f. , and Haney, "U. S. Involvement in Laos," citing
congressional hearings and the Washington Post, March 16, 1970.
19. Walter Saxon, New York Times, August 24,1975. See PEHR, chapter 5, for further details on this report and general discussion of postwar reporting of Laos.
20. Kimmo Kiljunen, ed. , Kampuchea: Decade of the Genocide, Report of a government-backed Finnish Inquiry Commission (London: Zed, 1984). See also Kiljunen, "Power Politics and the Tragedy of Kampuchea during the Seventies," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (April-June 1985).
21. See William Shawcross, Sideshow (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), and Seymour Hersh, The Price of Power (New York: Summit, 1983).
22. William Shawcross, "The End of Cambodia? " New York Review of Books, January 24, 1980, relying on reports by Fran~ois Ponchaud, a French priest whose work provided the major source ofevidence about Khmer Rouge atroci- ties in 1975-76: Fran~ois Ponchaud, Cambodia: Year Zero (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1978), a revised version of a 1977 French study that became perhaps the most influential unread book in recent political history after a review by Jean Lacouture ("The Bloodiest Revolution," New York Review of Books, Mar. 31, 1977); see also his "Cambodia: Corrections," New
York Review ofBooks, May 26, 1977, withdrawing the most sensational claims. Our review (The Nation, June 25, 1977) was the first, to our knowledge, to attend to the actual text, which appeared in English a year later. See our PEHR, 11. 6, on the record of falsification based on this book, and on Pon- chaud's own remarkable record, further analyzed by Michael Vickery in his Cambodia: I975-I982 (Boston: South End Press, 1984). CIA Research Paper, Kampuchea: A Demographic Catastrophe (Washington: CIA, May 1980). For a critique of this study revealing extensive falsification conditioned by U. S. government priorities-specifically, suppression of the worst Pol Pot atrocities during the later period-see Michael Vickery, "Democratic Kampuchea- CIA to the Rescue," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 14. 4 (1982), and his Cambodia. The latter is the major study of the Khmer Rouge period, by one of the few authentic Cambodia scholars, widely and favorably re- viewed abroad by mainstream Indochina scholars and others but virtually ignored in the United States, as was the Finnish Inquiry Commission report. See Noam Chomsky, "Decade of Genocide in Review," Inside Asia (London, February 1985, reprinted in James Peck, ed. , The Chomsky Reader [New York: Pantheon, 1987]), on several serious studies of the period, in- cluding these.
23. Michael Vickery, "Ending Cambodia-Some Revisions," submitted to the New York Review ofBooks in June 1981 but rejected. See his Cambodia for more extended discussion. Shawcross himself had had second thoughts by then (see "Kampuchea Revives on Food, Aid, and Capitalism," The Bulletin [Australia], March 24, 1981). See his Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust and Modern Conscience (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), for a later version, now recast in ways to which we return.
24. Page 370, blaming Vietnamese deception for the account he had relayed in 1980.
25. Shawcross, The Nation, September 21, 1985; Ben Kiernan, letter to The Nation, October 3,1985, unpublished. For evaluation of the international relief efforts, see Vickery, Cambodia; Kiljunen, Kampuchea; Joel Charny and John Spragens, Obstacles to Recovery in Vietnam and Kampuchea: U. S. Embargo of Humanitarian Aid (Boston: Oxfam America, 1984); Shawcross, Quality of
Mercy.
26. Fran~ois Ponchaud, on whom Shawcross relied, is a highly dubious source for reasons that have been extensively documented; see note 22. No one with a record of duplicity approaching his would ever be relied on for undocu- mented charges of any significance if the target were not an official enemy. 27. Shawcross, Quality ofMercy, pp. 49-50. He observes that "those years of warfare saw the destruction of Cambodian society and the rise of the Khmer Rouge from its ashes, in good part as a result of White House policies"; "with the forces of nationalism unleashed by the war at their command, the Khmer Rouge became an increasingly formidable army," while in the "massive Ameri- can bombing campaign" to which the Khmer Rouge were subjected through August 1973, "their casualties are thought to have been huge. " The phrase "their casualties" presumably refers to Khmer Rouge military forces; there is no mention of civilian casualties. On the limited scope of Shawcross's "quality of mercy," see "Phase III at home" (p. 288), below.
28. Vickery, Cambodia, p. 293.
29. AP, Boston Globe, September 24, 1978, citing the Report of the Interna- tional Labor Organization in Geneva on over fifty million child laborers in the world, with Thailand singled out as one of the worst offenders, thanks to grinding poverty, an effective military government backed by the United States, lack oflabor union power, and "wide-open free enterprise. " See PEHR, 11. 6, 359, for excerpts and other examples that have elicited even less interest, and PEHR, II, xv, on a World Bank description of the situation in Thailand. On the brutal treatment of many of the estimated 10. 7 million child laborers in Thailand, see Human Rights in Thailand Report 9. 1. (January-March 1985) (Coordinating Group for Religion in Society, Bangkok); Thai Development Newsletter 3. 1 1985 (December 1986) (Bangkok). On the treatment of women in "the brothel of Asia," with its estimated 500,000 prostitutes, masseuses, and bar-waitresses, 20 percent of them under fourteen years of age, drawn to Bangkok (and sometimes sold off to Europe) from the impoverished rural areas through "a huge underground network of brothels and workshops feeding on child flesh and labor," see several articles in Beyond Stereotypes: Asian Women
in Development, Southeast Asia Chronicle (January 1985).
30. For extensive evidence on this matter, see PEHR, 11. 6, and Vickery, Cambodia, extending the story to phase III.
31. Others give higher estimates. Ponchaud gives the figure of 800,000 killed, but, as noted in our 1977 review, he seems to have exaggerated the toll of the U. S. bombing, and as shown in the references of note 22, he is a highly unreliable source. "US Government sources put the figure unofficially at 600,000 to 700,000" (CIA demographic study, which accepts the lower figure). 32. Vickery, Cambodia, pp. 184f. Other estimates vary widely. At the low end, the CIA demographic study gives the figure of 50,000 to 100,000 for people
384 NOTES TO P AGES 263-267
NOTES TO P AGES 268-274 385
who "may have been executed," and an estimate of deaths from all causes that is meaningless because of misjudgment of postwar population and politically motivated assessments throughout; the Far Eastern Economic Review reported a substantial increase in the population under DK to 8. 2 million, "mostly based on CIA estimates" (Asia 1979 and Asia 1980 yearbooks of the FEER, the latter reducing the estimate from 8. 2 to 4. 2 million, the actual figure apparently being in the neighborhood of 6. 5 million); in the U. S. government journal Problem~ of Communism (May-June 1981), Australian Indochina specialist Carlyle Thayer suggests a figure of deaths from all causes at 500,000, of which 50,000 to 60,000 were executions. At the high end, estimates range to three million or more, but without any available analysis. As all serious observers emphasize,
the range of error is considerable at every point.
33. George Hildebrand and Gareth Porter, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolu- tion (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976), based on U. S. and international aid reports, cited by Vickery, Cambodia, p. 79; FEER correspondent Nayan Chanda in several articles, cited in PEHR, 1. 6, 229f. ; Western doctor is Dr. Penelope Key, of the World Vision Organization, cited by Hildebrand and Porter, along with similar reports from Catholic Relief Services and Red Cross observers; Shawcross, Sideshow, pp. 370f. Hildebrand and Porter's book, the only extensive study of the situation at the war's end, was highly praised by Indochina scholar George Kahin but ignored in the media, or vilified. See PEHR, 11. 6, 232f. , for a particular egregious example, by William Shawcross in the New York Review ofBooks. When PEHR, 11. 6 was circulating to Cam- bodia scholars and journalists in manuscript, we received a letter from Shaw- cross demanding that references to him be eliminated. We responded that we would be glad to consider any specific case that he found wrong or misleading
and delayed publication of the book awaiting his response, which never ar- rived. On his public response, see below.
34.
Milton Osborne, Before Kampuchea (London: Allen & Unwin, 1980), p. 191; David Chandler, Pacific Affairs (Summer 1983); Philip Windsor, The Listener, BBC (London), July II, 1985.
35. David Chandler and Ben Kiernan, eds. , Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea, Monograph 25/Yale University Southeast Asia Series (1983), p. I.
36. See note 32, above; FEER, January 19, 1979?
37. Douglas Pike, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 29, 1979, and Chn'stian Science Monitor, December 4, 1979; cited by Vickery, Cambodia, p. 65. On the Freedom House and Times assessments of Pike's work, see p. p. 324,326; Fox Butterfield, "The New Vietnam Scholarship," New York Times Magazine cover story, February 13, 1983, where Pike is regarded as the exemplar of the "new breed" of dispassionate scholars.
38. Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), pp. 329, 394, for a detailed analysis of the maneuverings during this period. See also Grant Evans and Kelvin Rowley, Red Brotherhood at War (London: Verso, 1984).
39. Derriere Ie sourire khmer (Paris: PIon, 1971); see FRS, chapter 2, section 2. 40. Vickery, Cambodia, pp. 7, 17, 5-6, 17, 43; ViCKery, "Looking Back at Cambodia," Westerry (Australia) (December 1976). See PEHR, 11. 6 for ex- cerpts from the latter study.
41. See FRS, pp. 192ft'. , and sources cited, particularly the fall 1971 studies by T. D. Allman, based on interviews with members of the Cambodian elite. 42. See Elizabeth Becker, When The War Was Over (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), p. 28, citing a 1963 U. S. embassy cable quoting Sihanouk; Chanda, Brother Enemy, pp. 61f. See A WWA and FRS on contemporary studies of the Sihanouk period that provide more detail.
43. Michael Leifer, "Cambodia," Asian Survey (January 1967). Becker, When the War Was Over, p. 27, asserts that the CIA was behind the 1959 plot. For sources on these developments here and below, largely French, see A WWA and FRS. See Peter Dale Scott in Pp, V, on the regional context of the 1963 escalation.
44. See A WWA and FRS for references and other examples.
45. Bombing in Cambodia, Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services, U. S. Senate, 93d Cong. , 1st sess. , July I August 1973, pp. 158-60, the primary source on the "secret bombings. "
46. See PEHR, 11. 6,288.
47? PEHR, 11. 6, 380; also 383. Shawcross, Quality ofMercy, p. 49, referring solely to B-52 bombings of Vietnamese "sanctuaries" in the border areas, the standard evasion of the issue.
48. See PEHR, 11. 6, 383, where the same point is noted, and its irrelevance discussed. These matters had been specifically brought to Shawcross's atten- tion during the period when he was working on his Sideshow, in commentary (which he had requested) on earlier articles of his on the topic in the British press.
49. William Beecher, New York Times, May 9, 1969; PEHR, 11. 6, 271, 289, 383.
50. Elterman, State-Media-Ideological Hegemony, p. 344. Note that the post- Tet operations were in part reported at the time, although often in the highly distorted framework already discussed. For samples, see A WWA. On media coverage of the Laos bombings in 1969, see "Laos" (p. 253).
51. T. D. Allman, FEER, April 9, 1970; Manchester Guardian, September 18, 1971. See note 41.
52. See FRS, p. 194, and sources cited; see A WWA on media coverage of the invasion.
53. Richard Dudman, Forty Days with the Enemy (New York: H. Liveright, 1971), p. 69?
54. Terence Smith, New York Times, December 5, 1971; Iver Peterspn, New York Times, December 2, 1971. See FRS, pp. 188f. , for citations from U. S. and primarily French sources. See also Fred Branfman, in Pp, V.
55. See FRS, pp. 19~2, for excerpts from Le Monde.
56. Elterman, State-Media-Ideological Hegemony, pp. 335f.
57. Vickery, Cambodia, p. 15.
58. UPI, New York Times, June 22, 1973, citing Pentagon statistics.
59. Shawcross, Sideshow, pp. 272, 297; see p. 262, above.
60. See PEHR, 11. 6, 154f. , 22of. , 365f. , for sources, excerpts, and discussion. 61. E. g. , Henry Kamm, New York Times, March 25, 28, 1973.
62. Becker, When the War Was Over, P. 32.
63. Malcolm Browne, "Cambodians' Mood: Apathy, Resignation," New York Times, June 29, 1973? On the forceful recruiting from "the poorer classes,
386 NOTES TO PAGES 274-283
. . . refugees and the unemployed," including the "poor peasants" who have "poured into the capital" after their villages were destroyed, but not the children of the wealthy elites, see Sydney Schanberg, New York Times, August
4,1973?
64. Kamm, New York Times, March 25, 1973.
65. See Vickery, Cambodia, pp. 9f. , on Buddhism, about which "probably more arrant nonsense has been written in the West . . . than about any other aspect of Southeast Asian life," particularly with regard to Cambodia.
66. Schanberg, New York Times, May 3, 8, July 19, July 30, August 16, August 12, 1973.
67. August 22, 1973. The material reviewed here is from May 3 to August 16. 68. Mostly Malcolm Browne; also Henry Kamm, wire services, specials. We omit brief reports here, and this record may not be complete.
69. Compare, for example, Jon Swain's horrifying account of the situation in the hospitals in Phnom Penh at the time of the 1975 evacuation with Sydney Schanberg's cursory remark that "many of the wounded were dying for lack of care" (Swain, Sunday Times (London), May II; Schanberg, New York Times, May 9, 1975); see PEHR, 11. 6, 370-71, for details.
70. Sunday Times (London), May II, 1975. See PEHR, 11. 6, 249f. , for longer excerpts.
71. Schanberg, New York Times, April 6, 8, 23, 1985.
72. New York Times, October 28, 1984.
73. Editorials, New York Times, April II, 1985; April 7, September 9, 1985. Others do note "America's role in the tragic destruction ofCambodian civiliza- tion," which "renders suspect any belated show of concern for Cambodian sovereignty" (Editorial, Boston Globe, April 12, 1985).
74. Editorial, New York Times, July 9, 1975; also Jack Anderson, Washington Post, June 4, 1975?
75. See PEHR, 11. 6.
76. Our review cited in the preceding footnote was therefore limited to materi- als based on this earlier period, all that was available at the time we wrote. 77. See PEHR, 11. 6, VI; Vickery, Cambodia.
78. PEHR, 11. 6, 135-36, 290, 293, 140, 299.
79. In the only scholarly assessment, Vickery concludes that "very little of [the discussion in PEHR, 11. 6] requires revision in the light of new information available since it appeared. " He also comments on the "scurrilous," "incompe- tent," and "dishonest criticism of Chomsky and Herman which has character- ized media treatment of their work," noting falsifications by William Shawcross, among others (Cambodia, pp. 308, 310).
80. Guenter Lewy, Commentary (November 1984), a typical example of a substantial literature. To our knowledge, Lewy, like other infuriated critics, did not condemn the Khmer Rouge in print as harshly, or as early, as we did. Recall that Lewy has experience with these matters, given his record as an apologist for war crimes, which reaches levels rarely seen. See chapter 5, notes 33,86.
81. John Barron and Anthony Paul, Murder in a Gentle Land (New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1977). Anderson, Washington Post, October I, 1978. Kamm, New York Times Magazine, November 19, 1978, including fabricated photographs; see PEHR, 11. 6,202,253; and 367, 372, on the scholarly literature
describing a country where "the population is ever on the edge of starvation" in earlier years and completely lacking an economy by 1975. Wise, FEER, September 23, 1977? See PEHR, 11. 6, for further examples and details, here and below; and Vickery, Cambodia, for additional evidence.
82. See our citations from his writings in the Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong) and Le Monde diplomatique (Paris), in PEHR, II.
83. Cambodia, p. 48. See also the review of his book by British Indochina scholar R. B. Smith, emphasizing the same point (Asian Affairs [February 1985]).
3. On this period, see, among others, Haney, "U. S. Involvement in Laos"; Noam Chomsky, At War with Asia (New York: Pantheon, 1970; hereafter A WWA); Nina S. Adams and Alfred W. McCoy, eds. , Laos: War and Revolu- tion (New York: Harper & Row, 1970); Charles Stevenson, The End ofNowhere (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972).
4. Howard Elterman, The State, the Mass Media and Ideological Hegemony: United States Policy Decisions in Indochina, I974-'75-Historical Record, Gov- ernment Pronouncements and Press Coverage (Ph. D. diss. , New York University, 1978), p. 198.
5. Fall, Anatomy of a Crisis.
6. A request to the (very cooperative) American embassy in Vientiane to obtain their documentation would have quickly revealed to reporters that the claims they were relaying on the basis of embassy briefings had little relation to the facts, as one of us discovered by carrying out the exercise in Vientiane in early 1970. For a detailed review of the available facts concerning foreign (North Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese Nationalist, and U. S. ) involvement through the 1960s, and their relation to what the media were reporting, see A WWA, pp. 203-36; and Noam Chomsky, For Reasons ofState (New York: Pantheon, 1973; hereafter FRS), pp. 178-79. See also chapter 5, p. 177, and note 22.
7. In Adams and McCoy, Laos; excerpts in AWWA, PP. 96-97.
8. On attempts by former Times Saigon bureau chief A. J. Langguth to explain
away the suppression of the bombing of northern Laos by obscuring the crucial distinction between the bombing of the civilian society of the North and the bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail in the South (acceptable within the doctrinal system in terms of "defense of South Vietnam against North Vietnamese aggression"), see Noam Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War (New York: Pantheon, 1982), p. 402.
9? Elterman, State-Media-Ideological Hegemony, pp. 332ff. and appendixes. 10. The report states that "until early this spring, when North Vietnamese troops began a series of advances in northeast Laos," the war had been "lim- ited," U. S. bombing had been aimed at "North Vietnamese supply routes" and "concentrations of enemy troops," and "civilian population centers and farm- land were largely spared. " Extensive refugee reports were soon to show that this account was inaccurate, as Decornoy's eyewitness reports had done fifteen months earlier.
II. See references cited above, and, shortly after, Fred Branfman, Voices from
the Plain ofJars (New York: Harper & Row, 1972); and Walter Haney, "A Survey ~fCivilian Fatalities among Refugees from Xieng Khouang Province, Laos," m Problems of War Victims in Indochina, Hearings before the [Kennedy] Subcommittee on Refugees and Escapees, U. S. Senate, May 9, 1972, pt. 2: "Laos and Cambodia," appendix 2. There were some 1970 reports in the media: e. g. , Daniel Southerland, Christian Science Monitor, March 14; Laurence Stern, Washington Post, March 26; Hugh D. S. Greenway, Life,
April 3; Carl Strock, New Republic, May 9; Noam Chomsky, "Laos," New York Review of Books, July 23, 1970, with more extensive details (reprinted in
AWWA).
12. Haney, PP, V. See FRS, pp. 176f. , on Sullivan's misrepresentation of
Haney's conclusions.
13? Refugee And Civilian War Casualty Problems in Indochina, Staff Report for
the [Kennedy] Subcommittee on Refugees and Escapees, U. S. Senate, Sep- tember 28, 1970.
14? One of the authors participated in a public meeting of media figures in New York, in 1986, at which a well-known television journalist defended media coverage of the bombing of northern Laos on the grounds that there was a report from a refugee camp in 1972. One wonders how much credit would be given to a journal that reported the bombing of Pearl Harbor in
1945?
15? T. D. Allman, Manchester Guardian Weekry, January I; Far Eastern Eco- nomic Review, January 8, 1972 (hereafter FEER); see FRS, pp. 173f. , for a lengthy excerpt. Robert Seamans, cited by George Wilson, Washington Post- Boston Globe, January 17, 1972; see FRS, pp. 172f. , for this and similar testi- mony before Congress by Ambassador William Sullivan. John Everingham and subsequent commentary on the Hmong (Meo) tribes, cited in Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, Political Economy of Human Rights (Boston: South End Press, 1979; hereafter PEHR) II, II9f. ; Chanda, FEER, December 23,
1977; see PEHR, II, 131f. , 340, for these and other direct testimonies, far from the mainstream, with a few noteworthy exceptions cited. Bangkok World, cited by Haney, "U. S. Involvement in Laos," p. 292, along with a Jack Anderson
column in the Washington Post (Feb. 19,1972). On postwar experiences of U. S. relief workers, see PEHR, pp. 132f. , 340 .
NUl"~ Tv "AGI! S 202-263 3113
16. McCoy's emphasis, in a letter to the Washington Post; cited by Haney, "U. S. Involvement in Laos," p. 293.
17. Television commentary reprinted in Christian Science Monitor, June 10,
1975?
18. See A WWA, pp. II9f. , and Haney, "U. S. Involvement in Laos," citing
congressional hearings and the Washington Post, March 16, 1970.
19. Walter Saxon, New York Times, August 24,1975. See PEHR, chapter 5, for further details on this report and general discussion of postwar reporting of Laos.
20. Kimmo Kiljunen, ed. , Kampuchea: Decade of the Genocide, Report of a government-backed Finnish Inquiry Commission (London: Zed, 1984). See also Kiljunen, "Power Politics and the Tragedy of Kampuchea during the Seventies," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (April-June 1985).
21. See William Shawcross, Sideshow (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), and Seymour Hersh, The Price of Power (New York: Summit, 1983).
22. William Shawcross, "The End of Cambodia? " New York Review of Books, January 24, 1980, relying on reports by Fran~ois Ponchaud, a French priest whose work provided the major source ofevidence about Khmer Rouge atroci- ties in 1975-76: Fran~ois Ponchaud, Cambodia: Year Zero (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1978), a revised version of a 1977 French study that became perhaps the most influential unread book in recent political history after a review by Jean Lacouture ("The Bloodiest Revolution," New York Review of Books, Mar. 31, 1977); see also his "Cambodia: Corrections," New
York Review ofBooks, May 26, 1977, withdrawing the most sensational claims. Our review (The Nation, June 25, 1977) was the first, to our knowledge, to attend to the actual text, which appeared in English a year later. See our PEHR, 11. 6, on the record of falsification based on this book, and on Pon- chaud's own remarkable record, further analyzed by Michael Vickery in his Cambodia: I975-I982 (Boston: South End Press, 1984). CIA Research Paper, Kampuchea: A Demographic Catastrophe (Washington: CIA, May 1980). For a critique of this study revealing extensive falsification conditioned by U. S. government priorities-specifically, suppression of the worst Pol Pot atrocities during the later period-see Michael Vickery, "Democratic Kampuchea- CIA to the Rescue," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 14. 4 (1982), and his Cambodia. The latter is the major study of the Khmer Rouge period, by one of the few authentic Cambodia scholars, widely and favorably re- viewed abroad by mainstream Indochina scholars and others but virtually ignored in the United States, as was the Finnish Inquiry Commission report. See Noam Chomsky, "Decade of Genocide in Review," Inside Asia (London, February 1985, reprinted in James Peck, ed. , The Chomsky Reader [New York: Pantheon, 1987]), on several serious studies of the period, in- cluding these.
23. Michael Vickery, "Ending Cambodia-Some Revisions," submitted to the New York Review ofBooks in June 1981 but rejected. See his Cambodia for more extended discussion. Shawcross himself had had second thoughts by then (see "Kampuchea Revives on Food, Aid, and Capitalism," The Bulletin [Australia], March 24, 1981). See his Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust and Modern Conscience (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), for a later version, now recast in ways to which we return.
24. Page 370, blaming Vietnamese deception for the account he had relayed in 1980.
25. Shawcross, The Nation, September 21, 1985; Ben Kiernan, letter to The Nation, October 3,1985, unpublished. For evaluation of the international relief efforts, see Vickery, Cambodia; Kiljunen, Kampuchea; Joel Charny and John Spragens, Obstacles to Recovery in Vietnam and Kampuchea: U. S. Embargo of Humanitarian Aid (Boston: Oxfam America, 1984); Shawcross, Quality of
Mercy.
26. Fran~ois Ponchaud, on whom Shawcross relied, is a highly dubious source for reasons that have been extensively documented; see note 22. No one with a record of duplicity approaching his would ever be relied on for undocu- mented charges of any significance if the target were not an official enemy. 27. Shawcross, Quality ofMercy, pp. 49-50. He observes that "those years of warfare saw the destruction of Cambodian society and the rise of the Khmer Rouge from its ashes, in good part as a result of White House policies"; "with the forces of nationalism unleashed by the war at their command, the Khmer Rouge became an increasingly formidable army," while in the "massive Ameri- can bombing campaign" to which the Khmer Rouge were subjected through August 1973, "their casualties are thought to have been huge. " The phrase "their casualties" presumably refers to Khmer Rouge military forces; there is no mention of civilian casualties. On the limited scope of Shawcross's "quality of mercy," see "Phase III at home" (p. 288), below.
28. Vickery, Cambodia, p. 293.
29. AP, Boston Globe, September 24, 1978, citing the Report of the Interna- tional Labor Organization in Geneva on over fifty million child laborers in the world, with Thailand singled out as one of the worst offenders, thanks to grinding poverty, an effective military government backed by the United States, lack oflabor union power, and "wide-open free enterprise. " See PEHR, 11. 6, 359, for excerpts and other examples that have elicited even less interest, and PEHR, II, xv, on a World Bank description of the situation in Thailand. On the brutal treatment of many of the estimated 10. 7 million child laborers in Thailand, see Human Rights in Thailand Report 9. 1. (January-March 1985) (Coordinating Group for Religion in Society, Bangkok); Thai Development Newsletter 3. 1 1985 (December 1986) (Bangkok). On the treatment of women in "the brothel of Asia," with its estimated 500,000 prostitutes, masseuses, and bar-waitresses, 20 percent of them under fourteen years of age, drawn to Bangkok (and sometimes sold off to Europe) from the impoverished rural areas through "a huge underground network of brothels and workshops feeding on child flesh and labor," see several articles in Beyond Stereotypes: Asian Women
in Development, Southeast Asia Chronicle (January 1985).
30. For extensive evidence on this matter, see PEHR, 11. 6, and Vickery, Cambodia, extending the story to phase III.
31. Others give higher estimates. Ponchaud gives the figure of 800,000 killed, but, as noted in our 1977 review, he seems to have exaggerated the toll of the U. S. bombing, and as shown in the references of note 22, he is a highly unreliable source. "US Government sources put the figure unofficially at 600,000 to 700,000" (CIA demographic study, which accepts the lower figure). 32. Vickery, Cambodia, pp. 184f. Other estimates vary widely. At the low end, the CIA demographic study gives the figure of 50,000 to 100,000 for people
384 NOTES TO P AGES 263-267
NOTES TO P AGES 268-274 385
who "may have been executed," and an estimate of deaths from all causes that is meaningless because of misjudgment of postwar population and politically motivated assessments throughout; the Far Eastern Economic Review reported a substantial increase in the population under DK to 8. 2 million, "mostly based on CIA estimates" (Asia 1979 and Asia 1980 yearbooks of the FEER, the latter reducing the estimate from 8. 2 to 4. 2 million, the actual figure apparently being in the neighborhood of 6. 5 million); in the U. S. government journal Problem~ of Communism (May-June 1981), Australian Indochina specialist Carlyle Thayer suggests a figure of deaths from all causes at 500,000, of which 50,000 to 60,000 were executions. At the high end, estimates range to three million or more, but without any available analysis. As all serious observers emphasize,
the range of error is considerable at every point.
33. George Hildebrand and Gareth Porter, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolu- tion (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976), based on U. S. and international aid reports, cited by Vickery, Cambodia, p. 79; FEER correspondent Nayan Chanda in several articles, cited in PEHR, 1. 6, 229f. ; Western doctor is Dr. Penelope Key, of the World Vision Organization, cited by Hildebrand and Porter, along with similar reports from Catholic Relief Services and Red Cross observers; Shawcross, Sideshow, pp. 370f. Hildebrand and Porter's book, the only extensive study of the situation at the war's end, was highly praised by Indochina scholar George Kahin but ignored in the media, or vilified. See PEHR, 11. 6, 232f. , for a particular egregious example, by William Shawcross in the New York Review ofBooks. When PEHR, 11. 6 was circulating to Cam- bodia scholars and journalists in manuscript, we received a letter from Shaw- cross demanding that references to him be eliminated. We responded that we would be glad to consider any specific case that he found wrong or misleading
and delayed publication of the book awaiting his response, which never ar- rived. On his public response, see below.
34.
Milton Osborne, Before Kampuchea (London: Allen & Unwin, 1980), p. 191; David Chandler, Pacific Affairs (Summer 1983); Philip Windsor, The Listener, BBC (London), July II, 1985.
35. David Chandler and Ben Kiernan, eds. , Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea, Monograph 25/Yale University Southeast Asia Series (1983), p. I.
36. See note 32, above; FEER, January 19, 1979?
37. Douglas Pike, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 29, 1979, and Chn'stian Science Monitor, December 4, 1979; cited by Vickery, Cambodia, p. 65. On the Freedom House and Times assessments of Pike's work, see p. p. 324,326; Fox Butterfield, "The New Vietnam Scholarship," New York Times Magazine cover story, February 13, 1983, where Pike is regarded as the exemplar of the "new breed" of dispassionate scholars.
38. Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), pp. 329, 394, for a detailed analysis of the maneuverings during this period. See also Grant Evans and Kelvin Rowley, Red Brotherhood at War (London: Verso, 1984).
39. Derriere Ie sourire khmer (Paris: PIon, 1971); see FRS, chapter 2, section 2. 40. Vickery, Cambodia, pp. 7, 17, 5-6, 17, 43; ViCKery, "Looking Back at Cambodia," Westerry (Australia) (December 1976). See PEHR, 11. 6 for ex- cerpts from the latter study.
41. See FRS, pp. 192ft'. , and sources cited, particularly the fall 1971 studies by T. D. Allman, based on interviews with members of the Cambodian elite. 42. See Elizabeth Becker, When The War Was Over (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), p. 28, citing a 1963 U. S. embassy cable quoting Sihanouk; Chanda, Brother Enemy, pp. 61f. See A WWA and FRS on contemporary studies of the Sihanouk period that provide more detail.
43. Michael Leifer, "Cambodia," Asian Survey (January 1967). Becker, When the War Was Over, p. 27, asserts that the CIA was behind the 1959 plot. For sources on these developments here and below, largely French, see A WWA and FRS. See Peter Dale Scott in Pp, V, on the regional context of the 1963 escalation.
44. See A WWA and FRS for references and other examples.
45. Bombing in Cambodia, Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services, U. S. Senate, 93d Cong. , 1st sess. , July I August 1973, pp. 158-60, the primary source on the "secret bombings. "
46. See PEHR, 11. 6,288.
47? PEHR, 11. 6, 380; also 383. Shawcross, Quality ofMercy, p. 49, referring solely to B-52 bombings of Vietnamese "sanctuaries" in the border areas, the standard evasion of the issue.
48. See PEHR, 11. 6, 383, where the same point is noted, and its irrelevance discussed. These matters had been specifically brought to Shawcross's atten- tion during the period when he was working on his Sideshow, in commentary (which he had requested) on earlier articles of his on the topic in the British press.
49. William Beecher, New York Times, May 9, 1969; PEHR, 11. 6, 271, 289, 383.
50. Elterman, State-Media-Ideological Hegemony, p. 344. Note that the post- Tet operations were in part reported at the time, although often in the highly distorted framework already discussed. For samples, see A WWA. On media coverage of the Laos bombings in 1969, see "Laos" (p. 253).
51. T. D. Allman, FEER, April 9, 1970; Manchester Guardian, September 18, 1971. See note 41.
52. See FRS, p. 194, and sources cited; see A WWA on media coverage of the invasion.
53. Richard Dudman, Forty Days with the Enemy (New York: H. Liveright, 1971), p. 69?
54. Terence Smith, New York Times, December 5, 1971; Iver Peterspn, New York Times, December 2, 1971. See FRS, pp. 188f. , for citations from U. S. and primarily French sources. See also Fred Branfman, in Pp, V.
55. See FRS, pp. 19~2, for excerpts from Le Monde.
56. Elterman, State-Media-Ideological Hegemony, pp. 335f.
57. Vickery, Cambodia, p. 15.
58. UPI, New York Times, June 22, 1973, citing Pentagon statistics.
59. Shawcross, Sideshow, pp. 272, 297; see p. 262, above.
60. See PEHR, 11. 6, 154f. , 22of. , 365f. , for sources, excerpts, and discussion. 61. E. g. , Henry Kamm, New York Times, March 25, 28, 1973.
62. Becker, When the War Was Over, P. 32.
63. Malcolm Browne, "Cambodians' Mood: Apathy, Resignation," New York Times, June 29, 1973? On the forceful recruiting from "the poorer classes,
386 NOTES TO PAGES 274-283
. . . refugees and the unemployed," including the "poor peasants" who have "poured into the capital" after their villages were destroyed, but not the children of the wealthy elites, see Sydney Schanberg, New York Times, August
4,1973?
64. Kamm, New York Times, March 25, 1973.
65. See Vickery, Cambodia, pp. 9f. , on Buddhism, about which "probably more arrant nonsense has been written in the West . . . than about any other aspect of Southeast Asian life," particularly with regard to Cambodia.
66. Schanberg, New York Times, May 3, 8, July 19, July 30, August 16, August 12, 1973.
67. August 22, 1973. The material reviewed here is from May 3 to August 16. 68. Mostly Malcolm Browne; also Henry Kamm, wire services, specials. We omit brief reports here, and this record may not be complete.
69. Compare, for example, Jon Swain's horrifying account of the situation in the hospitals in Phnom Penh at the time of the 1975 evacuation with Sydney Schanberg's cursory remark that "many of the wounded were dying for lack of care" (Swain, Sunday Times (London), May II; Schanberg, New York Times, May 9, 1975); see PEHR, 11. 6, 370-71, for details.
70. Sunday Times (London), May II, 1975. See PEHR, 11. 6, 249f. , for longer excerpts.
71. Schanberg, New York Times, April 6, 8, 23, 1985.
72. New York Times, October 28, 1984.
73. Editorials, New York Times, April II, 1985; April 7, September 9, 1985. Others do note "America's role in the tragic destruction ofCambodian civiliza- tion," which "renders suspect any belated show of concern for Cambodian sovereignty" (Editorial, Boston Globe, April 12, 1985).
74. Editorial, New York Times, July 9, 1975; also Jack Anderson, Washington Post, June 4, 1975?
75. See PEHR, 11. 6.
76. Our review cited in the preceding footnote was therefore limited to materi- als based on this earlier period, all that was available at the time we wrote. 77. See PEHR, 11. 6, VI; Vickery, Cambodia.
78. PEHR, 11. 6, 135-36, 290, 293, 140, 299.
79. In the only scholarly assessment, Vickery concludes that "very little of [the discussion in PEHR, 11. 6] requires revision in the light of new information available since it appeared. " He also comments on the "scurrilous," "incompe- tent," and "dishonest criticism of Chomsky and Herman which has character- ized media treatment of their work," noting falsifications by William Shawcross, among others (Cambodia, pp. 308, 310).
80. Guenter Lewy, Commentary (November 1984), a typical example of a substantial literature. To our knowledge, Lewy, like other infuriated critics, did not condemn the Khmer Rouge in print as harshly, or as early, as we did. Recall that Lewy has experience with these matters, given his record as an apologist for war crimes, which reaches levels rarely seen. See chapter 5, notes 33,86.
81. John Barron and Anthony Paul, Murder in a Gentle Land (New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1977). Anderson, Washington Post, October I, 1978. Kamm, New York Times Magazine, November 19, 1978, including fabricated photographs; see PEHR, 11. 6,202,253; and 367, 372, on the scholarly literature
describing a country where "the population is ever on the edge of starvation" in earlier years and completely lacking an economy by 1975. Wise, FEER, September 23, 1977? See PEHR, 11. 6, for further examples and details, here and below; and Vickery, Cambodia, for additional evidence.
82. See our citations from his writings in the Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong) and Le Monde diplomatique (Paris), in PEHR, II.
83. Cambodia, p. 48. See also the review of his book by British Indochina scholar R. B. Smith, emphasizing the same point (Asian Affairs [February 1985]).
