A Problem From Hell

by Samantha Power

  50. Jay G. Sykes, Proxmire (Washington, D.C.: R. B. Luce, 1972), p. 35. Wisconsin had been home to the country’s first graduated income and inheritance taxes, the first child labor law, and the first unemployment compensation law.

  51. Ibid., p. 72.

  52. Ibid., p. 90.

  53. “Pledge to Plead Daily for Ratification of Genocide Treaty,” Congressional Record, 90th Cong., 1st sess., 1967, 113, pt. 1:266.

  54. William Proxmire, The Fleecing of America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980), pp. 6–7.

  55. Proxmire later credited Jacob Javits (R.–N.Y.) with keeping the issue on the “front burner” in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for most of his twenty-four years in the Senate. “Jacob Javits: A Superb Senator,” Congressional Record, 99th Cong., 2nd sess., 1986, 132, pt. 27:4123.

  56. “International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” Congressional Record–Senate, 99th Cong., 2nd sess., 1986, 132 S 1355, pt. 2:2331.

  57. Ibid., 90th Cong., 2nd sess., 1968, 114, pt. 21:27918.

  58. Dan Jacobs, The Brutality of Nations (New York: Knopf, 1987).

  59. “Dissent from U.S. Policy Toward East Pakistan,” U.S. Consul General, Dacca, to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, April 6, 1971; quoted in Lawrence Lifschultz, Bangladesh: The Unfinished Revolution (London: Zed Press, 1979), pp. 158–159.

  60. Congressional Record, 92nd Cong., 2nd sess.,1972, 118, pt. 12:15091.

  61. See René Lemarchand, Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996).

  62. Confidential cable from Deputy Chief of Mission Michael Hoyt in Bujumbura to the State Department and embassies, May 29, 1972, obtained by Hoyt through the Freedom of Information Act. Hoyt has gathered the embassy cables from this period and plans to analyze them in a forthcoming book, The Burundi Cables: The American Embassy and the 1972 Genocide. In the first edition of “A Problem from Hell,” I erroneously wrote that Melady “downplayed the atrocities.” Hoyt noted the inaccuracy and sent me more than 200 pages’ worth of declassified cables from his collection. Melady was in fact quite straightforward in his descriptions of the carnage, but he argued against diplomatic intervention on the grounds that it would be counterproductive.

  63. See Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 267. In the fall of 1972, a $100,000 U.S. aid program to Burundi was suspended, but it was quickly restored after a $4 billion nickel deposit was discovered there and agents of Kennecott, Bethlehem Steel, and American Metals Climax began lobbying the State Department to improve its ties so it could influence the nickel’s “final disposition.”

  64. Secret cable from U.S. ambassador Thomas Melady to the State Department and embassies, May 1, 1972.

  65. Confidential cable from Secretary of State William Rogers to the U.S. Embassy in Bujumbura, June 20, 1972.

  66. Michael Bowen, Gary Freeman, and Kay Miller, Passing By: The United States and Genocide in Burundi, 1972 (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1973).

  67. Confidential cable from Ambassador Thomas Melady to the State Department and embassies, May 15, 1972.

  68. Confidential cable from Ambassador Thomas Melady to the State Department and embassies, May 20, 1972.

  69. Congressional Record, 92nd Cong., 2nd sess., 1972, 118, pt. 16:20593.

  70. Ibid., 90th Cong., 1st sess. 1967, 113, pt. 1:876.

  71. Ibid., pt. 1: 1197.

  72. Ibid., 95th Cong., 1st sess., 1977, 123, pt. 2: 2601.

  73. Ibid., 90th Cong., 1st sess., 1967, 113, pt. 3:3680.

  Chapter 6, Cambodia

  1. “Khmer Rouge Troops Enter Phnom Penh,” Washington Post, April 15, 1975, p. A1.

  2. Sydney H. Schanberg, The Death and Life of Dith Pran (New York: Penguin, 1985), p. 26. The new regime established what it called the Republic of Democratic Kampuchea.

  3. David Chandler, Voices from S–21: Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 32, citing John Bryan Starr and Nancy Dyer, eds., Post Liberation Works of Mao Zedong: Bibliography and Index (Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, 1976), p. 173.

  4. William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, rev. ed. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), p. 362.

  5. François Ponchaud, Cambodia, Year Zero (New York: Penguin, 1978), pp. 11, 13.

  6. According to official U.S. and South Vietnamese sources, some 4,954 South Vietnamese soldiers, 58,373 North Vietnamese soldiers, and 14,300 civilians were also killed. Cited in Don Oberdorfer, Tet! (New York: Doubleday, 1971), p. v.

  7. On March 16, 1968, Lieutenant William Calley led the American “Charlie Company” into the village of My Lai, Vietnam. Calley had told his men the night before that the villagers were all enemy supporters and the children all future Vietcong. Although not one villager fired on the U.S. troops, the Americans burnt down all the houses, scalped or disembowled villagers, and raped women and girls or, if they were pregnant, slashed open their stomachs. The Americans machine-gunned and bayoneted villagers by the dozen. Four hours after the Charlie Company arrived, 500 Vietnamese lay dead. Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim, Four Hours in My Lai (New York: Viking, 1992), p. 21.

  8. Shawcross, Sideshow, pp. 19–27; Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 176.

  9. Tad Szulc, The Illusion of Peace: Foreign Policy in the Nixon Years (New York: Viking Press, 1978), p. 54.

  10. “Transcript of President’s Address to the Nation on Military Action in Cambodia,” New York Times, May 1, 1970, p. 2. Nixon publicly explained escalation in Cambodia at the same time the United States was de-escalating from Vietnam: “If those North Vietnamese weren’t in Cambodia, they’d be over killing Americans. That investment of $250 million in small arms to aid to Cambodia so that they can defend themselves against a foreign aggressor—this is no civil war, it has no aspect of a civil war—the dollars we send to Cambodia saves American lives and enables us to bring Americans home [sic].” “The President’s News Conference of December 10, 1970,” The Nixon Presidential Press Conferences (New York: Earl M. Coleman Enterprises, 1978), p. 138.

  11. Isaacson, Kissinger, p. 638.

  12. The $1.85 billion figure represents the sum of all U.S. military and economic aid to the Lon Nol regime over the course of its tenure; Shawcross, Sideshow, p. 350; “The President’s News Conference of November 12, 1971,” The Nixon Presidential Press Conferences (New York: Earl M. Coleman Enterprises, 1978), p. 224.

  13. Elizabeth Becker, When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution (New York: Public Affairs, 1998), p. 99. Pol Pot studied at the Phnom Penh Technical College, specializing in carpentry. He went to Paris in August 1949 to study electronics but failed his exams at the university and in 1953 returned to Phnom Penh, where he earned a reputation as a left-wing journalist. One of thirty-four dissidents challenged publicly by Sihanouk in 1963, he took to the bush.

  14. James Pringle, “Sihanouk Adapts to ‘Austere Life,’” Washington Post, July 18, 1973, p. A18.

  15. New York Times correspondent Henry Kamm recalls encountering the First Battalion of Commandos of the Teaching Profession, a ragtag band of 474 school-teachers who carried arms they had never fired. Each received eight rounds of ammunition and was shipped to the front. Henry Kamm, Cambodia: Report from a Stricken Land (New York: Arcade, 1998), pp. 66–67.

  16. Ben Kiernan, “The American Bombardment of Kampuchea, 1969–1973,” Vietnam Generation 1, 1 (Winter 1989): 4–41. In the last six months of the bombing, the United States dropped 250,000 tons (compared to the 160,000 tons that fell on Japan during all of World War II); Isaacson, Kissinger, p. 636. Kissinger has never publicly acknowledged any American wrongdoing in Cambodia. In 1991 he said, “Journalists keep saying ‘bombing Cambodia.’ We were bombing four Vietnamese divisions that were killing 500 Americans a week”; quoted in Ben Kierna
n, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–79 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 24.

  17. Although precise figures are unknown, according to Kiernan, the evidence of survivors from many parts of Cambodia suggests that U.S. bombing caused “at least tens of thousands, probably in the range of 50,000 to 150,000 deaths”; Kiernan, “The American Bombardment of Kampuchea,” p. 32.

  18. Jamie Frederic Metzl, Western Responses to Human Rights Abuses in Cambodia, 1975–80 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), p. 6.

  19. Kiernan, “The American Bombardment of Kampuchea,” pp. 21–22, quoting an interview with journalist Bruce Palling and Catholic missionary François Ponchaud in Paris, January 1982.

  20. “Ousted Cambodian Premier Speaks Out,” New York Times, March 24, 1973, p. 3.

  21. Kenneth Quinn, “The Khmer Krahom Program to Create a Communist Society in Southern Cambodia,” February 20, 1974.

  22. Elizabeth Becker, “Who Are the Khmer Rouge?” Washington Post, March 10, 1974, p. B1.

  23. In November 1974 Becker’s colleague James Fenton reported for the Washington Post from just inside the Vietnamese border. Some 40,000 Cambodians had gathered there after fleeing KR-controlled territory. Fenton relayed refugee claims that KR areas were “undergoing a rapid forced transformation affecting every detail of life, from marriage laws to the Cambodian language itself.” “Reconstruction,” Fenton wrote, was one of the new words introduced to denote the treatment that awaited any man who violated KR laws by commencing an illicit love affair. James Fenton, “Cambodia: Communism Alters Lifestyle,” Washington Post, November 24, 1974, p. K1.

  24. Elizabeth Becker, “Cambodians Fear Rebel Drive for Seat at U.N.,” Washington Post, April 23, 1974, p. A18.

  25. Sylvana Foa, “Sihanouk Recalled Fondly in Cambodia,” Washington Post, August 14, 1973, p. A6.

  26. Metzl, Western Responses, p. 9.

  27. Officially, according to Becker, half a million died on the Lon Nol side of the war, whereas 600,000 were said to have died in KR zones; Becker, When the War Was Over, p. 170. A CIA demographic report on Cambodia estimates 600,000–700,000 “war-related deaths” during the civil war between the KR and the Lon Nol government. National Foreign Assessment Center, CIA, Kampuchea: A Demographic Catastrophe (Washington, D.C.: Document Expediting [DOCEX]. Project, Exchange and Gift Division, Library of Congress, 1980), p. 2.

  28. Ponchaud, Year Zero, p. 2.

  29. Jacques Leslie, “Phnom Penh Civilians Fatalistic; Rockets Fail as a Political Strategy,” Los Angeles Times, March 30, 1975, sec. 1, p. 10.

  30. Sydney H. Schanberg, “The Enigmatic Cambodian Insurgents: Reds Appear to Dominate Diverse Bloc,” New York Times, March 13, 1975, p. A1.

  31. Schanberg was evacuated on one of the last two convoys on April 30, but his erstwhile assistant, Dith Pran, was left behind to face the wrath of the KR. In a story recounted in the 1984 Oscar-winning Killing Fields, directed by Roland Joffe, Schanberg, who was racked by guilt for failing to save Pran, spent much of the next three years trying to locate his colleague and friend. When the pair were miraculously reunited on the Thai border in 1980, Schanberg asked for forgiveness for being unable to shelter Pran at the French embassy. Pran responded, “No, no,” gripping Schanberg’s hand. “It’s not like that. Nothing to forgive. We both made a decision. We both agree to stay, no one pushed the other. You tried all you could to keep me, but it didn’t work. Not your fault. We stayed because we did not believe in a blood bath. We were fools; we believed there would be reconciliation. But who could have believed the Khmer Rouge would be so brutal?” Schanberg, The Death and Life of Dith Pran, p. 61.

  32. Metzl, Western Responses, p. 11.

  33. Ibid., p. 11, citing “Cambodia Fact Sheets,” National Security Council, Sven Kramer to Bill Kendall, March 17, 1975, box 5, Vietnam (1) file, Gerald Ford Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

  34. Congressional Record, 94th Cong., 1st sess., 1975, 121, pt. 7:8796.

  35. Sydney H. Schanberg, “Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life,” New York Times, April 13, 1975, sec. 4, p. 1.

  36. Hearings Before the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, 94th Cong., 1st sess., 1975, p. 298.

  37. Ibid., pp. 299–300. In her written submission, Abzug urged, “Secretary Kissinger should turn his talents to this area”; see p. 302.

  38. Congressional Record, 94th Cong., 1st sess., 1975, 121, pt. 6:7902.

  39. “Cambodian Aid: Administration’s Choice,” Washington Post, March 17, 1975. As the bloodbath debate intensified, the debate became its own story. Two weeks before Phnom Penh finally fell to the Khmer Rouge, the New York Times ran an oped piece entitled “The Cambodian Bloodbath Debate” in which journalist Donald Kirk pointed out that “the dialogue resembles a shouting match in which one man accuses the other of lying, and neither has the final evidence to prove his point.” Donald Kirk, “The Cambodian Bloodbath Debate,” New York Times, April 5, 1975, p. 29.

  40. Jean-Jacques Cazaux, “Gathering of the Conquered: Lon Nol’s Brother Led Surrender in Phnom Penh,” Washington Post, May 9, 1975, p. A22.

  41. Lewis M. Simons, “Khmer Rouge: Victors’ Incongruities Begin with Sihanouk,” Washington Post, April 18, 1975, p. A14.

  42. Tom Mathews, Harry Rolnick, and Lloyd Norman, “We Beat the Americans,” Newsweek, May 5, 1975, p. 34.

  43. French embassy officials segregated occupants. Some 800 Westerners who gathered were allowed inside the embassy’s four buildings, whereas the 500 or so Cambodians and other Asians were forced to camp out on the grass outside the compound. Schanberg, The Death and Life of Dith Pran, p. 28.

  44. Kim Willenson and Paul Brinkley-Rogers, “Cambodia’s ‘Purification,’” Newsweek, May 19, 1975, pp. 30–36; Jean-Jacques Cazaux and Claude Juvenal, “Khmer Rouge Acts to ‘Purify’ Nation,” Washington Post, May 9, 1975, pp. A1, A16.

  45. Sydney H. Schanberg, “Cambodia Reds Are Uprooting Millions as They Impose a ‘Peasant Revolution,’” New York Times, May 9, 1975, p. A1; emphasis added.

  46. Ibid., pp. A1, A15.

  47. Cazaux and Juvenal, “Khmer Rouge Acts to ‘Purify’ Nation.”

  48. Schanberg, “Cambodia Reds Are Uprooting Millions.”

  49. Jack Anderson and Les Whitten, “Cambodia: Most Brutal Dictatorship,” Washington Post, July 21, 1977, p. D15.

  50. House Committee on International Relations, The Vietnam-Cambodia Emergency, 1975, Part I—Vietnam Evacuation and Humanitarian Assistance: Hearings Before the Committee on International Relations on H.R. 5960 (To Clarify Restrictions on the Availability of Funds for the Use of United States Armed Forces in Indochina) and H.R. 5961 (To Authorize Additional Economic Assistance for South Vietnam), 94th Cong., 1st sess., April 18, 1975, p. 152.

  51. Schanberg, “Cambodia Reds Are Uprooting Millions.”

  52. “‘Blood Bath’ in Cambodia,” Newsweek, May 12, 1975, p. 27. “Cambodian Ex-Officers, Wives Reported Slain by Khmer Rouge,” Washington Post, May 6, 1975, p. A14.

  53. Jack Anderson and Les Whitten, “Reports Hint ‘Blood Debt’ Being Paid,” Washington Post, May 12, 1975, p. C25. The two columnists consistently spoke out about the KR atrocities, but they also admitted their uncertainty. In a June 4, 1975, column they wrote that the KR “may be guilty of genocide against their own people” and they noted that some 3 million Cambodians had been driven from their homes. But they also conceded that intercepted reports had been “sporadic and fragmentary.” “There isn’t even hard evidence,” their sources told them, “that the killings run to the 80 figure” that Ford cited in early May. Jack Anderson and Les Whitten, “What Befell 3 Million Cambodians?” Washington Post, June 4, 1975, p. F11.

  54. “Kissinger Sees Atrocity in Events in Cambodia,” New York Times, May 14, 1975, p. 5.

  55. Willenson and Brinkley-Rogers, “Cambodia’s ‘Purification.’”

  56. Nuon Chea to a Danish journalist, quoted in Laura Sum
mers, “The CPK: Secret Vanguard of Pol Pot’s Revolution,” Journal of Communist Studies 3, 1 (March 1987): 11, cited in Chandler, Voices from S–21, p. 16.

  57. “Winner Seen in Struggle for Top Cambodian Post,” Washington Post, September 26, 1977, p. A21.

  58. Lewis Simons, “Cambodian Leader Moves to Counter Image of Brutality,” Washington Post, September 30, 1977, p. A20.

  59. Ponchaud, Year Zero, p. 50.

  60. Shawcross, Sideshow, p. 56.

  61. Metzl, Western Responses, p. 31. U.S. interest in Cambodia was piqued in May 1975 by the threat to American lives posed by the Mayaguez affair. On May 12 the Cambodian navy seized the USS Mayaguez sixty miles off the Cambodian coast and accused the crew of spying. Two days later, 250 U.S. marines in eleven helicopters attacked Koh Tang Island, where they believed the U.S. crew was being held. U.S. bombers also targeted a nearby Cambodian airfield, destroying seventeen planes and the Cambodian oil refinery. Press coverage of this event drowned out the atrocity reports during the month of May. The attack was initially seen as a daring display of American nerve, a crucial testament to American resolve, and a means of restoring U.S. credibility in the region. It showed, in Kissinger’s words, that there remained “limits beyond which the United States cannot be pushed.” In the end, because the attack left thirty-eight American soldiers dead (initially only two deaths were reported) and three U.S. helicopters destroyed, the Ford administration was criticized for mishandling the affair. Peter Goldman, Thomas M. DeFrank, Henry W. Hubbard, and Bruce von Voorst, “Ford’s Rescue Operation,” Newsweek, May 26, 1975. pp. 16–18. See also Milton R. Benjamin, et al., “Victory at Sea,” Newsweek, May 26, 1975, pp. 18–27, and Ralph Wetterhahn, The Last Battle: The Mayaguez Incident and the End of the Vietnam War (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2001).

  62. Metzl, Western Responses, pp. 51, 91.

  63. William C. Adams and Michael Joblove, “The Unnewsworthy Holocaust: TV News and Terror in Cambodia,” in William C. Adams, ed., Television Coverage of International Affairs (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1982), p. 224.