35 See U.S. Embassy Phnom Penh, Airgram, A-93, August 23, 1962; and RC, August 17, 1962, in which Sihanouk is reported as saying that “a few months ago” his intelligence services obtained a message “from Viet Minh authorities, addressed to Cambodian cadres.” The document urged the party not to present candidates for the 1962 election, adding: “Our best interests are served by relying on young intellectuals who sympathize with our movement.” This text, which may have been captured in the raid that resulted in Tou Samouth’s death in July 1962 (see below), might also have been the document “from 1961” referred to in Pol Pot’s anti-Vietnamese polemic, Livre noir, and characterized as ”excelling in confusion“ (see Democratic Kampuchea, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Livre noir: Faits et preuves des actes d‘agression ... du Vietnam [Paris, 1978]).

36 See U.S. Embassy Phnom Penh, Telegram 471, January 15, 1962, and Telegram 477, January 17, 1962.

37 Nuon Chea, ”History.“ After Samouth’s disappearance, Nuon Chea went underground:”I never went anywhere during the day. I never went to eat noodles in a shop. I was never happy like other people. That’s why my children said to me: ’You’re like a rat in a hole.‘“ See also Kiernan, HPP, p. 241; and author’s interview with Tea Sa Bun (September 1990). The confessions of Ruos Mau (Say) (September 1977) and Som Chea (March 1978) both asserted that Samouth was abducted from ”Lon Nol’s house“ in a car. Som Chea added that party members stabbed Samouth to death on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Serge Thion, ”A propos de Tou Samouth,“ Srok khmer, May 1987, summarized the evidence available up to that point. Cambodian official Ouk Boun Chhoeum told Thion in 1981 that he believed Samouth was betrayed by a fellow Communist who had been working for Sieu Heng and had been arrested, interrogated, and killed ”after 1975.“ Heng was assassinated on Nuon Chea’s orders in April 1975 after Communist forces occupied Battambang (from author’s interview with Ty Sophen, February 1989). An argument against Heng’s complicity would be that cadre brought to Tuol Sleng on trumped-up charges would have been eager to blame their treachery on Sieu Heng, one of the few genuine and well-known deserters from the party. Had Heng handed Samouth over to Lon Nol, it seems likely that others in the Communist network would have been arrested soon after. On balance, evidence points to Samouth being picked up, unrecognized, in a police raid and then killed after a fruitless interrogation.

38 Vorn Vet’s confession (typed version), p. 15. Nuon Chea, in his ”History,“ also blames Samouth’s bodyguards, but his assertion may have been colored by his knowledge of the S-21 confessions.