The Proconsuls

 CHAPTER 21

The Proconsuls

As the Senate confirmed Kissinger, Emory Coblentz Swank left Cambodia. When he had arrived in 1970 the glow of enthusiasm at least among the townspeople for Sihanouk's removal and for the chance of fighting the North Vietnamese was dimming, but it was still perceptible. By the fall of 1973 it had long disappeared. When Swank presented his letters of credence, the embassy numbered only 60, and the tiny military assistance program was quietly administered by Fred Ladd. Since then the embassy was held to two hundred Americans only by specific act of Congress. Fred Ladd himself, who by the end of his time there was a mournful spinner of yarns over large glasses of Scotch, was long gone home, his modest ideas with him.

Since the Paris Accords, Swank had made little attempt to conceal from his staff his distaste for the continuing carnage in Cambodia. As he left the country he gave an emotional and candid farewell press conference at which he spoke publicly of the frustrations of recent months. He asserted that the war "is losing more and more of its point and has less and less meaning for any of the parties concerned." He could see no prospects for peace. To questions about Kissinger's "delicate negotiations" earlier in the summer, Swank replied, "I would not describe them as negotiations. There are diplomatic contacts from time to time. I don't mean to overestimate or underestimate them."

As to whether the United States had achieved its objectives in Cambodia, Swank replied that through the deaths of Cambodians "time was bought for the success of the program in Vietnam ... to this extent I think some measure of gratitude is owed to the Khmers." It was not a valedictory that would heighten the regard in which Swank's superiors, particularly Kissinger, would hold him. One former CIA official suggests that he was, by the end, "about as popular as a polecat at a cocktail party" among the NSC staff. Swank's next appointment had already been announced, and it reflected Kissinger's opinion of him. Swank was to become Political Adviser to the North Atlantic Fleet, based in Norfolk, Virginia. He accepted the order without complaint, but in 1975, after two years in this wilderness, he asked what posting he could now expect. He was informed that there was no work for him in Kissinger's State Department.

Swank's was by no means the only career that Kissinger brought to an early end. The list of casualties among those who displeased the Secretary is probably longer in Kissinger's case than in that of any other recent incumbent. But some of Swank's colleagues did consider it a waste that, at fifty-three, the man whom The New York Times had described as "the acknowledged leader" of the State Department's Soviet experts and "a leading contender for the Moscow post" should instead be forced into retirement.

Kissinger did not replace Swank in Cambodia; the embassy was left in the hands of the Deputy Chief of Mission, Tom Enders. This arrangement was not widely welcomed in Phnom Penh. Enders’ manner had alienated many Cambodian officials, and within the political section of the embassy there was concern that he would cut back political reporting even further than it had already been since Bill Harben was removed and his job abolished.

This was apparently what Enders was meant to do. Now that Kissinger’s time was stretched even further than before, and now that the end of the bombing meant that he could, in his own perception, no longer “negotiate from strength,” Cambodia appears to have been pushed even further into the recesses of his mind. When Enders returned from a meeting with Kissinger in Tokyo during November 1973, he seemed to his colleagues to be in no doubt as to what was required of him. He was to worry about neither the future nor peace. He was to keep the show on the road and out of the press.

The period of the war that followed is, in some senses, the most depressing of all. The military and social decay of the country has already been described. It continued now, without optimism in Phnom Penh, without concern in Washington.

Some feel for the period can be derived from the end-of-tour reports of General Cleland, Chief of the Military Equipment Delivery Team, and his successor, General William Palmer, who was in Phnom Penh from February 1974 until its fall in April 1975. These reports must be read with caution, since each man was anxious to promote his own career in the Army despite the Cambodian débâcle. Each, therefore, was concerned to attach all blame to the Cambodians and refused to analyze carefully the effect of his own work in Phnom Penh. Nonetheless, the reports do provide an extraordinary picture of the problems of the Cambodian army at this stage of the war—and of the difficulties inherent in the Pentagon’s attempt to impose its models upon the country. It is clear from Palmer’s report that he disagreed with many of Cleland’s actions; he pointed out that the short length of American officers’ tours, together with the fact that arriving and departing officers rarely overlapped, meant that it was “impossible to follow the rationale on which program decisions had been made, particularly when a rapidly changing tactical situation may have rendered that rationale invalid in the meantime.”

In August 1973, the fall of Phnom Penh had been widely expected. Journalists flocked to be there when the American bombing ended. Given the fact that United States air power had indeed been, as Cleland wrote, “the one sacrosanct absolute” in all American planning for Cambodia, this was reasonable. In fact, however, now that they could no longer shelter behind the curtain of falling iron, Lon Nol’s troops fought, for a time, more bravely and aggressively.

They were helped also by the Khmer Rouge's continued shortage of ammunition. The day after the bombing ended, the Communists launched an assault on the provincial capital of Kompong Cham, a vital road-and-river junction northeast of Phnom Penh. Through the summer they had easily rolled up the garrisons defending the approaches to the town along Routes 6 and 7. Now they captured a large part of the city, led 15,000 people away into the countryside, and came within one hundred meters of the governor's mansion. But the government troops did not break as they had done a few weeks earlier in the town of Skoun. (The commander there had seized the first available helicopter for himself and fled the city.) After a long and bloody street battle the Communists finally withdrew. Sihanouk later complained bitterly that, but for the treachery of Hanoi in withholding supplies, the town would have been captured.

Ammunition, at least in the narrow military sense, decided the outcome of the war. While Communist advances were, to some extent, dependent on provisions from Hanoi, Lon Nol’s army became hostage to American matériel. Under the code names "Nimble Thrust" and "Nimble Voyage," shiploads of new equipment were rushed to Phnom Penh to replace American air power. There were 105-mm. and 155-mm. artillery pieces, over one hundred more armored personnel carriers, more heavy river craft, hundreds of 81-mm. mortars, grenade launchers and recoilless rifles, 45,000 more M-16 rifles—altogether a vast new store of treasure. With them came the equipment for the headquarters and the combat support elements of four divisions that Cleland was creating.

To the extent that he was anxious to protect FANK blood and bone, Cleland’s demand for such massive supplies was commendable enough. But the effect of the new bounty was predictable: the troops simply began to fire off more and more ammunition. In July 1973, 200 short tons were issued a day; by January 1974 this had tripled to 600 tons. Cleland explained the rationale—and, unconsciously, its serious implications—in his end-of-tour report: "The FANK depend on firepower to win. Seldom has FANK outmaneuvered the enemy—he has outgunned him." But his own actions made this inevitable; instead of improving the intrinsic fighting quality of Lon Nol’s troops, Cleland created a fatal new dependency on them. By mid-1974 fully 87 percent of all American military aid was being spent on ammunition. If the Congress began to cut back aid or if the Khmer Rouge closed all lines of communication, then the government’s troops would be deprived of "the quickfix" (to use another Cleland expression) which the Americans had thrust upon them. Both these things did happen and each contributed toward making the fall of the regime inevitable.

The fundamental military problems of incompetence and corruption were, if anything, exacerbated by the actions Cleland took. FANK was unable to absorb the sophisticated accouterments of divisional reorganization he pressed upon it. Congressional restrictions on advice meant that the Khmers were denied the over-all training, management skills, and technical know-how essential to the sort of army that Cleland was creating. At the most basic level, the Cambodians could not maintain equipment. Army engineers earned so much more in the city that they would spend only a 30-hour week in the field. Servicing was rare; guns, trucks and armored personnel carriers would simply be used until they stopped. When it proved impossible to shift spare parts through Khmer Rouge roadblocks, equipment was abandoned or cannibalized. Parts were sold to whoever was in the market, friend or foe.

Like his predecessor Mataxis, Cleland failed to move adequately against corruption. It was, for example, only when Elizabeth Becker stringing for the Washington Post, began to investigate how officers were selling brass artillery shell cases abroad, that real action was taken by the embassy. However, some restrictions were placed on “phantom” soldiers. The embassy now had personnel and financial experts working in FANK’s pay units. Lon Nol had been forbidden to increase the overall payroll beyond 253,000 men, and individual unit commanders had been deprived of their previous total control over their men’s wages. As Cleland delicately noted, “there was considerable resistance” to this last change and “there were some incidents, including overt acts of force and intimidation on the part of some commanders.” The embassy had to order Lon Nol to send letters to unit commanders instructing them to obey the new procedures. But still no one knew how strong individual units really were, and neither Cleland nor Enders was determined to insist on effective change. Enders would argue within the embassy that the United States actually had no authority over individual commanders. In the end, as General Palmer later noted, the fact that so many “phantoms” were defending Phnom Penh helped ensure its collapse.

The command structure had not been reformed. Lon Nol, whose title was now "Supreme Commander," still bypassed his general staff, forbade any proper coordination between army, navy and air force, and guarded the right to make all important strategic and even tactical decisions personally. The untrained prewar officer corps, which had been elevated en masse with the expansion of the army in 1970–71, still occupied most of the key positions. Group loyalties still prevailed over national consciousness; in 1974 one brigade was entrusted to an officer who was actually a deserter. Many battalion and brigade commanders were more often to be found in Phnom Penh villas they had built or bought on phantom salaries than with their men. All this had serious effects upon the morale of effective officers. One CIA Information Report noted that "junior and field-grade officers blame the FANK high command" for the country’s predicament. "Officers openly state that Cambodian President Lon Nol is incompetent because of mental illness."

Ammunition disappeared faster and faster, in many different directions. The troops expended it as generously as they could, and hundreds of thousands of rounds were sold every month to the Khmer Rouge. One of the worst offenders was the military commander of Battambang province, who supplied the Communists with weapons on the understanding that they be used against any government positions save his own.

After the Yom Kippur war and the oil price rise, the black market in petrol was uncontrolled. By the end of 1973, $100,000 worth of gasoline was vanishing every month. Boys and young soldiers stood on street corners all over Phnom Penh with bottles for sale. Corrupt officers always found ways of evading such restrictions as the embassy did attempt to impose. Units equipped by the Military Equipment Delivery Team would be dissolved overnight, their matériel shifted elsewhere or sold. Despite the objections of the embassy, Lon Nol created the 9th Infantry Division as his Palace Guard. He placed it under one of the most ineffective and corrupt commanders in the entire country, who, in General Palmer’s words, “then used his strong political position to circumvent organizational restraints and diverted unauthorized personnel and equipment into a large unauthorized division base ... the result was three unequipped, poorly trained brigades that successively collapsed under minimal combat pressure.”

There were by now few volunteers to the falling flag. The government had passed a Conscription Act, and in summer 1973 the army rounded up 16,000 boys and young men in Phnom Penh. Cinema queues were a favorite hunting ground; army trucks would rush up in the evening and drag young customers away at gunpoint. Army life began as it ended—in squalor. The boys were packed off for inadequate training. General Cleland's account of the system and how the problems were met is of some interest.

“The new troops faced primitive living conditions, lackadaisical cadre at some training centers, and lack of command interest.” As more and more recruits deserted, the government, he says, “finally realized ... that something had to be done.” What was it? “Money previously allocated for training-center construction was released; security forces at some training centers were increased; barrack material was provided (not to keep the enemy out but to assist in keeping the recruits in) ...”

Military pay was, as Palmer said, an insult: a soldier received $13 a month—if he was lucky. Rice was usually sold by unit commanders to their men on pay day. If, as frequently happened, monthly pay was late or was stolen, then the men and their families went without. Inevitably soldiers were often far busier fishing, farming, gathering firewood, stealing chickens, than in manning their defensive positions. Moonlighting of some sort was essential for almost everyone.

Battlefield tactics reflected both the incompetence of the officers and the poor training of their men. The army had built small mud huts around the government's remaining enclaves. These could have been effective only with cleared fields of fire, active day and night patrolling to disrupt infiltration and accurate indirect fire by both mortars and artillery to prevent the enemy concentrating his forces. None of this was achieved. 

Enemy targets were not usually well observed, and machine guns were rarely positioned properly. Artillery officers worked only to a very strict schedule: from 0630 to 1300 or 1400 hours five days a week. On Saturdays and Sundays they invariably rested. Lon Nol’s command and control structure prevented coordination of artillery with infantry assaults.

The army’s infrequent offensives were no better. General Palmer noted that “the normal attack pattern of the Khmer Republic’s army was characterized by a dull plodding, belated advance, devoid of surprise, coordination or innovation. When the enemy chose to resist, friendly casualties were high and objectives rarely attained.” (Once again, Palmer failed to question how far this reflected his own and his predecessor’s impact on the army.) If by midafternoon on the day of an operation they had not gained terrain to their liking, the troops would simply retreat to their original positions for the night. Day after day this would happen, and casualties were such that, after seventy-two hours, units often had to be withdrawn altogether. The Khmer Rouge now mounted superb nighttime operations, but Lon Nol’s troops rarely ventured out of their foxholes after dark.

The air force had grown considerably since Sihanouk’s day, but it was still the least efficient of the three services. Cleland called it “undisciplined.” Palmer pointed out that it had a “totally inadequate motivation, incentive and salary system” and that “the necessity to survive” led to the sale of equipment, falsified reports, evasions of responsibility and cynicism.

Despite the almost total lack of maintenance, planes remained airborne, even if not strictly airworthy. However, many of the missions the pilots flew were useless. There was almost no cooperation on either strategy or tactics between the services, and often the only link between operational headquarters and the air base was by ordinary commercial telephone; radio contact with combat units in the field was erratic, communications security nonexistent. Pilots were keener to fly for contraband than for combat, and then often demanded bribes from ground units before providing air support. The T-28 fighter-bomber pilots would not descend below 3,000 feet; bombs and napalm dropped at sharp angles from that height were usually inaccurate. They undoubtedly killed a lot of people but not necessarily those who were targeted.

By this time the economy was in ruin. Inflation ran at about 250 percent a year, industrial and agricultural production was permanently declining.

exports were almost nonexistent. The government and the population it controlled were now on American welfare—about 95 percent of all income came from the United States—and the welfare officer was Tom Enders. It was he, together with the U.S. AID officials in the embassy, who determined what the exchange rate should be, how far electricity prices should be raised, how slumps in production might be solved. The government was often reluctant to accept his orders; frequent harrowing meetings with ministers were necessary, and Enders would tower over Khmer officials bellowing, “Vous comprenez, Monsieur le Ministre, que c'est absolument nécessaire, n'est-ce pas?” “Ah, oui, oui, Monsieur Enders, bien sur” would be the reply, and eventually a haltered compromise would be effected. One American economist stationed in the Phnom Penh embassy later complained in an official report that the economic policies that Enders implemented were like “picking fleas off a dog that has cancer.... It will make him more comfortable, more faithful and save energy by keeping him from scratching and thus prolong his life. But the ultimate result will be the same unless the cancer is cured.”

Those who could count themselves a part of the government’s establishment continued to live well. Lon Non, Lon Nol’s younger brother, was reported to have raised $90 million by arms trafficking and extortion. Lesser men had built lesser but still substantial fortunes, and for them conditions were tolerable. During 1974 there were frequent power cuts in Phnom Penh under the government’s austerity program. But they almost all occurred in the poor parts of the city. In the villas the air conditioners and refrigerators usually had power, and at the Cercle Sportif, the city’s smartest club, the floodlights were normally working for evening tennis. One journalist noted that “for the few privileged elite the good life—tennis, nightclubs, expensive French meals, and opulent, brandy-drenched dinner parties went on almost to the very end, while the vast majority of the city’s swollen population sank deeper and deeper into misery.”

For ordinary people the more urgent problem now was always food. Eighty percent of the country’s prewar paddy fields had been abandoned, and the government’s own figures showed that in 1974 rice production was only 655,000 metric tons—as opposed to 3.8 million tons in the last year before the war. The shortfall was not nearly met by imports. To deflect growing Congressional criticism of the amount of rice being shipped to Indochina, the embassy still requested only the minimum necessary to avert a repetition of the food riots that had already flickered through Phnom Penh. Even at the very reduced rations allocated perhead, there was never now more than a two- or three-week supply on hand, and at one stage in 1974 there was only three days' rice left in the capital. None of the rice from the United States was provided free, and food prices were rising catastrophically high—from a base of 100 in May 1971, they were 1,604 in 1973 and 4,454 in 1974. A bowl of soup which had cost 4 riels in 1970 now cost 300, a bread roll had risen from 2 to 100 riels. Real wages had dropped, and U.S. AID's draft termination report acknowledges that the vast majority of the population of Phnom Penh could afford to buy little more than one day's subsistence of rice in any week. Through the last eighteen months of the war most people in the cities were slowly starving.

Because the Communists were now concentrating on closing the government's lines of communication, hectic and chaotic profiteering developed in 1974. In 1973 it had cost 8,000 riels to shift one ton of cargo from Battambang to Phnom Penh by road; the price leaped to 30,000 riels now that the road was cut and part of the journey had to be made by water. (At the official rate of exchange this was an increase from almost $18 to $66.) It was simply explained: merchants had to pay protection money to the Cambodian navy to ensure safe passing along the river. The fees were demanded by the Association of River Carriers; its President was the brother of Sosthene Fernandez, the army commander in chief.

The skies were even more chaotic. Military pilots constantly overloaded their planes with food—sugar, salt, rice and fish in the engine casings made flying more hazardous and maintenance more difficult than ever. At the beginning of 1974 there were six registered airline companies; by the end of the year there were 23, flying a total of 57 planes, many of them battered old DC-3s, around the country. Food could be sold in Phnom Penh for up to four times the price paid in the provinces. Planes swooped into an enclave where, for some reason, there was a temporary halt. Wounded soldiers waiting for transport to a hospital were ignored.

Refugees continued to press into the capital. By the end of 1973 they had swollen the population of Phnom Penh to over two million and, according to U.S. AID's Termination Report, their plight then “was desperate, serious health problems became evident, and thousands . . . were without housing, without work and completely dependent upon outside assistance for their very survival.”

This was almost all being provided by charities like Catholic Relief Services (the most effective) and World Vision. The embassy itself was still only indirectly associated with the refugee crisis. The U.S. AID final report noted that Washington "assumed no responsibility for the generation of refugees in Cambodia."

By early 1974 the United States government had provided humanitarian aid of $2.5 million for Cambodia. It can be compared with $3.4 million provided by other countries, and by the voluntary relief agencies in the period January 1972–May 1973, alone—and with the $516.5 million in military aid and $216.6 million in economic aid that had flowed from Washington since the war began.

For the most part, the voluntary agencies coped well, though inter-denominational arguments were sometimes squalid, and on occasion food was offered in exchange for religious conversion. But they had neither the manpower nor the money really to relieve the suffering of the refugees, and throughout 1974 conditions in and out of the camps grew ever more inadequate. By now lean-tos and shacks were propped against walls all over Phnom Penh, and thousands of people slept in the doorways of houses. Thousands and thousands of orphan children roamed the streets in rags. One twelve-year-old boy, Chum Pal, whose father was killed in battle and whose mother had been driven mad by the war, lived by begging. "Sometimes I go into shops. Some people give me five or ten riels. Some give me nothing, but they do not say bad things to me. They just say they have no small change." Chuon Yan, a thirteen-year-old village girl whose father had been badly burned in a shelling attack, also begged in order to supplement the 50 cents a day her mother made picking through garbage for plastic bags to sell.

Until August 1973 the refugees tended to cite American bombing as the main reason for flight. Through 1974 they spoke of the increasing violence of the Khmer Rouge. In March 1974, a government offensive into the province of Kompong Thom opened an escape route for the people living there. Around 35,000 stumbled with their bundles and their oxcarts over to the Lon Nol side. Altogether that year at least another 100,000 people pressed desperately into the government’s shrinking, decaying enclaves. Many brought with them tales of alarming harshness.

“Out there” the Khmer Rouge were reorganizing. At the end of 1973 the Party finally asserted full control of the Front’s military command structure. Political commissars were now assigned to assist and instruct officers down to company level throughout most of the country. Main forces were reorganized, like Lon Nol's, into divisions. But unlike in Lon Nol's army, Khmer Rouge officers were promoted for their performance.

When they launched their annual dry-season offensive against Phnom Penh in January 1974, they used dispersed patrols and stand-off attacks by fire, and they seeded areas with mines as they left. At night they pinned Lon Nol’s troops down by fire and then mounted ground assaults through the darkness. By dawn they had often consolidated their positions and dug themselves into well-camouflaged protective emplacements that would withstand both 105-millimeter artillery fire and T-28 bombing attacks.

Once within range they demonstrated their attitude toward the people of Phnom Penh by showering rockets and artillery shells over the heads of the defenders into the city. Day after day, night after night the missiles fell haphazardly into the streets, smashing a group of children here, a family there, a rickshaw driver pedaling home after work, houses and schools. The principal line of fire was directly into an area in which thousands of refugees squatted, and so it was the most wretched of the city who suffered worst from this, as from every other, desolation of the war. On one day in February 1974 alone, Khmer Rouge gunners killed 139 people and blew to smithereens the houses and shacks that gave meager shelter to some ten thousand people. More than one thousand people died in this one series of attacks before Lon Nol’s troops were finally able to push the guns and rocket launchers out of range of the town.

That 1974 dry-season assault failed because the Khmer Rouge command and control machinery was still inadequate; because the attackers committed units in an uncoordinated piecemeal fashion; because they were unable to replace casualties fast enough; and because they were still short of ammunition. Through the course of the year, as they maintained pressure on the government by cutting the roads, these deficiencies were largely repaired.

At the same time they were developing into an increasingly formidable political organization. As their relationship with Hanoi became more and more bitter and as their growing strength allowed them more and more independence, they started to eradicate among the people they controlled the three traditional elements of Cambodian life: respect for the monarchy, attachment to the village, and devotion to Buddha. Throughout 1974, reports reached Saigon, Phnom Penh and Washington that in areas where their military situation was relatively secure—such as the southeast—the Communists were accelerating their transformation of society. As well as the Sihanoukists, cadres who were known to be pro-Vietnamese were purged and replaced by militant officials who had never been.

seen before. According to one contemporary State Department study, the Communists embarked on intense programs of "psychological reorientation, mass relocation, total collectivization of agriculture, the elimination of religion and restructuring social customs."

The destruction of Sihanouk's authority was always inevitable if the war continued long enough; it began in earnest after his one visit to the liberated areas in spring of 1973, when the affection in which the peasantry still held him must have been evident, even though he was convinced by cadres. The fiction of a united national front began to be dismissed; the word "Royal" (Reach) was removed from documents and proclamations of the Royal Government of National Union of Kampuchea. The Khmer Rouge started to destroy schools built in the Sihanouk period. The Prince was more frequently accused of living too long in the comfort of Peking and of supporting the hated Vietnamese. Such attacks were not always well received by peasants, and refugees to South Vietnam brought stories of fighting between the Khmer Rouge and those members of the Front who were still loyal to Sihanouk. But in Peking the Prince understood the drift of events. In a memorable phrase he told the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci that he and the Khmer Rouge hated one another and that they would "spit me out like a cherry stone" when they had sucked him dry.

All Khmer Rouge policies, and in particular the relocation of villages, were obviously intended to effect a total and dramatic break with the past. When peasants were moved they were ordered to leave behind any private property; in the new villages, refugees reported, about two hundred people lived in a single shelter, all land was owned and worked communally, all day was spent in the fields, long indoctrination sessions followed at night, no religion could be practiced, monks were defrocked, all old songs were banned, traditional sexual and marital habits forbidden.

Younger and younger cadres began to appear; the Party used its Youth Organization as the cutting edge of social change. One party document of the time declared that the Party “educated, watched, nourished and built youth as the central force in the revolutionary movement of each area and as the central force for future national construction.” The education seemed to have had dramatic effects. In the southeast, teenagers were removed from their families for two or three weeks of intensive indoctrination; according to refugees, this was enough to engender in them a passionately fierce commitment to the destruction of the old society and a total rejection of religion and all family ties. Throughout 1974 Cambodia who fled from the southeast of their country into Vietnam, and from other areas into the government's enclaves, spoke with awe of the fanaticism of these youths, who would allow no dissent nor any questioning of their directives.

It was now that the gruesome accounts of rule by terror, which after 1975 became commonplace, began to filter out of the "liberated" zones. Refugees repeated that those who questioned the orders of the young cadres were led away never to reappear. According to the State Department study, "some refugees said that the climate of fear was so great that even within the confines of their own home a husband and wife did not dare discuss Khmer Rouge policies for fear of being overheard." Its author, Kenneth Quinn, concluded that the exploitation of terror was the main way in which the Khmer Rouge enforced their will.

This analysis, based on reports of refugees in the Mekong Delta area of South Vietnam, was supplemented by newspaper reports of Khmer Rouge conduct elsewhere in Cambodia. In March 1974, for example, the Baltimore Sun correspondent remarked on the "incomprehensible brutality of the Khmer Communists." He recalled that the conventional wisdom had always been that Khmer did not wish to fight Khmer and that once the North Vietnamese withdrew from Cambodia good sense would prevail; in fact, however, the Khmer Rouge seemed to have indulged in "sheer brutality for brutality's sake." The Washington Post reported that the Khmer Rouge were "reconstructing" the people and often punished infringements of their regulations by death. The New York Times correspondent, Sydney S. Schanberg, described the joy with which the refugees from Kompong Thom escaped Khmer Rouge control. All of this information—and much more—was available to the State Department and the National Security Council. It does not appear to have created any sense of urgency.

In April 1974 Tom Enders returned to Washington. When he and Gaetana had arrived in Phnom Penh in 1971 she had told colleagues that the best Tom had expected after his Belgrade problem was a consular appointment; now Kissinger rewarded his unquestioning obedience in Cambodia by nominating him to be Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs. The promotion infuriated those members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who recalled the attempts to frustrate their investigation of the bombing in 1973. The Committee delayed six weeks before it reported his nomination favorably. When it eventually did so, it issued an unusual rebuke in which it called Enders' successor, John Günther Dean, was the last American ambassador to Phnom Penh. He had a frustrating tour. Like Kissinger, Dean is a refugee from Hitler's Germany. He had been involved in Indochinese affairs since the middle fifties and, in the Paris embassy in 1968, he had taken part in the first, abortive round of peace talks with Hanoi. Dean had come to know and like Étienne Manac'h, who was then the head of the Quai d'Orsay's Asian Department. When Manac'h heard of Dean's appointment he wrote him from the French Embassy in Peking to wish him luck, calling him the "chevalier de la retraite."

Dean arrived from Vientiane, where he had distinguished himself by forestalling a right-wing coup d'état that had threatened to wreck the fragile coalition peace that had been imposed upon Laos since the Paris Accords. His arrival and Enders' departure were widely welcomed in Phnom Penh. Many Cambodians hoped he could work the same sort of miracle there. For weeks people ran up to his car to pass notes through his window requesting help or advice.

Dean was a more canny bureaucratic warrior than Swank and less aloof than Enders. From his experience in Laos he was used to dealing directly with Kissinger, bypassing State Department officials. He accepted this, arguing that the man in the field has no alternative but to deal with real power, wherever it lies, whatever his personal or professional loyalties. The precise nature of Kissinger's instructions to him as he left for Cambodia is not certain. One senior State Department official says that, "Henry shot the dove off his shoulder," telling Dean, "Your job is to improve the military situation to enable us to negotiate from strength. I don’t want to hear about Laos-type compromises." Certainly Dean saw one of his tasks as trying to improve the quality of the Lon Nol army and its image in the American press and the Congress.

Most journalists who were based in, or who visited, Cambodia felt a troubling ambiguity about the country. Phnom Penh still had enormous, poignant charm; it was an easy place to love—with sadness. The corruption of the regime was depressing, but the people, including officials, were invariably friendly, even warm. In the countryside small boys smiled as they walked toward the war, and incompetent officers would patently explain their tactics to reporters. But most journalists were sickened by the killing, and their dispatches tended to reflect the war-weariness of the country. Sydney Schanberg filled The New York Times with powerful accounts of the effect of Washington's policies; H. D. S. Greenway, who had covered the whole length of the war, wrote moving descriptions of the people’s suffering for the Washington Post.

Such accounts of the futility of war in the sideshow had an impact in Washington. As the House Judiciary Committee moved closer to impeaching Nixon, Congress began to question more critically the rationale of the “decent interval” in South Vietnam and the policy of supporting Lon Nol. In Vietnam, neither side had launched an all-out offensive since the Paris Agreement, but each had tried continually to increase its holdings of land and people at the cost of many thousands. The Senate Refugee Subcommittee claimed that the fighting in the first year of “peace with honor” had created 818,700 new refugees in Vietnam, far more than in any year since 1968, save 1972. An average of 141 people were being killed each day. “The Vietnamese have, in short, suffered more in one year of peace with honor than America experienced in a decade of war,” the subcommittee reported.

Despite the fact that the August 1973 bombing cut-off meant that Washington could no longer respond, as Nixon had promised, "with full force" to North Vietnamese violations of the cease-fire, United States policy had not altered since Nixon declared, four days before the cease-fire, that Thieu’s regime was "the sole legitimate government of South Vietnam." The United States continued to support Thieu in his attempts to ignore the political obligations of the agreement. Graham Martin, an unashamed hawk, who was ambassador to Saigon, fulfilled those instructions to the letter. When Senator Kennedy sent Kissinger a series of questions about United States policy in Indochina, Martin cabled the Secretary: "It would be the heart of folly to permit Kennedy, whose staff will spearhead this effort, the tactical advantage of an honest and detailed answer..."

Kissinger's replies to Kennedy were certainly unusual. The crucial feature of the Paris Agreement (which had enraged Thieu) was that it tolerated North Vietnamese troops in large parts of South Vietnam. Now, however, Kissinger declared, "The presence of large numbers of North Vietnamese troops in the South demonstrates that the military threat from Hanoi is still very much in existence." This quicksilver shift, Kennedy pointed out, was "a new rationalization for our continued heavy involvement in Indochina."

Kissinger claimed that "a secure peace" in Vietnam was an important part of Nixon’s search for "a worldwide structure of peace" and throughout the spring of 1974 the White House pressed for more military aid to Saigon. But Watergate was pushing even conservatives away from the commitment. Republican Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona declared, "We can scratch Vietnam." The Senate approved an amendment to bar further military aid to Vietnam after July 1974.

Congressional impatience with Cambodia had always been greater, and Dean appreciated that restrictions on aid to Lon Nol would inevitably be imposed. After he arrived in Phnom Penh he saw that some sort of negotiation must be started if the war was not to end in the collapse of the government and the ignominious flight of the Americans.

But as impeachment approached, Nixon became more committed to his foreign-policy record. The trips to China and the USSR, the Paris Accords and the disengagement in the Middle East were the achievements he cited most frequently as proof of the extent to which he had built a "generation of peace." It was also clear to the NSC staff that Cambodia, the "Nixon Doctrine in its purest form," remained an emotional commitment of the President’s. The New York Times reported that he was "taking a personal interest in Cambodia" and had pledged his support to Lon Nol despite the warnings of the intelligence community. Early in 1974 Nixon wrote to Lon Nol:

I am convinced that under your vigorous leadership and that of your government, the republic will succeed ... The United States remains determined to provide maximum possible assistance to your heroic self defense and will continue to stand side by side with the republic in the future as in the past ... The continuing warfare in Cambodia results solely, I believe, from the unreasoning intransigence of the North Vietnamese and their Khmer communist supporters.

To Dean, Kissinger seemed equally inflexible. Soon after he arrived, Dean cabled Kissinger to suggest that the United States try to contact the Khmer Rouge commander in chief, Khieu Samphan, who was on a long tour of North Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Kissinger rejected the idea. Dean persisted, asking Kissinger to consider the proposal very carefully and arguing, in terms that he thought Kissinger would respect, that Washington had nothing to lose by the initiative. He suggested that whatever happened, it would make the administration look good in Congress and in the eyes of the world. Kissinger again refused to.

entertain the idea; the United States and the Lon Nol side would be "negotiating from weakness." That was true. But the evidence of the last four years was that the insurgents grew stronger month by month.

Dean, nonetheless, did what he could to muster the government side; "If you don't hang together you'll hang separately," he warned. In these early months, he was more optimistic that he could repeat his Lao success than circumstances warranted, and many journalists found his manner brash and arrogant. But some recognized that he showed more concern for the country than Enders.

In one cable to Kissinger soon after his arrival, Dean commented on a rout of FANK:

Although leadership failures from the platoon up lie behind the Kompong Luong defeat, shifting and unclear command responsibilities of the field commanders were a deficiency FANK need not have incurred. These came in part from the familiar personal intervention of the Marshal himself, from some unavoidable if unfortunately timed reassignments ... giving the Kompong Luong and Lovek commands to unemployed and discredited generals... We are making certain that these lessons are brought home to the Khmer. ... We are requesting an appointment with Marshal Lon Nol for April 23 to engage in a frank talk on the need to avoid future setbacks of this nature.

Dean forced the government to restrict the import of the more extravagant luxuries—Mercedes cars, televisions, canned asparagus—but his attempts to have the most corrupt officials and officers retired were not very successful. With General Palmer, he flew from enclave to enclave, haranguing ineffective commanders and praising the brave. He introduced the novel procedure of making personal wagers with individual commanders. He would issue precise instructions as to what he wished to see done; if the commitments were fulfilled he would hand out bottles of cognac or champagne as a prize.

Sek Sam Iet, the governor of Battambang province, was widely considered to be among the most corrupt of Lon Nol's commanders, selling rice to the Thais and ammunition to the Khmer Rouge. On a visit to Battambang, Dean upbraided him for his recent defeats; he gave him precise orders to reduce the size of his command, regroup his forces into large entities, improve his use of artillery and air support, and run more food convoys. “You must be mean and tough,” he said, and he insisted that the siege of the town of Koh Kralor must be broken. “Would you like to bet as to how long it will take you to relieve Koh Kralor?” he asked. “I’ll bet you a bottle of cognac you can’t do it before Monday. Will you bet me you can do it sooner?”

Sek Sam Iet was interested in bigger wagers. His leadership remained execrable, rice and ammunition continued to disappear. Dean insisted on his removal, but Lon Nol was by now so used to the unconditional support of the White House that, after a brief transfer, he restored him to office.

Dean’s behavior was a novelty—neither Swank nor Enders had involved himself so minutely in military or government affairs. A report by the House Foreign Affairs Committee noted that he was “energetic” in carrying out what he saw as his task. “By his own admission, he does not hesitate to give strategic military advice to Lon Nol or tactical advice to subordinate military commanders.” This was against the law, but Dean rather airily asserted that when Congress passed the Cooper-Church amendment it did not mean to preclude advising at the level at which he performed.

In his early months in Cambodia the government did have some successes. In May 1974, as the monsoon rains began, the Khmer Rouge lifted their siege of the coastal town of Kampot, and then government troops relieved the towns of Oudong, the old imperial capital, and Lovek, which is north of Phnom Penh. After these victories Dean persuaded Lon Nol to offer, in a speech on July 4, "unconditional negotiations" with the Communists. The new proposals dropped Lon Nol's previous insistence on a prior cease-fire and the withdrawal of foreign troops. Dean thought Lon Nol's speech (of which he was the chief author) was "nicely Roosevel­tian," but in Peking Sihanouk denounced it, reiterating that his government would never negotiate with the "puppets," particularly not with the "seven traitors," who had been marked for execution. From the interior, the Khmer Rouge dismissed Lon Nol's offer as a "fallacious maneuver."

Lon Nol's offer had been approved by Kissinger, but it was about the only concession Dean managed to extract from the Secretary that summer. Dean understood that any improvements he could effect in the government's position could only be marginal. The republic was fighting for survival alone, and nothing would change that. He sent a series of cables back to the State Department warning that "time is against us," arguing that "the ship must be found a port; we cannot abandon it on the high seas." He began to talk of the need for a "controlled solution," which he later defined as "a nonmilitary solution which would take account of the “realities” while allowing the Cambodians to stop fighting and the Americans to withdraw with dignity. When one of his gloomy predictions was realized, Dean could not always resist the temptation of saying “As I pointed out in my cable . . .” or “As I warned some weeks ago . . .” Once, in frustration over his apparent inability to move Kissinger toward a settlement, he asserted that but for his self-discipline he would have resigned by now.

Such cables infuriated Kissinger. He sent increasingly astringent messages to Phnom Penh informing Dean that the duties of an ambassador did not include giving strategic counsel to the Secretary of State. To Dean’s demands that “we must do something,” Kissinger would reply that he was indeed acting but it was no concern of Dean’s: an ambassador had no right to know everything. When presented with his morning cable traffic, Kissinger would ask his staff sarcastically, “What lectures has Professor Dean got for us today?” and he reacted with anger (understandable, perhaps) when The New York Times revealed that he had rejected Dean’s proposal for a meeting with Khieu Samphan. He blamed Dean for the leak. Later, Dean diplomatically told a Congressional committee that he felt the number of cables he received from Kissinger was “amazing.” Of their disagreements, he said he considered that “It is the role of an ambassador to be honest and not always say what is popular.” This was never Kissinger’s view.

Kissinger did face certain distractions at this time. Throughout the year he had been preoccupied with his Middle East shuttle and with the collapse of Nixon's Watergate defense. While Dean was proposing contact with Khieu Samphan, the White House was reeling under public reaction to Nixon's edited version of his taped White House conversations.

The row over the Judiciary Committee's demands for more tapes continued through May and June, and involved Kissinger once again in wiretap scandal. On June 6 Laurence Stern of the Washington Post revealed that the February 28, 1973, tape in the hands of the committee showed that Nixon had told John Dean that it was Kissinger who "had asked that [it the wiretaping] be done." That afternoon, at a State Department press conference, where he had expected to be questioned about his Middle East triumphs, Kissinger was instead asked "whether or not you have consulted or retained counsel for a defense against a possible perjury indictment." He flinched, said he was not conducting his office like a conspiracy, and tried to avoid the question. Clark Mollenhoff of the DesMolines Register began to bellow about his "evasion and failure to recollect," and he demanded an answer to "the direct question—if you had any role in initiating the wiretaps of your subordinates." Kissinger sidestepped; Mollenhoff shouted. Shaking with rage, the Secretary said, "I did not make a direct recommendation."

More evidence to show that he had neglected to tell all the truth about the wiretaps appeared in other papers, and by the time Nixon departed on a diversionary "journey for peace" to the Middle East, Kissinger was upset. On June 11 in Salzburg he called an impromptu news conference. His eyes watering, he complained bitterly about the way in which his secret papers were being leaked and his motive impugned. Warning that "I do not believe it is possible to conduct the foreign policy of the United States under these circumstances when the character and credibility of the Secretary of State is at issue," he threatened to resign unless the Senate Foreign Relations Committee publicly cleared him of lying about the wiretaps.

Kissinger's outburst had the effect he desired. The idea that the nation might be deprived of its brilliant Secretary of State as well as its President was too alarming for the Senate; fifty-two Senators quickly signed a statement declaring that the Nobel Prize winner's "integrity and veracity are beyond reproach," and the Foreign Relations Committee promised to hold more hearings. When it did so it was clear that it had no wish to probe. Senator Fulbright advised his colleagues, "It is not our responsibility to say whether it was legal or not, but whether Mr. Kissinger misrepresented his role." The Committee found that he had not.

In the course of his outburst in Salzburg, Kissinger explained his behavior in a revealing way. "I would like to think that when the record is written some may remember that perhaps some lives were saved and that

.Such confrontations were rare. Kissinger had by now more critics in the press, but many of those who covered him most constantly still felt very close to him. The first major account of his period of office, by Marvin and Bernard Kalb, was published in the fall of 1974. It was useful as a log of his events and very admiring; the words “Chile” and “Allende” do not appear in its index. Soon after it was published, Kissinger embarked with his press corps on another arduous Mid-East shuttle, and at the end of the trip, Marvin Kalb suggested to his press colleagues that they give presents to the crew of the plane. The journalists were delighted with the idea. What the crew wanted, Kalb said, were signed copies of his book. The journalists paid $5 each.

† Kissinger and Le Duc Tho had been awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize jointly, in recognition of their achievement in negotiating the Paris Peace Agreement. In his book, The Ends of Power, H. R. Haldeman recalled that the award aroused Nixon's jealousy of Kissinger. Kissinger accepted the prize; Le Duc Tho refused to take his share, on the grounds that peace had not yet come to Vietnam. perhaps some mothers can rest more at ease ... But I leave that to history . What I will not leave to history is a discussion of my personal honor.

The corollary of the wiretaps was the concealment of the Menu bombing of Cambodia from Congress and the falsification of the Pentagon's computerized records. When this was revealed in 1973, Congressman Robert Drinan, the Jesuit priest from Massachusetts, introduced the first motion to impeach Nixon. His motion was later taken up by John Conyers, Jr., one of the senior Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee. A tiny staff was assembled for the committee to investigate the charge that Nixon had flouted the Constitution by waging a secret war in a neutral country.

It was an immensely important commission. The Committee possessed full authority to discover how the foreign policy processes of the United States had been corrupted.

But the Committee staff soon realized that the Democratic leadership had little wish to see the inquiry proceed. One reason was its breadth. Unlike the articles concerned with specific domestic crimes, Article IV, on the bombing of Cambodia, threatened to indict an entire system of policymaking. Furthermore, the introduction of the war into the Committee's proceedings would inevitably be emotional and would threaten the “fragile coalition” that Judiciary Chairman Peter Rodino was trying to build with moderate Republicans. Finally, a full inquiry would have demonstrated that Senator Mike Mansfield, the Senate Majority leader and other Democrats had known about the secret bombing at the time it was taking place.

Without real political support, the staff was able to obtain only a limited amount of material from either the Pentagon or the Senate Armed Services Committee. It did, however, receive all the cables to and from General Abrams that precipitated the bombing and are quoted at the beginning of this book. The papers showed that Nixon himself had ordered the concealment, and that the Senate had been lied to by men like Elliot Richardson. At the same time the texts of closed Armed Services Committee hearings revealed the extent of Democratic complicity in the deception. The White House refused categorically to allow Executive Branch documents to be declassified and the Committee leadership made almost no attempt to question this judgment. Rodino limited as strictly as possible his members' access to the papers.

Article IV survived through the summer only because of the obstinacy of Conyers. And it was eventually adopted by the Democratic caucus because the members knew it would be defeated in the full committee.

The Democrats met together in closed executive session on the morning of July 30, 1974. The Committee had already approved the first two articles of impeachment—on the Watergate cover-up and on the abuse of power (including the Cambodia wiretaps and the Huston plan). The discussion of Cambodia in this private session (reproduced from the notes of a staff member who was present) provides a revealing demonstration of the caution with which Congress, by contrast, approached matters of foreign affairs.

Rodino soon made it clear that he wished Conyers to drop the Article. He agreed with Representative Walter Flowers, Democrat of Alabama, who said, “It’s going to damage the credibility of the Committee to the extent of jeopardizing our efforts. If I was a prosecutor and a guy was up for five murders and I could prove only three, I would bring him up on only three. The primary charge is abuse of office and we have already proved that.”

To this William Hungate, Democrat of Missouri, responded, “It’s kind of hard to live with yourself when you impeach a guy for tapping telephones and not for making war without authorization.” But Rodino warned that if the Article was introduced the Republicans would say, “Nixon’s the guy who saved the world, brought peace and all that crap.” “One of the hardest things in politics is being right and keeping quiet,” sighed Hungate. The caucus ended with Conyers agonizing over what he should do.

Later that day the full Committee met before national television to debate Article III, which charged Nixon with contempt of Congress for refusing to provide papers and tapes duly requested by the Committee. In the middle of the debate Conyers passed around a note saying he intended still to offer Article IV. At this, Representative Harold Froehlich, a Wisconsin Republican, approached Rodino and whispered, “I seriously hope you will consider putting this off till tomorrow so it does not happen on prime time TV. That will cost us all our support with the American people.”

Article III was approved, and the Democrats again caucused to decide how debate on Conyers’ troublesome motion could be limited. Rodino asked Conyers if he would withdraw the Article if the Republicans attached an amendment attacking Lyndon Johnson as well. Conyers refused. “This is not frivolous, Mr. Chairman. This is not merely to make a record. I feel very strongly on this.”

After the caucus Charles Wiggins, a conservative Republican from California, approached Conyers. "I hear you are offering your article. Well I might just have another article too. I understand the President has been having all these prayer breakfasts at the White House. I might just impeach him for not separating church and state."

Eventually the debate opened at 4:15 that afternoon—not prime time—and the members agreed to limit it to one and a half hours. Rodino left the chair, almost for the first time in the entire impeachment process.

Article IV charged that Nixon had violated his constitutional oath of office in that he, "on and subsequent to March 17, 1969, authorized, ordered, and ratified the concealment from the Congress of the facts and the submission to the Congress of false and misleading statements concerning the existence, scope and nature of American bombing operations in Cambodia in derogation of the power of the Congress to declare war, to make appropriations, and to raise and support armies, and by such conduct warrants impeachment and trial and removal from office."

The charge, said Conyers, was simple: "The President unilaterally undertook major military actions against another sovereign nation and then consistently denied that he had done so to both the Congress and the American people." Representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who had tried the year before to stop the bombing of Cambodia, pointed out that the issue was "whether or not the Congress can participate in decisions which it is given power over under the constitution." Robert Kastenmeier of Wisconsin acknowledged that the Article had no hope of approval but said he would vote for it nonetheless, for "the essence of the article is as fundamental as the three we have already adopted if not more so."

The opponents of the motion argued that this had been wartime, that the President was fulfilling his obligation to protect American lives, that Sihanouk had acquiesced, that some members of Congress had been told, and that previous Presidents, particularly Johnson, had been deceitful. Perhaps the most interesting speech against the motion was made by John Seiberling, whose Ohio district includes Kent State University. He agreed with its spirit but had to vote against it, he said. With a flourish he held up in his hand the sheaf of cables to and from Abrams in which the Menu procedures were organized in 1969. The administration, he said, had refused to declassify them. "They are top secret. And yet there is no justification for the secrecy. The war is over. But they also, by doing that, prevent us from using as evidence in this case before the public some of the documents which tie the President into this very act of concealment. So the concealment is continuing and prevents us from effectively presenting the facts." Twelve members voted for the motion, twenty-six against After the result was announced, ten of those who had voted in favor filed a dissenting view in which they remarked that the ariticle was

one of the most serious the Committee on the Judiciary considered during the course of its inquiry. It is difficult to imagine Presidential misconduct more dangerously n violation of our constitutional form of government that Mr. Nixon's decision secretly and unilaterally to order the us of American military power against another nation, and to deceive and mislead the Congress about this action... The Constitution does not permit the President to nullify the war-making powers given to the Congress. Secrecy and deception which deny to the Congress its lawful role are destructive of the basic right of the American People to participate in their government's life-and-death decisions. . . . By failing to recommend the impeachment of President Nixon for the deception of Congress and the American public as to an issue as grave as the systematic bombing of a neutral country, we implicitly accept the argument that any ends—even those a President believes are legitimate—justify unconstitutional means.*

Perhaps Drinan was exaggerating only a little when he said, "Those who vote against this article will be saying, in effect, that the President, our next President, any President, can deceive the Congress, can have secrecy in the executive branch, can try to justify it by saying we didn't want to embarrass some foreign prince. . . ."

Richard Nixon's resignation was hailed by Sihanouk in Peking. President Gerald Ford, he remarked, was not bound by the errors and the obligations of his predecessor. He could break with the past and perhaps finally a solution to the war in Cambodia could be found. Then Ford made it clear, by retaining Henry Kissinger as his Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, that he intended to continue the foreign policies of the past five years.

When John Gunther Dean visited Washington at the end of August it was obvious to him that little had changed. He found it almost impossible even to talk to Kissinger. Once again the Secretary was preoccupied—this time with the failures of his policy during the Cyprus crisis. After writing Kissinger another long paper on the situation, Dean spent a good deal of time with influential members of the Senate and the House. In an obvious, and understandable, attempt to protect his future should there...

The dissenting view was signed by Representatives Holtzman, Kastenmeier, Edwards, Hungate, Conyers, Waldie, Drinan, Rangel, Owens, Mezvinsky.

be a rout in Cambodia, he made it clear, discreetly, that he was rather more in favor of negotiations than was Kissinger. He also hinted at the difficulty he was having in getting to see the Secretary.

The investment paid off. After several calls from Capitol Hill to the State Department, Kissinger did see Dean briefly and extended what Dean took to be grudging approval of the idea of a “controlled solution.” Several months later Congressman Donald Fraser, to whom Dean had talked, pointed out at a public hearing on Cambodia, “It is reasonably common knowledge that when the Ambassador from Cambodia was back in Washington a while back he had great difficulties getting the attention of the Secretary.” Choosing his words carefully, Fraser observed, “the impression one gets is that we are prepared to continue financing this war to the last Cambodian.”