Distant Voices (59 page)

Our five subpoenas were stopped, meaning that our main witnesses could not be called. When the trial began, the authority for this gagging order – a ‘Public Interest Immunity Certificate' signed by Tom King – was presented to the judge.
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The promised ‘intervention in the proceedings' was now underway, and in a most spectacular fashion. Acting for the Government, John Laws, QC, spelt out the catch-all provisions of the ‘certificate'. For example, evidence regarding the SAS and the security services, such as M16, which might have been produced as evidence by our defence counsel, would be challenged and the judge would be asked to rule it out of court.

We looked on almost incredulously as much of our evidence was pored over by Laws and his junior, Philip Havers, and up to six officials from the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and M16. An affidavit by a former Foreign Office official submitted in our defence was censored as this scrum of Government officials leaned over Laws's shoulder and directed his pencil in moments of high farce. (They were especially concerned about a passage which said it was
‘common knowledge' that both the SAS and the American Special Forces were involved in Cambodia.) ‘Is it OK to leave in the Americans?' said one of them, to which another replied, ‘No, take them out.'
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Laws told the judge that ‘national security' might be at stake with the disclosure of evidence that ‘travels into the area that the secretary of state would protect'. He did not explain what events in Cambodia had to do with Britain's national security. The judge asked what he had in mind. Alas, it was not possible to be precise as he did not know what else the defence might produce. The judge accepted this restriction. This meant that if we called a Ministry of Defence witness he would not even be allowed to confirm or deny anything about the SAS; and we would not be allowed to challenge this.

The Government had effectively tied a gag on the whole trial. Our defence counsel, Desmond Browne, QC, described this ‘considerable injustice' as ‘grossly unfair'. He said it was reminiscent of the
Spycatcher
case four years before when the Government had intervened in a trial in an uncannily similar way – then, as here, in the name of ‘national security'.

With all our principal witnesses silenced, we withdrew and Central Television paid damages to the men who insisted they had been libelled. Central had been prepared to see the trial through to its conclusion, and had left the final decision to me.
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The backing of the company – especially that of Andy Allan, Colin Campbell and Roger James – was exemplary at a time of real political pressure on ITV, not least given the auction of franchises that saw off one ITV company, Thames, which had challenged the Government on another matter involving the ‘national security' and the SAS.

In many respects ITV and Channel 4 have taken over the traditional, often mythologised, newspaper role as whistle-blower. It is a tenuous responsibility for broadcasters, who are bound both by commercial and a plethora of legal constraints. Overshadowing them all, of course, are the libel laws; and until Parliament empowers the courts to accept the public interest as a defence and to reject political intervention
in the conduct of justice, the British judicial system will continue on its steady, downward path.

On the day the case was settled, David and I began making our sixth documentary on Cambodia by placing on film the statements of witnesses whose evidence would have been ruled inadmissible under the Government's gagging order. With Noel Smart and Mel Marr, the cameraman and sound recordist who had worked with us on
Cambodia: The Betrayal,
we drove from the High Court to Heathrow and caught a plane to a European city, where we had arranged a clandestine meeting with a former Cambodian guerrilla. This is the man referred to
here
, who had been trained by the British in Malaysia and had worked under cover with the Khmer Rouge.

Back in London, we filmed an interview with General Tea Banh, minister of defence in the Phnom Penh Government, who had flown from Cambodia to give evidence in the libel case. He had brought with him intelligence documents and other evidence, which described the training of Khmer Rouge by six British officers at Nong Nhai camp on the Thai border.
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‘The main source is a senior Khmer Rouge,' he said. ‘Nong Nhai is a well-known Khmer Rouge training camp.'

Of course, a representative of the Phnom Penh regime would have a vested interest. Yet in this instance, Tea Banh and Hun Sen's closest adviser, Uch Kiman, who had accompanied him, were deeply concerned about offending the British Government. They believed they needed British goodwill if they were to gain anything from the UN peace plan, with which they said they had no choice but to comply. They also believed that
Cambodia: The Betrayal
had told an important truth about how the Khmer Rouge had been kept going by the West, and they were prepared to take a calculated risk and back us.

The same could be said of our ‘Deep Throat' source who, at the end of the libel case, agreed to be interviewed on film as long as his face was hidden and his voice altered. In the interview he described his career ‘in British intelligence
working on the operational side overseas'. (David and I, and executives of Central Television, know who he is.) He said that not only was the British training of Cambodians continuing, but that there was now an even ‘greater commitment' by the Government. I asked why. He replied,

The situation in that part of the world is becoming increasingly
more
sensitive. We have the problems of an imminent destabilisation within the People's Republic of China. We have Vietnam, which is quietly making overtures to the West . . . We have a power vacuum in Cambodia itself. At the same time, the lessons of Americans in Vietnam have been well learned and what is being done now is to provide a greater degree of on-the-ground support and training [than] the American old-style of going in heavy and high.

Shortly before Christmas Simon O'Dwyer-Russell died. David and I were stunned. He was twenty-nine. He had suffered a heart complaint and undergone a by-pass operation in October. He was recovering well when he suddenly relapsed. The
Sunday Telegraph
published an obituary that warmly celebrated his memory, describing his ‘series of notable exclusives' and his ‘unrivalled access to both the Armed Forces and the security forces at all levels.'
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Incredibly, there was no mention of his biggest scoop: the secret British operation in Cambodia.

Simon would have been arguably our most important witness in the libel case. Before the case was due to be heard, I had a meeting with the editor of the
Sunday Telegraph
, Trevor Grove. I asked him if he would repeat in court some of the praise that his newspaper had showered upon Simon at the time of his death. It was, I pointed out, Simon who had broken the SAS in Cambodia story and appeared as a witness in
Cambodia: The Betrayal
. It seemed reasonable
that his editor should now speak out for his memory, as a character witness.

Grove was clearly discomfited by this. ‘I'm afraid', he said, ‘there were problems with Simon . . .' Without elaborating on this, he went on to cast doubt on Simon's professionalism, capping it with: ‘You know, the MoD even had a file on him.' I suggested that a Ministry of Defence ‘file' might be regarded as recognition of Simon's independence and worth as a journalist. I recounted his paper's proud recall of Simon's ‘series of notable exclusives' and his ‘unrivalled access' to the military and the security services ‘at all levels'. And there was the Simon O'Dwyer-Russell Prize that King's College was soon to inaugurate for War Studies essays, which had been funded by his colleagues as a lasting tribute. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘but I'm afraid I'm not in a position to speak for him. I'm so sorry.'

In the week after the case was settled the
Sunday Telegraph
published a prominent article in which I was accused, by clear implication, of once supporting the Khmer Rouge. ‘It must not be forgotten', said the paper, that the Khmer Rouge ‘publicly thanked people like him [that is, me] for their help.'
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I phoned Trevor Grove and told him he had published lies. I said I had never supported the Khmer Rouge and that, far from thanking me, they had set out to kill me. His response was to blame his staff. ‘You see, I don't really have charge of that page,' he said. ‘I'm so sorry.'

Like the
Sunday Times
, the
Sunday Telegraph
had relied on the same two ubiquitous sources, Derek Tonkin and William Shawcross. After I had written a reply to the paper, I was phoned by the letters editor and told I could not mention Shawcross's name, or correct his allegations.
¹⁰⁷
When David Munro wrote to the
Evening Standard
to explain Tonkin's involvement, his letter was not published.
¹⁰⁸
When Chris Mullin wrote to the
Spectator
, following a poisonous tirade by Paul Johnson, his letter was not published.
¹⁰⁹

I recount these episodes not merely as further examples of how a section of the British press routinely plays the part
of medieval witchhunter, but of the important function of the Western media in sidetracking the issues of life and death in Cambodia. The most urgent issue today remains the prospect of the return of the Khmer Rouge in some form. But as the Khmer Rouge role was central to American policy, critics of this policy, who oppose the return of the genocidists, were to be targeted, rather than those who supported their return. This was the point Ben Kiernan made. At times it had a ‘looking glass' quality; but the logic was there.

The struggle to eradicate public memory was most crucial. ‘Public opinion' had proven a potent force in the defence of Cambodia's human rights, as thousands of letters to Downing Street had demonstrated. Moreover, the three stages of Cambodia's holocaust were all within public memory: the American bombing, the Pol Pot period and the American-led blockade against the survivors of stages one and two, which had maintained Cambodia in a state of physical ruin, disease and trauma. Public awareness of how the Khmer Rouge had been rehabilitated – diplomatically, politically and militarily – could not be tolerated.
¹¹⁰

Diminishing Western culpability is, of course, standard media practice in most global matters. However, support for those who put to death a fifth of the Cambodian population presented a challenge. In this, Pol Pot provided a lead. ‘We must', he said in 1988, ‘focus attention on the Vietnamese aggression and divert attention from our past mistakes.'
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The discrediting of Cambodia's liberators was an essential first step. As already noted, this began with an act of self-defence described as an ‘invasion',
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false accusations of Vietnamese ‘atrocities' and ‘subtle genocide'. Once Pol Pot's communists could be equated with Vietnam's communists, regardless of the fact that one group was guilty of genocide and the other was not, in propaganda terms almost anything was possible.

Numerous initiatives by the Vietnamese to extricate themselves from Cambodia were dismissed or went unreported, and the attempts by others to broker peace derided. When the Australian foreign affairs minister, Bill Hayden, tried to
develop contacts in the region in 1983, he was vilified in the press as a ‘communist dupe' and his efforts dismissed as ‘stupid' by the US secretary of state, George Schultz.
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By 1985 Vietnam's only condition for the withdrawal of its troops was that the Khmer Rouge be prevented from returning to power.
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This was welcomed by several South-east Asian governments, and rejected by the United States.
¹¹⁵
On July 13, 1985 the
Bangkok Post
reported, ‘A senior US official said that [Secretary of State] Schultz cautioned ASEAN to be extremely careful in formulating peace proposals for Kampuchea because Vietnam might one day accept them.' When the Vietnamese withdrew unconditionally from Cambodia in 1989, Western support for the Khmer Rouge – justified as necessary
realpolitik
as long as Vietnamese troops remained in Cambodia – did not cease; it increased.

While the Vietnamese were fulfilling their ‘aggressor' function in Western eyes, the Khmer Rouge were being regarded very differently. From 1979 the American far right began to rehabilitate Pol Pot. Douglas Pike, a prominent Indo-China specialist, described Pol Pot as a ‘charismatic' and ‘popular' leader under whom ‘most' Cambodian peasants ‘did not experience much in the way of brutality'.
¹¹⁶
Pike argued that the Khmer Rouge should share political power in Cambodia: the essence of the UN ‘peace plan'.
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In 1980 the CIA produced a ‘demographic report' on Cambodia, which softened Pol Pot's reputation by denying that he had carried out any executions during the last two years of his regime. In fact, in 1977–8 more than half a million people were executed.
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During Congressional hearings in November 1989 Assistant Secretary of State Richard Solomon repeatedly refused to describe Pol Pot's crimes as genocidal – thus denying his own department's earlier unequivocal position.
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Journalists whose reporting reflected the US Administration line received the highest commendation. Nate Thayer, an Associated Press reporter, was described as ‘brilliant' by Congressman Stephen Solarz, one of the architects of US policy.
¹²⁰
Richard Solomon called the following Thayer
commentary ‘the most sober-minded and well-informed assessment of that issue I've seen'.
¹²¹

In Thayer's view the ‘good news' in Cambodia struggled to be heard above the din of the ‘tales of terror'. Writing in the influential
Washington Quarterly
, he described the one-and-a-half million people who died during the Khmer Rouge years as ‘displaced'. Using the official euphemism, Thayer distinguished ‘the policies and practices of the Khmer Rouge' from what he called the ‘violence and misery that preceded and succeeded them'. He wrote that, while Pol Pot did implement some ‘objectionable policies' these were ‘largely perpetrated only on a certain section of the population . . . to which journalists, scholars and other foreign observers have had access'. Thayer claimed that ‘perhaps 20 per cent of Cambodians support the Khmer Rouge'. The source for this? Why, Pol Pot himself! The author made no further mention of the 20 per cent Pol Pot had already ‘displaced' somewhere.
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