55 On the rules for the elections, see FBIS, Daily Reports, March 10, 1976. Sihanouk remembered voting in Phnom Penh; voting occurred in some rural areas as well. The Central Committee document of March 31, 1976, in Chandler, Kiernan, and Boua, eds. and trans., Pol Pot Plans the Future, pp. 1-8, notes that the ”representatives,“ once elected, ”will disperse to live with the people again“ (p. 7).

56 See Bruce Palling’s interview with Pech Kim Luon, a DK pilot who defected to Thailand in late April 1976. Luon said that the main speech on April 17 had been given by ”Saloth Sar,“ but Khieu Samphan’s speech was the one broadcast over Radio Phnom Penh. Luon claimed that Sar was the leader of Cambodia; he was unable to identify ”Pol Pot.“ I am grateful to Ben Kiernan for a transcription of this interview. On the ambassador’s statement, see Phandara, Retour à it Phnom Penh, p. 56. Khieu Kannarith suggested that Sar used the pseudonym ”Pol“ on some occasions and ”Pot“ on others (author’s interview, September 1990).

57 For a list of officers in Democratic Kampuchea in 1976, see Carney, ”Organization of Power,“ pp. 100-102. Fourteen of the twenty-six people on this list were executed between 1976 and 1978. See also Chandler, Kiernan, and Boua, eds. and trans., Pol Pot Plans the Future, p. 7, where ”Comrade Pol“ is listed as the future prime minister.

Chapter Seven

1 Among survivors’ accounts, see Pin Yathay, L‘utopie meurtrière (Paris, 1980); Someth May, Cambodian Witness (London, 1986); and Martin Stuart Fox and Ung Bunheang, The Murderous Revolution (Sydney, 1985).

2 See Chandler, Kiernan, and Boua, eds. and trans., Pol Pot Plans the Future, for translations of eight confidential party documents from this period.

3 See “Statement of the Communist Party of Kampuchea,” Journal of Communist Studies 3, 1 (March 1987): 19-36; quotation on p. 27. In a December 1976 speech, Pol Pot used similar language: “The methods of defense must be secret,” he said. “Those who defend us must be truly adept. They should have practice in observing. They must observe everything, but so those being observed are unaware of it” (Chandler, Kiernan, and Boua, eds. and trans., Pol Pot Plans the Future, p. 211). He returned to the theme in his speech of September 28, 1977: “Secret work was the fundamental thing. It allowed us to defend the revolution [the leadership] and also allowed us to arouse the people” (Pol Pot, “Long Live the 17th Anniversary,” p. 35).

4 Chandler, Kiernan, and Boua, eds. and trans., Pol Pot Plans the Future, p. 121. Steve Heder (letter to author, August 1991) wrote that, in Pol Pot’s view, “to survive, the revolution had to move faster than its counterpart in Vietnam. Therefore, anyone who slows things down will prevent the revolution’s survival and is objectively ’Vietnamese.‘”

5 Hildebrand and Porter, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, p. 93.