?

I only"woes" and distress, reach a mass audience and become part of'the established
truth. I n this way a "I i&' isimplanted in ,the public mindwith all the
effectivenessof a system of cen- sorship,while the. illusion of an open press and-
society, maiptained. I f dic- tators were smarter, they -wouldsurely use the
Ameticbnsysterp of thoughtand indoctrination.I t was inevitablewith the failure of
the American t6 subdue South Vietnamandto,crbsh: move- ments elsewhere in
I ndochina, that there would be a to*.'ieconstructthe history of these years,sd to
place the role of the United States in a more favorable light.:The drab ,viewof
temporary Vietnamprovided by Butter- fieldand establishmentpresshelps,sustain the
desired rewriting of his- tory, asserting isit doesof Communist .suetie&, and
American failure. Well suitea these aims are tales of atracities, which not only
prove the evils .of-communism but undermine the ciedibility'.of those who opposed
the 1 might interferewith future crusadbs'.forfreedom.s'1'i;I Edward
munistatrocitiesB. ut problem..despite the "vast destruction facilitieins flicted
by the There have alsobeenpositive of the "neweconomiczones" journals as theof soil
and pastaccounts in such1write as theywish: Fox Butterfield,with his ideological b
h d e r s , the frontpage of the (daily circulation armed soldiers people PUllinF
more than 800.000); and Bragg, plows, others workiri&j.:fields, and one-and the
CanadianButnone of thisextensivevidenceappears in analy- sis of "conditions in
I ndochina years after the end of the war there." Nor is there any discussion the of
the "case of the missingbloodbath," though forecasts of a holocaust were urged by
the US. leadershipo,fficial 'experts and the massmediaover the entire course of the
in justifying our continued military presence., On the other hand, protests by some
former anti-warindividualsagainstallegedman rights violations in Vietnam are
givengenerouscoverage. This choice of subject may be the only basis on which US.-as
opposed to Soviet-dissidents&TDistortSonsat S.I ,a Thomas Y.Crowell (1977).nonite
Central Committee,whoworked in Vietnam for manyyearsandstayedfor thirteen months
after the war, testi-before Congress March 1977 on a two-week return visit in
January, alsoconveying a very favorable impres- sion of the great progress he
observed&r-there is a slight Post account the Vietnamesereach a tiny circle of of
they weresmuggled out a relative of the photographer who died theescape. attempt is
entirely fanci-May 1,977,published ah accounotfproblems of peace" in Vietnam by Fox
Butterfield. He describes the "woes" of the people of the South, their "senseof
hardship" and the grimconditions of their life,concluding that "most South- erners
are said appear resigned to their fate." His evidencecomes from
L'diplomatsr,efugeeasnd letters from Vietnam." journals of the War Re- sisters
League and the-American Friends Service Committee of March-May 1977, in contrast,
there are lengthy reports by Carol Bragg a visit to Vietnam earlier thisyear by a
six-person AFSC delega- tion, including two hadworkedin Vietnamand are fluent in
Vietnamese. The group traveledwidely the South andspoketowell-known leaders of the
non-Communist T h u d Force who are active in the press andgovernment, as welals
ordinary citizens. They report impressive social and economic progress in the face
of the enormous destruction left by the war, a "pioneeringlife" that
i"sdifficulatnd at timesdiscouraging," buteverywhere"signs of a nation re-
building"withcommitmentanddedica- tion.- Butterfieldclaims that "there is little
verifiable information on the neweco- nomic zones-no full-time American
correspondents have been admitted since the war-but they are evidently not
popular." While it is true that American correspondents are not welcomed in
Vietnam, there is nonethelessampleex- pert eyewitnesstestimony,including that of
journalists of international repute, visitiVngietnamepsreofessorsCanada, American
missionaries and others whhoavteraveled through the country where they worked for
years. Jean and Simonne Lacouture pub- lished a in 1976 a recent visit, critical of
much of what they saw but giving a generallyverypositive account of reconstruction
effortasnpdopular commitment. Max Ediger of the Men-ReviewbodgeParis (1977).atof
respectively.that ignore the Americraonle-Butterfield onlybaths'in Fact and
Propaganda (19731, = will bebringhimselfto speak of "substantialThe pictures. _- b-
. ..appeared a yearTHB25, 1977I ,."*I "/._789I the "painfulC. HI LDEBRAND and Monthly
(1976).PONCHAUD. Juilliard Press.and ANTHONY, -..tracts of land madefallowwar,"
with no indicated-andby thatcanget serious attention mediatoday.The technical name
"freedom of the press." All arefreewith her eyewitnesstestimony, in (circulation
2,500).Typically, reports whichemphasize the destruction caused by the Ynited
States theprogress and commitment"of-is. known if this ttie::'caption reads.)the
massthisfarce isexception isI .I ,I t isthe recent spate hewspaper reports, editorials
Cambodia, a part of the world ordinarily of great concern to the press.However, an
useful lessons may bt2 drawn and public opinion mobi-lized in directions
advantageous tothe established order. Such didacticism often. plays fast andloose
'withthe truth. ,example,onApril 8, 1977,Post ,devotedhalf a page to"photographs
believed. be first of actual forced labor conditions in the countryside of
Crtmbodia [to] have reached the West.?' pictures showboundman waksilled,'! Quite a
sensation@testimonial to Com-.">>. , ,"~#I ,./this context *thatwe must view.,?,
earlier inFrance, Germany and Aus- tralia, aswelals in the(April 19, 1976), with
the caption "TrueFaI se?" I n fact, an, attempt by a Thai trader to sell these photos
to the Post was turned down "because the origin and authenticity of the photo-
graphs were in doubt." The photos ap- peared inanother,Thai newspaper two days
before the April 4th election. The Post then published them, ex- plaining in an
accompanying article that "Khmer watchers'"were dubious about the' clothes and
manner of the peopledepicted, and quoting "other observers" who "pointed to the
possibility thatthe series of pictures could have been taken in Thailand with
theprime objectivedestroying the image of the Socialist parties" before the
election.This story iYas reported in theof theI ndochina Re-source Cqnter in July
1976, along -with the additional information that aThai intelligence officer later
admitted that the photos were indeed posed inside Thai- land: " 'Only the
photographer and were supposed to know,''he confided to"a Thaj journalist." The
full details were again given in the(April 25, 1977; circulation 6,000). A letter
of,April 20 to Post on these points hasnot appeared. I n short, the "freedom ,of the
press" assures that readers of therevolutionaries in overcoming it, giving and
three foreign embassies in Wash-a very favorable picture of their pro- ington."
Their "Acknowledgments" men- grams and policiesb,ased on a widl tion only the
expertise of Thai and range of sources. Published las,t year, ,Malaysian officials,
U.S. Government ~ and weltreceived by the journal of the Cambodian experts,
anFdather Pon-q AsiaSociety March-April 1977), chaud. They also claim to have ana-I
Chilean police state are explained away an uafiortunate consequence of Allend-ista
"wrecking" of the economy.I n brief, Hildebrand andPorter at- tribute "wrecking" and
''rebuilding'' LO the wrong parties in Cambodia. I n his Foreword tuand that"Here
and there were bodies, but it wasdifficult to tell if they were people who had
succumbed to the hard- ships of the march or simply civilians and soldiers killed
inthe last battles." " They do not mention the Swedish jour- 'nalist, Olle
Tolgraven, Richard Boyleof Pacific News Service, the last news- man to leave
Cambodia. who denied theJacquei Engelmann, a priest with nearly decades of
experience in Cambodia, who was evacuated athe same time,g.wetill the .facts.Even
if the photographs had beenobserves thaitt is a book from whichshould be pulling
plows in Cambodia. The reason- is clear, if unmentioned: The savage American
assault on Cain- bodia 1 didnot spare the animal pop- ulation. Hildebrand and
Porter, in their,cite a Cambodian Government report of April 1976that several
'hundred thou- sand draftanimals, were killed inthe rural ,areas. The Post did, not
have to resort to probable fabrications to depict the facts. A hundred-word item
buried in of June' 14, 1976, cites an official U.N. reportthat teams of "human
buffaloes" pull plows inLaosinareaswherethebuffaloherds, along with 'everything
else, were deci- mated (bythe 'American bombing, al- though this goes unmentioned
intheMuch the ,same is true in Viet- nam. Quite possibly theU.No. trheLaotian
Government, could supply photo- graphic evidence, but this would not satisfy the
needs of current propaganda.The response 'tothe three books under review nicely
illustrates this selection process. Hildebrand and Porter present a carefully
documented study of the destructive American impact on Cam- bodia and the success
of the Cambodiastanding the situation $btaining in PhnomPenh before and afterthe
Lon No1 government's collapsea'nt.hde chardcter and programs of the Cam- bodian
Government that has replaced it,will, am sure, be grateful. . . ."the mass media
arenotgratefulforthe Hcdebrand-Porter message, and have shlelded the general public
from sucharnedpopted"werethattheresands, as certain newpapers have writ- ten".
(cited by Hildebrand and Porter).790THE 25, 1977*Asian scholar George Kadinit has
not been reviewed intheor any mass-mediapublication, nor usedas the basis for
editorial comment, with one exception. acknowledged its existence in ' a n
editorial
entitled \"Cambodia Good Guys" (November 22, 1976), which dismissed contemptuously
the very ideathathe Rougecould play a constructive role, aswellas the notion that
the United States had 'a major hand in the destruction, death and turmoil of'
wartime and postwar Cambodia, I n another editorial on the"Cambodian Horror"(April
16, 1976), the editors speak of the attribu- tion of postwar Cambodian difficulties
to ,U.S. intervention as "the record ,ex- tension to date of the politics of
guilt." Onthe subject of "Unscrambling Chile"lyzed radioand refugee reports.Their
scholarship collapses under the barest scrutiny. T o cite a few cases, they state
that among those evacuated from PhnomPenh, "virtually everybody saw the
consequences of ,[summary execu- tions] intheform .of the corpses of men, women and
children rapidly bloat- ing and rotting inthehot sun," citing,9, 1975). They also
citeMay 9, 1975, where SydneySohmberg wrote tha"tthere have been unconfirmed
reports of executions of senior military and civilianofficials. . . . But none of
this will apparently bear(September 20, 1976), however, the any resemblance to the
mass executions abuses of the "manfully rebuilding", 'that had been predicted by
Westerners,,"perceptions of Cambodia.,Barron andPaul claim thathere is no evidence
of popular supportfor the Communists tihne countryside and that people '"fled tothe
cities" as a re- sult of the "harsh ,regimen" imposed by the Communists-not the
American bombing.Extensiveevidencetothe con- trary, including eyewitness reportsand
books by Frenchand American corre- sponden,ts and observens long familiar with
Cambodia (e.g., Richard Dudman, Serge Thion, Pomonti, Charles Meyer) is never
cited, Nor do they'to account for tlie amazingly rapid growthof the revolutionary
forces fromI n contrast, the,media favorite, Bar- ronand Paul's "untold story of
Com- munist Genocide in Cambodia" (their subt,itle)-,v.irtuallyignoresthe.U.S.Gov-
ernment role; When they speak of "tqe murder of gentle land," they are not
referring to B-52 attacks on villages or thk systematic bombing and murderous
ground sweepsby American troops or forces organized and supplied by , the United
States, ina land that had been largely i'emoved fromthe conflict prior tothe
American attack.Theirpoint 'of view can be predicted fromthe "di- verse sources" on
which they relied: namely, "informal briefings from spe- cialists atheState and
Defense De- partments, the National Security Council"Cazaux, who wrote, single
corpse was seen along our evacuation route," and that early reports of massacres
proved fallacious Post, Mayothers,in fact, that"notathat evacuated priests witness
to any cruelties"were deaths, but"not thou-1969 to 1973, as attested by U.S.
intelli- - gence and as isobvious fromthe un- folding events themselves.Their
quotes, where they can be checked, are no more rkliable. Thus they claim that
Ponchaud attributes' to',a,?,interesting that a 1.2 million estimateis attributed-
byPonchaud to the Amer- idan Embassy ,(presumably Bangkok) , a completely worthless
source, as the historical record demonstrates. The figure bears a suggestive
similarity to the prediction by officials at the war's end that a million would
diein the next year.May 1,1977, Robert (editor of a dubious offshoot ,of Britain's
called "Foreign Report" which specializes in sensational rumors from the
intelligence agencies) asserts that"Cambodia's pursuit of total revolution has
resulted, by the , official admission of itsHead of State, KhieuSamphan, inthe
slaughter of a million people."' Moss that the source of statement is Paul, who
claim that in an interview with the I talian..become the 'best-known unread book in'
around Phin6m Penh- for many daysKhmer Rouge official the statement that pmple
expelled from the cities "are longer needed, and local chiefs are free to dispose
of them a3 they please," imply-of limited +met Rouge infiuenw and unusual ,peasant
discontent, where revenge killings were aggravated by t8e threat of starvation
resuhing from American destruction and killing. These reports also emphasize both
the extra-"TRYI NG TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT,@g that local chiefs arefreeto killthem.
But Ponchaud's first reportthis February 18, 1976) ordinary brutality both sides
during quotes a military chief as stating thatthey "are left t o ,the absolute
discretionof the local authorities," whichimpliesnothing of theyard,-to eatThese
examples are typical. Where there is no independent confirmatory evidence, the
Barron-Paul story can hardly be regarded credible. Their version of history has
already appeared in the Digest (circulation more than 18 million), and has been
widely cited inthe mass media as an authori- tative account, including, amongthem,a
front-page horror summary inan article in TI /(April 30, circulation more than 19
million) ,by Ernest Lefever, a foreign policy specidist who is other- wise known
for his argument beforethat we should be more toler- ant 6f the "mistakes" of the
Ohilean junta "in attempting to clear away thedevastation of the Al! ende period,"
and. hisdiscoveryof the "remarkable free- dom of expression" enjoyed by critics of
the military regimeAugust 6, 1974).Ponchaud's book is based his own personal
experiences in Cambodia from1965 until thecapture of Phnom extensive interviews
with refugees and reports from the Cambodian radio. Pub- lished in France in
January 1977, it hasalways getsgate .,recent hsistory, on the basis of an ac- count
by Jean Laoouture (inwidely cited since inthe pressw, hichalleges that Ponchaud has
revealed a policy of "auto- genocide" (Lacobture's term) practicedby
the,Communists.Before looking more closely at Pon- chaud's book and its press
treatment, we would like to point outthatapait from HildebrandandPortertherearemany
other sources on recent events in Cambodia thathave'not been brought to the
attention of the American read- 'ing public. Space limitations preclude aafter its
fall [and]' sawwidheard of n o . . . executions" ! 'the shooting of some prominent
politicians and the lynching of hated bomber pilots in Phnom Penh." He concludes
"that such executions could be numbered in hundreds or thousandsrather than,in
hundreds of thousands," thoughthere was "a big death toll from sickness"- surely a
direct consequence,, in large measure, of the devastation caused by the American a
%.fack. Sampson'sysis is kpown to those ir. the press who have 'cited Ponchaud at
second-hand, but has yet 'tobe reported here. Andcqmprehensive - review, such nals
as theview, the London thejour-"justcitedandothers 4elsewhere, have provided
analyses by highly qualified specialists who havestudied the full range of evidence
avail- or have died as a result of the, policiesable, and who concluded *hat
executions have numbered a t most inthe thou- sands; that these were localized in
areasof the Communist regime since April (UPI , Globe, April 17,19.77). No source is
given, 'but it isTliE 25, 1977-..7910~"I ~. .-"the civil war(provoked by.icaanttack)
and repeated discoveries that massacre reports were false. They also test-ifyctp
the extreme unreliabdity of refugee reports, andthe need to treat shem with great
caution, a fact that we and others have discussedelse- where (cf. Chomsky: W qon
,the problems of interpreting reports of refugees American bomb- ing in Laos).
Refugees are frightened and defenseless, at mercy of alien forces. They naturally
tend to report what they believe their interlocuters wishto hear. While their
reports must be considered seriously, care caution are necessaSrpye.cifically,
refugees questimed by Westerners or Thais have a vested interest in reporting
atrocities onthepart of Cambodian revolutim- aries, an obvious facthat no serious
reporter 'will fail take into account.To give an illustration of neglected source,
the London(March 26, 1977) carried a letter by Sampson, worked as an ewn-omist and
statistician for the Cambodid Government until March 1975, in close contact with
,the central statistics office. After leaving ,Cambodia, he writes, he "visited
relugee camps in Thailanii and kept in touch with Khmers," also relied on European
friend who cycledbear to stopestimate of executions f_isar unique.fromExpert
analyses. of thesortread quite differently from the confident conclusions of the
mass mkdia. Here we read tha,t "Most foreign experts Cambodia and refugees believe
at least 1.2 million persons have been killedKhieuSam- th' h a million and that the
popu-I steps glassesrattleZ Zalldog aateZ tell decidedpaw.toBartels Ludvigsonweeklyp
h n stated-thatdied during the war,latiohnad been 7 million befortehe . war and is
now 5 million. Even if one places some credence, in reported interview nowhere it
does Khieu Samphan suggest thatthe million post-war deathws ere a result of
official policies (as opposed ,to the lag effects ofthatleft large numbers ill,?\
jured, and on the verge of starvation). The, "slaughter" by the KhmerRouge is a
creation.A editorial states: "Reports putthe loss of life as high as 2 million
people out of 7.8 mil- lion total." Again, there is n'o source, but we will suggest
a possibility directly.social and economic development, while deploring much brutal
practice i n work- ing for egalitarian goals andnational independence.Ponchaud's
book lacks the documen- tation provided Hinildebrand a n d Porterand veracity is
therefore diffi- cult to assess. But the serious reader will find much to make him
somewhat wary. For one thing, Ponchaud plays fastand loose with quotes and with
numbers. He quotes an unattributed Khmer Rouge slogan, "One two million young peo-
ple will be enough to build the new , Cambodia." I n an article in(February 18,
1976) he gives whatap-pears to be the same quote, this time . as follows: "To
rebuild the newbodia,
a million people are enough." Here the quote is attributed to a Khmer Rouge
military commander, along with the statement misrepresented 'byBarronI Goodfellow,
July 14, 1975).I n fact, where an independent check is possible, Ponchaud's account
seems at best careless, sometimes in rather signif& cant ways. Nevertheless, the
book is a serious work, however much the press has distorted it.As noted,
Ponchaud ,relies over- whelmingly on refugee reports. Thus his account,is at best
second-hand with many of the refugees reporting what they claim to haveheardfrom
others. Lacouture's review gives at best a third- hand account. Commentary on
Lacou- ture'sreview in,the press, which has been extensive,gives afourth-hand ac-
count. That is what is available to read- ers of the American press.As an instance,
consider I editorial alreadycited, which givesis available to the American publi'c.
This editorial, based on Cacouture's review, speaks of the "reign of 'terfor
against the popu1,atim"instituted by the Kmhmer Rouge. Lacouture, like Ponchaud,
em- phasizes brutality of the American war, which laid the basis for all that fol-
lowed. These references disappear fromanalysis of "two ist victory" goes still
further. David'A delman, May 2,1977, speaks without qualification of "the purges
'that took hundreds of thou- sands of lives inthe aftermath of the Communist'
capture of PhnomPenh on April 17, Even the P.S. Govern- ment sources on which
journalists often uncritically relyadvanceno such claim, to our knobledge. I n fact,
evenand Paul claim only that "100,000 or more?' were killed in massacres and
executions-they base their calculations ona variety of interesting assumptions,
among them,, that a21 military men, civil ,servants and teachers were targeted for
execution; curiously, their "calculations" lead {hem tothe figure of 1.2 million
deaths as a result ,of"actions" of the Khmer Rouge governing authorities, by
January 1, 1977 ("at a very minimum"); by a coincidence, thenumberreported much
earlier by the American Em- bassy, according to Ponchaud. Else-years afterthe Commu
where in the press, similarnumbers Ere credibility.1I ibandied about, withequal
an,dPauln,otedchanges thenumbers2 million, attributes the quote toan unnamed
Marxist, and concludes that it goes beyond barbarism). This is one of the rare
examples of aquotethatcanbe checked. The results are not pressive.Ponchaud cites
that 200,000 people were killed in Amer- ican bombings from March 7 to August 15,
1973, No source. is offered,picions are aroused by the fact that theeditorial,
which pretends suffering in Cambodia historical vacuqm, a s 'Phnom-Penhradio9, 1975
that there were 200,000 casual-. above (Lacouture to 1.5 million toCambodian report
anhounced May- ---Ponchaud?s-~b-ook--is---serious- aid-.ties-
ofLthFAmericanbombingin1973,.--alizing-aboutthose -are-indifferent- ....inchding
"killed, wounded, and crippled for life" (Hildebrandand Porter). Pon- chaud cites
"Cambodian authorities" who give the figures 800,000 killed' and 240,000 wbunded
before liberation. The figures are implausible. By the usuaI rule of thumb, wounded
amount to about three times killed; quite possibly he has the figures reversed.
worth reading, as distinct frommuchof the commentary it has elicited, He gives a
grisly account of what refugees have reported to him about the barbarity of ,their
treatmentat the hands of the Khmer Rouge. H e ,also reVminds us of some relevant
history. For example, in this "peaceful land," peasants were mas- sacred, their
lands,stolenand villages destroyed, by police and army in 1966, ' 8many then
,joiningthe"their hatredfoarcising such injustices and sowing death.",He reports
the enormous destructionand murder resulting directly 'fromtheAmerican attack on
Cambodia, the star-vation and epidemics as the population Penh would have sufficed
for tyowas drivsnfrom t h e k countryside byAmerican military terror and ,the U.S.-
incited civil war; leaving Cambodia with"an economy completely devastated bythe
war." He points that"from thetime \,of Srhanouk, then Lon Nol, thesoldiers of the
government armyhad Premier, PhnomPenh had only, eight "lovely land." -%already
employed, with regardtotheir Khmer Rou'geenemies,' bloodthirsty methods in no way
different from those of Democratic Cambodia" (the Khmer Rouge).He alsogives arather
positive account of Khmer Rouge programs ofdays worth of riceonhand on the eve of
the surrender" (Agence France-Presse, Bangkok; May 9 , 1975). Nor does, he cite the
testimony of U.S. AI D officials thatPhnomPenh had only a six-day supply of rice
(Wil-T o appreciate fully the cynicism of the press and editorial comments, it is
necessary to recall the role of the Ameri- can mass media in supporting the "secret
war" against Cambodia. P rior t ot h eNixon-Kissinger administration, Cambo-792THE
25, I 977out of government exer-More significant is Ponchaud's account of the
evacuation of PhnomPenhin April 1975. He reports the explanation given by the
revolutionary government: thathe evacuation was motivated by impending famine. But
this he rejects, on the ground that rice stocks in PhnomI t isdifficult to convey
the deep cyni- cism of this .all-too-typical reporting . which excises from history
the Ameri- canrole in turning peaceful Cambodia into a land of massacre, starvation
and disease. While the editors prateabout morality, people are dying int Cambodia
months, with rationing(whathe thinks would have happenedafter two months, with no
new harvest, he does not say). He gives nosourcefor this estimate, and fails to
observe that "According to Long Boret, the old Government's lastas a direct
result .of the policies that they.supported,andindeed) concealed.
HildebrandandPorterquotea Western doctor in Phnom Penh on the mass star- vation
that resulted fromthe Ameridan war: "as well as knocking off a genera- tion of
young men, the war is knocking off generation of children"-those who will die from
the permanent damage suf- ferefrdom severe malnutrition, one small part of the
American legacy to thisa fairsample of whatthethatthecurrenttakes place inana mere
result of Communist savagery., Similarly, an earlier editorial (January] 26, 1977),
based on Barron and Paul, also avoids anyreference to American responsibility,
though there is much mor-to "one of $he most brutal and concen- trated onslaughts
ihnktory" in this "lovely land" of "engaging people."I ?\March 1969, ,whentheraids
were launched. I nweeks, the Cambodian Government made repeated efforts to bring
thefacttsothe attention of theinternational press. Prince Sihanouk appealed to the
press to make public these "criminal attacks" on "peaceful Cambodian farmers"and to
"publicize abroad this very clear stand of Cambodla" in "oppos[ing] all bomb- ings
on Cambodian territory under what- ever pretext." I n January 1970, his gov- ernment
released an official White Book giving details of U.S. attacks civiliansto
1969,including names, places, dates, ,figures and photographs. Ail of this was
conceded by the American press, which 'was laterto claim that it was Richard who
kept the 1969 bombardment from the press and the American people.There was one
notable exception, a report by WilliamBeecher (May 9, 1969), headed"Raids in
Cambodia by U.S. Unprotested," which reported B-52 raids on "Vietcong anNd orth
Vietnamese supply dumps and base camps in Cambodia," citing U.S. sources and
disregarding Sihanouk's impassioned~ protest against the murder of "Khmer
'peasants, women and chil- dren in particular."Byt let us return to the fourth-hand
account. I t also refers to "re-cent photographs depicting forcedlabor conditions
inthe countryside," namely, the case already discussed, adding that they "have not
been positivelyverified." This hardly does justice to the facts. Thealso cites
'keports" that 2 mil- people have died. The source we can imagine for this is
Lacouture's rhetorical question: "What Oriental des-pots or medieval inquisitors
ever boasted having eliminated, in a single year, one- quarter of their own
population?''-2 million people. This statement, allegedly based on Ponchaud, is
quoted intheNothing supporting this appears' i n Ponchaud's book, as' Lacoutme
agreescorrections published in (May 26, 1977),The editorial writers had ob: viously
never seen the book on which they based,their account of events,inQCambodia.
Rather, like the bulk of the ress, they selected what they wanted to believe.
Citing Lacoutmet,heyde-' nounce the terrorandbarbarism of theKhmer Rouge, omitting
his denunciation oftheAmericanattack.Lacouturedoes~ in fact compare the Khmer Rouge
the\ \.I We. disagree with Lacouturk's judg- ment on thiemportance of precision on
this question. I t seems to us quite important, at this point in ,our under-
standing, to distinguish between official government texts 'and memories of slo-
gans reported by refugees, between the statement that the regime "boasts" of having
"killed" 2 million people and the claim by Western sources that some- thing like a
million have died-particu- larly, when the bulk of these deaths are plausibly
attributable to the States. Similarly, it seems to a very important question
whether an :'inhuman phrase" was uttered by a Thai reporteror a Khmer Rouge
official. As forthenum- bers, it seems to quite important to
determinewhetherthenumber of col- laborators massacred France was on the order of
thousands, orhundreds of thousands; and whether the French.Government orderedand
organized the massacre. Exactly such questions arise inthe case of Cambodia! We nopt
retend to know where thetruth lies amidst these sharply con- flicting asessmentsra;
ther, we again want to emphasize some crucial points. What filters thropgh to the
American public is a seriously distorted version of the evidence available,
emphasizing alleged Khmer
Rouge atrocities downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, directand
indirect, in the torment thaCt ambodiahas suffered. Evidence that focuses oh the
American role, like theHildebrandandPorter volume, is ignored, noton 'the basis of
trdthful-ness scholarship but because the mes- sage is unpalatable.I t is a fair
generalization that the largerthenumber of deaths attributed to the Khmer Rouge,
and the more the U:S. role is set aside: the larger the audi- ence that will be
reached. The Barron- Paul vblume is a third-ratepropagandaY'dian villages had been
subject tou.S.- or U.S.-supported armed attack, invari- ably denied, but on
occasion later con-_ceded when it was discovered that West- f&n observers were
present. The massive assault against Cambodia began incitesKatyn. perhaps, we may
add, whether the victims of My Lai numbered inthe hundreds tens of thousands,THE
25, 1977793"secret" B-52 the followingthe fruit that suit perfectly," as distinct
from the Vietnamese, who "have removed only therotten fruit." Com- menting on this
passage, Lacouture states: "Perhaps Beria would not have dared to say this.openlyg
HimmI er might have done And he then concludes that the Cambodian revolution is
"wor-I f, indeed, postwar Cambodia is,he believes, similar to NaziGermany, then
comment is perhaps just, though we may addthat hehas produced no evidence to
support this judgment. But if postwar Cambodia is more similar to Francaefter
liberation, where many thousands of people were massacred within a few months
underfar less rig- orous conditions than thoseleft by the American , war,
thenperhaps a rather diflerent judgment is in order.That the latter conclusion may
be more nearly,Nazis. H e states thaPt onchaud"telling articles" from a Cambodian
ernment newspaper quotes a para-graph which states that "we will 'choose if a
factor of 100 isunimportant.thy ofGauleiters.",The newspaper reportht atthese
judgments, on which the press un-critically relies, does appear in Pon-
chaud'sbook. The source, however, is not a Cambodian 'Government news- paper but a
Thai newspaper, a consider- able dserence.The quotedparagraph was written by a Thai
reporter who claims have hadan interview with a Khmer Rouge official. I n his
corrections, Lacouture notes the error, and adds that this Khmer Rouge official
"said, as chaud writes, that he found the revolu- tionary' method of the Vietnamese
'very slow'. . . ." A moreaccurate statement would be thattheThai reporterthat that
is what was said-by now, a suf- ficiently remote &ain bf transmission to raise many
doubts. seriously would we regard a critical account ,of the United States in a
book aa hostile European leftist based on a report in Pravda of a statement
allegedly made by anunnamed American official? The anaiogy is precise.Why then
should we rest any judgment on Ponchaud's ac- count of a Thairep9tt of an alleged
statement by an unnamed Khmer Rouge official? What is certain is that the basis for
Lacouture's 'accusations, cited above, disappears when the quotes are properly
attributed: to a Thai reporter, not a Cambodian Government newspaper.Lacouture's
review contained other errors, ashe notes in h i s , corrections. h e attributedto
"texts distributed in Phnom what infact appear to be slogam remembered by refugees,
again a rabher considerable difference. None of the examples hqeuotes is
specifically attributed by Ponchaud.I n his corrections, Lacouture raises the
question whether precision on these matters is very important."Faced with
anenterprise as monstrous as the new CambodianGovernment, should wd see the main
problem one of deciding exactly which person uttered 'an inhu- man'phrase, and
whether the regime has murdered thousands hundreds of thousands of wretched
people?",/He adds thaithtardlymatters whatwerethe exact numbers of the victims of
Dachauelicitedcorrect sisuggestebdy mentioned earlier.the analysesI ?tract, but its
exclusive on Corn- munlst terror assures it a 'huge audience. ' Ponchaud's far more
.substantial workheart; a n d the mystic, survivor of a chivalric orderthat
combined stunning swordsmanship with the ability to trans- mit psychic force by
telepathy, is played by Alec Guinness, which I thought theOld to beTWOhim 'an anti-
Communist bias and message,but it has attained stardomonly iib theextreme anti-
Khmer Rouge distortionsadded to it the article New These human actors are
consistentlyproved version ,of history.Eland personages deliberately to putall in a
slack-jawed state of mind-suit-able for maximum appreciation of hisastonishing
cinematic trickery. The in-terior accommodations of the DeathStar, ultimate weapon
of the wicked,galactic Empire; the moment when thespace ship bursts through.. the
speed of space ship; the bustling litttle brown- light; the instantanegus
destructionofanentire planet; th'estupendous climaxwhen the fighter planes of the
freedom- cave in the wilderness and, of course,- -3n the -weeks since-Luke
Skywalker, the very fair-haired- -- bopwho--discovers -that he -too -posses---- ses
the Force. All in all, it is an out- rageously successful, what will be calledof
The last addedits value in an otherwise sluggish mar- ket. That's the sort of
.cause andeffect that makes criticism irrelevant. However, to give you an idea-
belongs to the sub-base- ment, or interstellar qomic-strip,schoolof science
fiction;with astro-drive. Themain participants are a princess mortal peril, a
splen- did young Four-H type is fated to rescue her, an irreverent
fri5e"ehterpriser with - a space ship for hire, an mysticpossessed of "the Force,"
and a gaggle of villains who, when- they -areentirely encased in elegantly plastic
armor, very much like ex- tras borrowed from scenes of the Wehr- macht general
staff plotting Hitlerian strategies. The princess (CarrieFisher) is spunky and-in
both manner andhair style somewhat resembles theGish sis-'ters; the young Hahiill)
is not quite bright but adroit with ma- chinery; the freebooter (Harrisontalks with
shocking cy_nicism outside of his mouth, but an honesthausting as the chariot race
inYears from long afterthe last already be the drawing boards. 0bucket of popcorn
has been eaten at the last neighborhood showing offilmbuffs .will be regaling one
another with recollections of their favor-ite,scenes.and persons: thefrontierbar
patronized by the offspring of improb-able matings liked the elephadcroc-
odile)t;hentrapment within a hugegarbage compacter (courtesy of EdgarPoe); the
-duel with cold-light The Paul Taylor Dance Company's one-swords; the bombing down
a narrow week ' season in at the City Cen- chasm to the one vulnerable spot in the
ter consisted of new repertory. All ofDeathStar; the poignant falling out of - the
six. dances except one were made the two robots in a Geste stretch since 1975, the
year Taylor stopped'794THE 25. 1977I "* ,1, film's most remarkable surprise.upstaged
by a pair of robots-one of the adequately large numbers executed :'them, an
electronic improvement ontheand gave a "Left" authentication 'of woodsman, seems to
have derivedit was a.yello-w brick'Communist evil -that. assuredpa quantum leap to
the mass audience unava,ilableto Hildebrand anPdorter Carol Bragg.
Contraryfactsandeven-authors' corrections of misstatements are general- ly ignored
inadequately reported in favor of a useful lesson (we noteone exception: an honest
retraction of editorial based on Lacouture in theGlobe). We noted earlier thathe
editorial andother press com- ments .built on the Lacouture review of- fer at,best
a fourth-hand account. The chain of transm'ission runs from refugees(or Thai or
U.S.oflicials), to Ponchaud, Yorkwhere a mass audience $isreached "facts"
established that enter the ap-his stilted vbcabulary -obsequious manners fromthe
servants' quarters of Upstairs, theother, shaped rather-like a canister vacuum
cleaner, butwithoutthe hose, is possessed (like the mind reader in Theof the secret
information that is causing all the fireworks, speaks in beeps,whistles and
blinking lights and is emotionally vulnerable as a mother-bysaiditless child.,,it,
waswhen carNo sighed,-This. is ,the sort of thing that will leach one's brain, and
suspect thatnot startGeorge, American(the director ' previously concocted theloving
rebelsinto action against the (don't- ask--what planes--are-cumulative suspense as
gratifyingly ex- tioned. doubthat anyone will ever-Wars-opened (six theatres inthe
Greater New York area),the 1 stock of 20th Century-Fox,its gratified distributor,
has risensomeeleven points, approximately doubling machined sculpture,Fand by means
of largely derived but thoroughly recondi-'-totalitariansdoing in airless space)-
all theseand much more are impeccably engineered,~often beautiful in the manner of
highly a "classic," compilation of nonsense,it wasswoopingbirdsflockssaid all9',
pered 7-foot madbear navigator of thehabited dwarfs withflashlighteyes, who sell
second-hand automatons from amatch it, though the imitations mustof desert; the
amiable but quick-tem- dancing. Except fothrat older oneof 1973), all of the
dances*are immensely popular, supporting thef theorythat TayI or's retirement from
performance freed him to become a greater choreographer. No matter how much one
would like to believe this theory its refutation of the solipsistic theory of
creation, the fact is that Tay-Susan Baumann