24 Forty years later, Pol Pot was quoted in the Bangkok Post (February 22, 1993) as referring to Sihanouk as ”more than 90 percent paranoid due to all sorts of hedonism, corruption, and debauchery.“ The Khmer wording is not available, but I suspect that Pol Pot was not referring to paranoia so much as to a mental unbalance that he traced to Sihanouk’s fondess for excess.

25 The word for ”soldier“ or ”recruit“ (transliterated here as pol) is spelled and pronounced differently in Khmer from ”Pol,“ Saloth Sar’s pseudonym. Intriguingly, Saloth Sar used the name ”Pol“ (or ”Paul“) on at least one occasion in Paris (author’s interview with Keng Vannsak, May 1987). It is conceivable that the nickname dated from his time at Ecole Miche, where students, regardless of their religion, were given saints’ names (like ”Paul“) by their Catholic teachers (Suon Kaset Sokho, personal communication). According to Thel Thong (personal communication), the name”Pol Pot is not unusual. ’Pol‘ is a common rural surname, and ’Pot‘ a widely used given name—like John Jones or Bill Smith.“

26 Steve Heder’s interview with Mey Mann, March 1997.

27 See Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy (New York, 1986), p. 58. A 1973 history of the Cambodian Communist party asserted that in its early days, the party had included ten members of the Communist party of France. Saloth Sar was almost certainly one of them, but none had returned from France when the Cambodian Communist party was founded in 1951. Some of the others were Sien An, Rath Samouen, Sok Knol, Hou Youn, Mey Mann, and Ieng Sary.

28 Nearly all of Sar’s formal training as a Communist, such as it was, occurred after his return to Cambodia in 1953. His mentors there would have been either Vietnamese or Cambodians who had received their training from the Vietnamese.

29 See Bruce Mazlish, The Revolutionary Ascetic (New York, 1976), especially pp. 92ff.

30 Debré, Cambodge, p. 86. This quotation suggests that Saloth Sar planned to model his personal style on that of Stalin rather than on those of other Communist leaders. For final quotation, Thayer, ”Day of Reckoning.“

Chapter Four

1 From Loth Suong’s interviews with Stephen Heder (1981) and with author (1990).

2 Kiernan, HPP, pp. 122-123; and from author’s interviews with Keng Vannsak (1986). In 1953 Sar probably still considered Son Ngoc Thanh a genuine nationalist. Steve Heder’s interview with Saloth Chhay (March 1975). Chhay died under Democratic Kampuchea. In a November 1974 interview with the Australian journalist Niel Davis, Chantaraingsey, whom Saloth Sar may have known from his childhood, recalled that when Sar visited him in 1953, “he was already working with the Vietnamese.” I am grateful to Steve Heder for his notes from these two interviews.

3 Chanda, Brother Enemy, p. 58. See also W Burchett, The China-Cambodia-Vietnam Triangle (London, 1981), p. 54, which relies on another interview with Pham Van Ba.