24 On Sihanouk’s visit, see Monique Sihanouk, “Voyage historique au Cambodge en 1973,” Bulletin mensuel de documentation de ... Norodom Sibauouk (March-April 1987): 17-26. The U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh was reluctant to believe that the prince had gotten to Angkor, but Cambodians in Siem Reap heard about the visit soon after Sihanouk departed (see author’s interview with Sok Pirun; and Bruce Palling’s interview with Chhit Do [1986] on file at William Joiner Center, University of Massachusetts, Boston). Do, a Red Khmer soldier at the time, was brought to Phnom Kulen to welcome the prince.

25 USLO (United States Liaison Office) Peking, Airgram A-8, “Sihanouk Interview with Stanley Karnow,” May 17, 1973. For Hu Nim’s description of the visit, see Chandler, Kiernan, and Boua, eds. and trans., Pol Pot Plans the Future, pp. 265—266. As far as I know, the 1973 albums contain the last published photographs of Khieu Ponnary. Others from 1972 struck Elizabeth Becker as “haunted”: “The posed photograph cannot hide her condition: Ponnary is going mad in the service of her husband’s revolution” (Becker, When the War Was Over, pp. 160-161). In the 1973 photographs, Ponnary looks listless and unwell. Nuon Chea does not seem to have participated in the visit. Sihanouk was lulled into believing that the “Three Ghosts” were in charge, as he later admitted in Prisonnier des khmers rouges (Paris, 1987), p. 229.

26 For Khieu Samphan’s remark, see Shawcross, Sideshow, p. 281. According to Chhit Do, study sessions after Sihanouk’s departure stressed that pleasing Sihanouk was still important, because “if he were disappointed he might go over to the Americans on his return to Beijing, and we would lose the war.”

27 Kirk, “1973.” Shawcross, Sideshow, pp. 295ff., argues that the heavy casualties suffered by the Red Khmer forces—perhaps as high as 25 percent killed in some units—drove some survivors mad. See von Marschal, War in Cambodia, p. 117 (n23); and Becker, When the War Was Over, p. 172. See also the triumphal “Chayo kongto’p padevat reboh pak kommunis” [Long live the Revolutionary Army of the Communist party], Tung Padevat (September 1975): “We were not afraid [of the American bombing], because for reasons of national honor and independence we had to struggle against it alone and regardless of the world.” Sihanouk told Stanley Karnow that he had “advised our forces not to take Phnom Penh” because he did not want to endanger his mother, who was still there (USLO Peking, Airgram A-8, “Sihanouk Interview,” p. 6).

28 Kiernan, HPP, p. 371; and Steve Heder to author (letter, August 1991). In 1974, when Red Khmer forces captured the former royal capital of Udong, north of Phnom Penh, they swept off more than ten thousand people. Reports of random executions by cadre surfaced at this time. See Donald Kirk, “Revolution and Political Violence in Cambodia, 1970-1974,” in Joseph Zasloff and M. Brown, eds., Communism, in Indochina (Lexington, Mass., 1975), pp. 215-230.

29 Kiernan, HPP, pp. 365ff. On rivalries between the southwest and dombon 25, see Vickery, Cambodia, 1975—1982, pp. 91ff.; and Chou Chet’s confession.