Nate Thayer
Encyclopedia
Nate Thayer is a journalist who interviewed Pol Pot
. He was the Cambodia
correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review
, a respected investigative publication that published from 1946 to 2009. His journalism has focused on international organized crime
, narcotics trafficking, human rights
, and areas of military conflict.
, Soldier of Fortune
, The Associated Press and for more than 40 other publications, including The Cambodia Daily
and The Phnom Penh Post. Thayer’s reporting earned him The World Press Award, the 1997 “Scoop of the Year” British press award, and the 1998 Francis Frost Wood Award for Courage in Journalism, given by Hofstra University
in Hempstead, New York
to a journalist "judged to best exemplify physical or moral courage in the practice of his or her craft." He was a visiting scholar at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
at Johns Hopkins University
as well as the first recipient of the Center for Public Integrity
's ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting in November, 1998. Upon awarding Thayer the ICIJ Award, the judges noted:
According to Vaudine England of the BBC
, "Many of the region's greatest names in reporting made their mark in the pages of the Review, from the legendary Richard Hughes
of Korean War
fame, to Nate Thayer, the journalist who found Cambodia's Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot."
Thayer was also the first person in 57 years to turn down a prestigious Peabody Award
, because he did not want to share it with ABC News
' Nightline whom he believed stole his story and deprived him and the Far Eastern Economic Review of income.
Since 1999 Hofstra University's Department of Journalism and Mass Media Studies in the School of Communication has awarded the Nate Thayer Scholarship to a qualified student with the best foreign story idea. Winners are selected on the basis of scholastic achievement or potential as well as economic need.
, the son of Harry E. T. Thayer
who was United States Ambassador to Singapore from 1980 to 1985. He studied at the University of Massachusetts Boston
. From 1980 to 1982 he was involved with the Boston
-based Clamshell Alliance
, acting as spokesman during protest
events at the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant as well as anti-draft
protests.
He began his career in Southeast Asia
on the Thai-Cambodian border, taking part in an academic research project in which he interviewed 50 Cham survivors of Khmer Rouge
atrocities at Nong Samet Refugee Camp
in 1984. He then returned to Massachusetts where he worked briefly as the Transportation Director for the state Office of Handicapped Affairs. Thayer himself noted, "I got fired. I was a really bad bureaucrat
."
He later worked for Soldier of Fortune
Magazine reporting on guerrilla combat in Burma
, and in 1989 he began reporting for the Associated Press
from the Thai-Cambodian border. In October 1989 he was nearly killed when an anti-tank mine
exploded under a truck he was riding in. In 1991 he moved to Cambodia where he began writing for the Far Eastern Economic Review.
In August 1992 Thayer traveled to Mondulkiri Province and visited the last of the FULRO Montagnard guerrillas who had remained loyal to their former American commanders. Thayer informed the group that FULRO's president Y Bham Enuol had been executed by the Khmer Rouge seventeen years previously. The FULRO troops surrendered their weapons in October 1992; many of this group were given asylum in the United States
.
In April 1994 Thayer participated in (and funded) the Cambodian Kouprey Research Project, a $30,000, two-week, 150 km field survey to find the rare Cambodian bovine
known as the kouprey
. Thayer later wrote: "After compiling a team of expert jungle trackers, scientists, security troops, elephant mahouts and one of the most motley and ridiculous looking groups of armed journalists in recent memory, we marched cluelessly into Khmer Rouge-controlled jungles along the old Ho Chi Minh trail
."
On July 3, 1994 Thayer was asked help negotiate Prince Norodom Chakrapong
's release and safe passage to the airport after the prince had been accused by Prime Minister
Norodom Ranariddh
of plotting a coup d'etat
. Thayer was subsequently expelled from Cambodia by Prince Ranariddh, but he returned anyway.
In early 1997 he was again expelled from Cambodia for exposing connections between Prime Minister
Hun Sen
and heroin traffickers. Thayer then decided to pursue a fellowship at Johns Hopkins University.
Thayer noted, "Every ounce of his being was struggling to maintain some last vestige of dignity."
Thayer believed that the trial had been staged by the Khmer Rouge for him and McKaige:
of ABC News
made a verbal agreement with Thayer to use footage from the trial on Nightline, then violated that agreement:
ABC News responded that they had "agreed to pay Nate Thayer the sizable sum of $350,000 for the rights to use his footage of former Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. Despite the fact that ABC provided prominent and repeated credit and generous remuneration for his work, Mr. Thayer initiated a five-year barrage of complaints coupled with repeated demands for more money." In 2002 Thayer sued Koppel and ABC News for $30 million in punitive damages
and unspecified compensatory damages.
in 1978) ever to be granted an interview with the former dictator and, along with McKaige, was certainly the last outsider to see him alive. Thayer recounted the story of his interview with Pol Pot in his book Sympathy for the Devil: Living Dangerously in Cambodia - A Foreign Correspondent's Story. Pol Pot told Thayer:
and Pol Pot's second wife Muon, who told Thayer, "What I would like the world to know is that he was a good man, a patriot, a good father." Thayer was then asked to transport Pol Pot's body in his pickup truck to the site a short distance away where it was later cremated.
, interviewed Kang Kek Iew (Comrade Duch) for the Far Eastern Economic Review after Dunlop had tracked Duch to Samlaut
and suspected strongly that he was the former director of the notorious S-21 security prison
. Dunlop wanted Duch to provide clues that would reveal his identity, and Thayer began probing Duch's story that he was Hang Pin, an aid worker and a born-again Christian:
Duch surrendered to the authorities in Phnom Penh
following the publication of this interview. Dunlop and Thayer were first runners-up for the 1999 SAIS-Novartis Prize for Excellence in International Journalism, presented by the The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, for "exposing the inside story of the Khmer Rouge
killing machine."
, Indonesia
, Mongolia
and the Philippines
. In 2003 he reported on the Iraq War in a five-part series for Slate
Magazine. He also covered the Bangkok
2010 Redshirt riots
. He has recently worked for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists' Center for Public Integrity writing a three month investigation on North Korea
as a rogue state
financed by criminal activity.
Pol Pot
Saloth Sar , better known as Pol Pot, , was a Cambodian Maoist revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until his death in 1998. From 1976 to 1979, he served as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea....
. He was the Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review
Far Eastern Economic Review
The Far Eastern Economic Review was an English language Asian news magazine started in 1946. It printed its final issue in December 2009. The Hong Kong-based business magazine was originally published weekly...
, a respected investigative publication that published from 1946 to 2009. His journalism has focused on international organized crime
Organized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...
, narcotics trafficking, human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
, and areas of military conflict.
Publications, honors and awards
Thayer has written for Jane's Defence WeeklyJane's Defence Weekly
Jane's Defence Weekly is a weekly magazine reporting on military and corporate affairs, edited by Peter Felstead. It is one of a number of military-related publications named after John F. T. Jane, an Englishman who first published Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships in 1898...
, Soldier of Fortune
Soldier of Fortune (magazine)
Soldier of Fortune , The Journal of Professional Adventurers, is a periodical monthly magazine devoted to world-wide reporting of wars, including conventional warfare, low-intensity warfare, counter insurgency, and counter-terrorism...
, The Associated Press and for more than 40 other publications, including The Cambodia Daily
The Cambodia Daily
The Cambodia Daily is Cambodia's first English-language daily newspaper. It was started in 1993 by Bernard Krisher, an American journalist. Krisher hired two young and relatively inexperienced journalists, Barton Biggs and Robin McDowell, as the paper's first editors. The first issue was published...
and The Phnom Penh Post. Thayer’s reporting earned him The World Press Award, the 1997 “Scoop of the Year” British press award, and the 1998 Francis Frost Wood Award for Courage in Journalism, given by Hofstra University
Hofstra University
Hofstra University is a private, nonsectarian institution of higher learning located in the Village of Hempstead, New York, United States, about east of New York City: less than an hour away by train or car...
in Hempstead, New York
Hempstead (village), New York
Hempstead is a village located in the town of Hempstead, Nassau County, New York, United States. The population was 53,891 at the 2010 census.Hofstra University is located on the border between Hempstead and Uniondale.-Foundation:...
to a journalist "judged to best exemplify physical or moral courage in the practice of his or her craft." He was a visiting scholar at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies , a division of Johns Hopkins University based in Washington, D.C., is one of the world's leading and most prestigious graduate schools devoted to the study of international affairs, economics, diplomacy, and policy research and...
at Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...
as well as the first recipient of the Center for Public Integrity
Center for Public Integrity
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit organization dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on issues of public concern. The Center is non-partisan and non-advocacy and committed to transparent and comprehensive reporting both in the United States and around...
's ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting in November, 1998. Upon awarding Thayer the ICIJ Award, the judges noted:
- "He illuminated a page of history that would have been lost to the world had he not spent years in the Cambodian jungle, in a truly extraordinary quest for first-hand knowledge of the Khmer Rouge and their murderous leader. His investigations of the Cambodian political world required not only great risk and physical hardship but also mastery of an ever-changing cast of factionalPolitical factionA political faction is a grouping of individuals, such as a political party, a trade union, or other group with a political purpose. A faction or political party may include fragmented sub-factions, “parties within a party," which may be referred to as power blocs, or voting blocs. The individuals...
characters."
According to Vaudine England of the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, "Many of the region's greatest names in reporting made their mark in the pages of the Review, from the legendary Richard Hughes
Richard Hughes (journalist)
Richard Joseph Hughes was an Australian journalist who spent much of his life in the Far East as correspondent for The Times, The Economist and the Far Eastern Economic Review...
of Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
fame, to Nate Thayer, the journalist who found Cambodia's Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot."
Thayer was also the first person in 57 years to turn down a prestigious Peabody Award
Peabody Award
The George Foster Peabody Awards recognize distinguished and meritorious public service by radio and television stations, networks, producing organizations and individuals. In 1939, the National Association of Broadcasters formed a committee to recognize outstanding achievement in radio broadcasting...
, because he did not want to share it with ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
' Nightline whom he believed stole his story and deprived him and the Far Eastern Economic Review of income.
Since 1999 Hofstra University's Department of Journalism and Mass Media Studies in the School of Communication has awarded the Nate Thayer Scholarship to a qualified student with the best foreign story idea. Winners are selected on the basis of scholastic achievement or potential as well as economic need.
Career
Thayer was born in 1960 in MassachusettsMassachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, the son of Harry E. T. Thayer
Harry E. T. Thayer
Harry E. T. Thayer was the sixth United States Ambassador to Singapore.-Biography:From 1945 to 1946, Thayer served in the US Navy. He attended Yale University and graduated in 1951, and worked for Newsweek from 1952 to 1954, followed by two years with the Philadelphia Bulletin...
who was United States Ambassador to Singapore from 1980 to 1985. He studied at the University of Massachusetts Boston
University of Massachusetts Boston
The University of Massachusetts Boston, also known as UMass Boston, is an urban public research university and the second largest campus in the five-campus University of Massachusetts system. The university is located on on Harbor Point in the City of Boston, Massachusetts, United States...
. From 1980 to 1982 he was involved with the Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
-based Clamshell Alliance
Clamshell Alliance
The Clamshell Alliance is an anti-nuclear organization co-founded by Paul Gunter, Howie Hawkins, Harvey Wasserman, Guy Chichester and other activists in 1976. The alliance's coalescence began in 1975 as New England activists and organizations began to respond to U.S...
, acting as spokesman during protest
Protest
A protest is an expression of objection, by words or by actions, to particular events, policies or situations. Protests can take many different forms, from individual statements to mass demonstrations...
events at the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant as well as anti-draft
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
protests.
He began his career in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...
on the Thai-Cambodian border, taking part in an academic research project in which he interviewed 50 Cham survivors of Khmer Rouge
Khmer Rouge
The Khmer Rouge literally translated as Red Cambodians was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan...
atrocities at Nong Samet Refugee Camp
Nong Samet Refugee Camp
Nong Samet Refugee Camp, also known as 007, Rithisen or Rithysen was one of the largest refugee camps on the Thai-Cambodian border and served as a power base for the KPNLF until its destruction by the Vietnamese military in late 1984....
in 1984. He then returned to Massachusetts where he worked briefly as the Transportation Director for the state Office of Handicapped Affairs. Thayer himself noted, "I got fired. I was a really bad bureaucrat
Bureaucrat
A bureaucrat is a member of a bureaucracy and can comprise the administration of any organization of any size, though the term usually connotes someone within an institution of a government or corporation...
."
He later worked for Soldier of Fortune
Soldier of Fortune (magazine)
Soldier of Fortune , The Journal of Professional Adventurers, is a periodical monthly magazine devoted to world-wide reporting of wars, including conventional warfare, low-intensity warfare, counter insurgency, and counter-terrorism...
Magazine reporting on guerrilla combat in Burma
Myanmar
Burma , officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar , is a country in Southeast Asia. Burma is bordered by China on the northeast, Laos on the east, Thailand on the southeast, Bangladesh on the west, India on the northwest, the Bay of Bengal to the southwest, and the Andaman Sea on the south....
, and in 1989 he began reporting for the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
from the Thai-Cambodian border. In October 1989 he was nearly killed when an anti-tank mine
Anti-tank mine
An anti-tank mine, , is a type of land mine designed to damage or destroy vehicles including tanks and armored fighting vehicles....
exploded under a truck he was riding in. In 1991 he moved to Cambodia where he began writing for the Far Eastern Economic Review.
In August 1992 Thayer traveled to Mondulkiri Province and visited the last of the FULRO Montagnard guerrillas who had remained loyal to their former American commanders. Thayer informed the group that FULRO's president Y Bham Enuol had been executed by the Khmer Rouge seventeen years previously. The FULRO troops surrendered their weapons in October 1992; many of this group were given asylum in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
In April 1994 Thayer participated in (and funded) the Cambodian Kouprey Research Project, a $30,000, two-week, 150 km field survey to find the rare Cambodian bovine
Bovinae
The biological subfamily Bovinae includes a diverse group of 10 genera of medium to large sized ungulates, including domestic cattle, the bison, African buffalo, the water buffalo, the yak, and the four-horned and spiral-horned antelopes...
known as the kouprey
Kouprey
A kouprey , is a wild, forest-dwelling ox found mainly in northern Cambodia, but also believed to exist in southern Laos, western Vietnam, and eastern Thailand. It was discovered in 1937.Koupreys are very large ungulates, and can approach similar sizes to the wild Asian water buffalo...
. Thayer later wrote: "After compiling a team of expert jungle trackers, scientists, security troops, elephant mahouts and one of the most motley and ridiculous looking groups of armed journalists in recent memory, we marched cluelessly into Khmer Rouge-controlled jungles along the old Ho Chi Minh trail
Ho Chi Minh trail
The Ho Chi Minh trail was a logistical system that ran from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to the Republic of Vietnam through the neighboring kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia...
."
On July 3, 1994 Thayer was asked help negotiate Prince Norodom Chakrapong
Norodom Chakrapong
Prince Norodom Chakrapong of Cambodia is the son Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia. Following years of guerilla fighting where he earned respect among the Sihanoukist resistance, he became a key figure in Cambodian politics in 1991...
's release and safe passage to the airport after the prince had been accused by Prime Minister
Prime minister
A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...
Norodom Ranariddh
Norodom Ranariddh
Prince Norodom Ranariddh is the second son of former king Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia and a half brother of the current king, Norodom Sihamoni.-Biography:...
of plotting a coup d'etat
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
. Thayer was subsequently expelled from Cambodia by Prince Ranariddh, but he returned anyway.
In early 1997 he was again expelled from Cambodia for exposing connections between Prime Minister
Prime minister
A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...
Hun Sen
Hun Sen
Hun Sen is the current Prime Minister of Cambodia.He has been the sole leader of the Cambodian People's Party , which has governed Cambodia since the Vietnamese-backed overthrow of the Khmer Rouge in 1979...
and heroin traffickers. Thayer then decided to pursue a fellowship at Johns Hopkins University.
Thayer at Pol Pot's Trial
Nate Thayer became world famous in July 1997 when he and Asiaworks Television cameraman David McKaige managed to visit the Anlong Veng Khmer Rouge jungle camp inside Cambodia where Pol Pot was being tried for treason. Thayer had hoped for an interview but was disappointed:- "Pol Pot said nothing. They made it clear and I believed them, that I was to interview Pol Pot after the trial. Pol Pot literally had to be carried away from the trial--he was unable to walk--and I was not able to talk to him. I did try to talk to him... he did not answer any questions, and he did not speak during the trial."
Thayer noted, "Every ounce of his being was struggling to maintain some last vestige of dignity."
Thayer believed that the trial had been staged by the Khmer Rouge for him and McKaige:
- "It was put on specifically for us, to take the message to the world that Pol Pot has been denounced. They had reported on their radio, on June 19, that Pol Pot had been purgePurgeIn history, religion, and political science, a purge is the removal of people who are considered undesirable by those in power from a government, from another organization, or from society as a whole. Purges can be peaceful or violent; many will end with the imprisonment or exile of those purged,...
d. No one believed them. After five years of lying over their radio, there was no reason anyone should take what they say credibly. It was clear to them that they needed an independent, credible witness to show what was happening."
Nightline controversy
According to Thayer, Ted KoppelTed Koppel
Edward James "Ted" Koppel is an English-born American broadcast journalist, best known as the anchor for Nightline from the program's inception in 1980 until his retirement in late 2005. After leaving Nightline, Koppel worked as managing editor for the Discovery Channel before resigning in 2008...
of ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
made a verbal agreement with Thayer to use footage from the trial on Nightline, then violated that agreement:
- "[Koppel] returned home with a copy of my videotape. I gave it to him in exchange for his strict promise that its only use would be on Nightline. However, once he had the copy of the tape, ABC News released video, still pictures, and even transcripts of my interviews to news organizations throughout the world. Protected by its formidable legal and public relationsPublic relationsPublic relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
department, ABC News made still photographs from the video, slapped the “ABC News Exclusive” logo on them, and hand delivered them to newspapers, wire services, and television...All of these pictures demanded that photo credit be given to ABC News... The story won a British Press Award for “Scoop of the Year” for a British paper I didn’t even know had published it...I even won a Peabody Award as a “correspondent for Nightline." But I turned it down—-the first time anyone had rejected a Peabody in its 57-year history."
ABC News responded that they had "agreed to pay Nate Thayer the sizable sum of $350,000 for the rights to use his footage of former Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. Despite the fact that ABC provided prominent and repeated credit and generous remuneration for his work, Mr. Thayer initiated a five-year barrage of complaints coupled with repeated demands for more money." In 2002 Thayer sued Koppel and ABC News for $30 million in punitive damages
Punitive damages
Punitive damages or exemplary damages are damages intended to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in conduct similar to that which formed the basis of the lawsuit...
and unspecified compensatory damages.
Interview with Pol Pot
In October 1997, Thayer returned to Anlong Veng and became only the second western journalist (after Elizabeth BeckerElizabeth Becker
Elizabeth Becker is a journalist and author who specializes in trade, development, and Asian affairs.Becker began her career as a war correspondent for The Washington Post covering Cambodia. She left Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge expelled all foreigners from the country in April 1975...
in 1978) ever to be granted an interview with the former dictator and, along with McKaige, was certainly the last outsider to see him alive. Thayer recounted the story of his interview with Pol Pot in his book Sympathy for the Devil: Living Dangerously in Cambodia - A Foreign Correspondent's Story. Pol Pot told Thayer:
- "First, I want to let you know that I came to join the revolution, not to kill the Cambodian people. Look at me now. Do you think ... am I a violent person? No. So, as far as my conscience and my mission were concerned, there was no problem. This needs to be clarified...My experience was the same as that of my movement. We were new and inexperienced and events kept occurring one after the other which we had to deal with. In doing that, we made mistakes as I told you. I admit it now and I admitted it in the notes I have written. Whoever wishes to blame or attack me is entitled to do so. I regret I didn't have enough experience to totally control the movement. On the other hand, with our constant struggle, this had to be done together with others in the communist world to stop Kampuchea becoming Vietnamese. For the love of the nation and the people it was the right thing to do but in the course of our actions we made mistakes."
Thayer and the death of Pol Pot
Thayer visited Anlong Veng again on April 16, 1998, only a day after Pol Pot had died. After photographing the corpse he briefly interviewed Ta MokTa Mok
Ta Mok , which means "Grandfather Mok" in Khmer, was the nom de guerre of Chhit Choeun , a senior figure in the leadership of the Khmer Rouge...
and Pol Pot's second wife Muon, who told Thayer, "What I would like the world to know is that he was a good man, a patriot, a good father." Thayer was then asked to transport Pol Pot's body in his pickup truck to the site a short distance away where it was later cremated.
Interview with Kang Kek Iew
In April 1999 Thayer, alongside photojournalist Nic DunlopNic Dunlop
Nic Dunlop is a photographer and author of The Lost Executioner, a book about how he tracked down Khmer Rouge leader Comrade Duch.Dunlop was born in Ireland and is now based in Bangkok, Thailand...
, interviewed Kang Kek Iew (Comrade Duch) for the Far Eastern Economic Review after Dunlop had tracked Duch to Samlaut
Samlaut Multiple Use Area
Samlaut is a protected area in northwestern Cambodia. It was declared a protected area in 1993 by King Norodom Sihanouk along with other forests and preserves. Samlaut is the last remaining tropical rainforest in northwestern Cambodia, covering 600 square kilometres...
and suspected strongly that he was the former director of the notorious S-21 security prison
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a museum in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. The site is a former high school which was used as the notorious Security Prison 21 by the Khmer Rouge communist regime from its rise to power in 1975 to its fall in 1979...
. Dunlop wanted Duch to provide clues that would reveal his identity, and Thayer began probing Duch's story that he was Hang Pin, an aid worker and a born-again Christian:
- "Then Nate said, 'I believe that you also worked with the security services during the Khmer Rouge Period?' Duch appeared startled and avoided our eyes...Again Nate put the question to him...He looked unsettled and his eyes darted about...He then glanced at Nate's business card...'I believe, Nic, that your friend has interviewed Monsieur Ta Mok and Monsieur Pol Pot?'...He sat back down...and inhaled deeply. 'It is God's will that you are here,' he said."
Duch surrendered to the authorities in Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh is the capital and largest city of Cambodia. Located on the banks of the Mekong River, Phnom Penh has been the national capital since the French colonized Cambodia, and has grown to become the nation's center of economic and industrial activities, as well as the center of security,...
following the publication of this interview. Dunlop and Thayer were first runners-up for the 1999 SAIS-Novartis Prize for Excellence in International Journalism, presented by the The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, for "exposing the inside story of the Khmer Rouge
killing machine."
Subsequent work
Nate Thayer has also covered AlbaniaAlbania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...
, Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
, Mongolia
Mongolia
Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...
and the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
. In 2003 he reported on the Iraq War in a five-part series for Slate
Slate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
Magazine. He also covered the Bangkok
Bangkok
Bangkok is the capital and largest urban area city in Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep , meaning "city of angels." The full name of Bangkok is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom...
2010 Redshirt riots
2010 Thai political protests
A prolonged series of political protests occurred in Bangkok, Thailand in 2010 from March to May against the Democrat Party-led government. The protests were organized by the National United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorship...
. He has recently worked for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists' Center for Public Integrity writing a three month investigation on North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
as a rogue state
Rogue state
Rogue state is a controversial term applied by some international theorists to states they consider threatening to the world's peace. This means meeting certain criteria, such as being ruled by authoritarian regimes that severely restrict human rights, sponsor terrorism, and seek to proliferate...
financed by criminal activity.
External links
- "Journalist Nate Thayer was on the scene in Cambodia recently when Pol Pot, the leader of the guerrilla force, the Khmer Rouge, was sentenced to life imprisonment in a show trial," NPR Interview, August 7, 1997
- "Continuing Unrest," PBS Interview with Sydney Schanberg and Nate Thayer, June 18, 1997.
- "Cambodia: Trial of Pol Pot," interview with Gareth Evans and Tep Kunnal.
- "Your scoop? Nah. It's ours if we want it," The Independent, 25 May 1998
- "Killing Fields Leader 'killed himself'," BBC News, January 21, 1999
- "70's Torturer in Cambodia Now 'Doing God's Work'," The New York Times, May 2, 1999
- "Former Khmer Rouge leader arrested," The New York Times, Sept 19, 2007
- "Alternative Wasn't There For Hun Sen," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jan 5, 1999
- Nate Thayer, "Dying Breath: The inside story of Pol Pot's last days and the disintegration of the movement he created," Far Eastern Economic Review, April 30, 1998
- Nate Thayer, "The Road From Baghdad," Slate, March 28, 2003
- Nate Thayer's Interview with Pol Pot on YouTube, Part 1
- Nate Thayer's Interview with Pol Pot on YouTube, Part 2
- Dirck Halstead, "Rewind: Wars and Memories (PART I)" October 17, 1997
- "Educating Nate Thayer by Al Rockoff and Project Pineapple," June 9, 2010
- Andrew Drummond, "The Rebel Who Caught Pol Pot," The Times, July 30, 1997.