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Back Brother Number One
Chapters (28)
  1. Title Page
  2. Preface
  3. Acknowledgements
  4. CHAPTER ONE - Introduction
  5. Who Was Pol Pot?
  6. The First Year in Paris
  7. Joining the Viet Minh
  8. CHAPTER FIVE - “Red Khmer,” 1963—1970
  9. CHAPTER SIX - Coming to Power, 1970—1976
  10. CHAPTER SEVEN - Prairie Fire, 1976-1977
  11. Pol Pot in China and North Korea
  12. CHAPTER NINE - “Grandfather 87,” 1979—1998
  13. Chronology
  14. Appendix 1: - Non Suon’s Biography of Pol Pot
  15. Appendix 2: - Khmer Personnel at “Office 100,” 1963—1966
  16. Notes
  17. Chapter One
  18. Chapter Two
  19. Chapter Three
  20. Chapter Four
  21. Chapter Five
  22. Chapter Six
  23. Chapter Seven
  24. Chapter Eight
  25. Chapter Nine
  26. Interviews by Author
  27. Index
  28. Copyright Page

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