In late 1964 a young Communist named Chhim Samauk traveled from Phnom Penh to Office 100. Like many of Saloth Sar’s close associates, he was later purged by Pol Pot’s government at interrogation center S-21 in Phnom Penh. Samauk was one of many “enemies” who left several thousand pages of confessions, extracted under torture, admitting to a range of spurious charges. These documents shed light on details of life in the Communist movement about which the prisoners had no reason to lie. In his confession in 1977, for example, Chhim Samauk remembered:

I met Brother Number One at Office 100. I was excited and very happy, for I hadn’t imagined that he would be there. At that time, I couldn’t tell the Brothers [that is, the leading party personalities] apart. After a while, I learned who Brother Number One was and Brother Van [Ieng Sary].... The work was a real struggle. It went on even if you had malaria. I saw the Brothers [Sar and Sary] writing documents, preparing stencils (sdengsil) and printing the documents. I tried very hard to study with them. After a while I was able to help them to an extent, writing and publishing secret documents myself. In Office 100 in 1964-1965 I was very happy. No problems arose to confuse me. I believed that I was building myself [that is, constructing a new, revolutionary personality] and making progress.3

Another young party member worked in Office 100 as a paramedic under Ieng Sary. In his confession, he noted that Cambodians had not been allowed outside the base by the Vietnamese who guarded it. The psychological impact of such conditions on these proud men is difficult to measure. In 1964—1965 Office 100 seems to have contained no more than twenty Cambodians at any given time. Only three of them were “military.” Those at the base included such party stalwarts as Keo Meas; Ney Saran (Ya); Sok Knol; Sao Phim, a Central Committee member with responsibility for the eastern part of the country; and Chou Chet’s wife, Im Naen (Li), who acted as cook for Sar and Sary in Office 100 and who was brought into the party by Sary in 1966 as a reward for her revolutionary zeal.4

In spite of these handicaps, Saloth Sar and his colleagues proceeded to plan a revolution. In late 1964 Sar convened a study meeting at the base. A party document from 1978 asserts that the “meeting ... decided to counter any eventual coup by the Americans”—an opinion confirmed by a former party member interviewed by Steve Heder in 1980. The coup they envisaged would have involved the United States supporting Lon Nol or the exiled Son Ngoc Thanh in a move against Sihanouk. In such an eventuality, the Communists would not be able to count on Sihanouk’s alliances with China and Vietnam or his anti-American stance and would have to consider initiating a mixture of armed and political struggle. This was precisely the decision the party reached two years later, shortly before Lon Nol became prime minister in another Sihanouk regime.5