Cambodia's Curse (19 page)

Nicoletti explained that it wasn’t so simple. There were still “real questions about the allegations and the motives of the grenade thrower.” Actually, by now Nicoletti had a pretty good idea about what had happened. From the leaked photos he thought he was close to identifying the ringleader of the attack, a man well known to be a CPP enforcer. But Nicoletti certainly wasn’t going to tell Rainsy that because “I didn’t think he was very honest.” Whatever Nicoletti told him would likely be all over the Rainsy party newspapers the very next morning. So the agent tried to throw him off the scent.

Sensing that Nicoletti was withholding something, Rainsy erupted and threatened Nicoletti. “You’d better be careful,” he told the agent. “You might become a target of violence.” The FBI report eventually recounted this conversation and added: “Rainsy also predicted that another violent incident might occur in the near future.” Questioned about this years later, Rainsy denied that the conversation with Nicoletti ever took place. “It’s ridiculous,” he said as he took off his glasses for emphasis and offered a grave expression. “No. This did not happen.”

 

A few days after that meeting, Rainsy and his wife flew to Bangkok, where they held a press conference and handed out their own report on the attack. As the FBI later described the news conference, “he linked the FBI’s investigation to a ‘Preliminary Report’ which Rainsy claimed pointed to Second Prime Minister Hun Sen as the culprit of
the March 30, 1997, attack.” With this “report,” Rainsy attached a raft of papers, said to be English-language transcripts of the agents’ interviews with various witnesses. Nicoletti explained later that Rainsy had put “a plant inside the police department” who must have passed transcripts on to him. Some of the translators the FBI used were Rainsy followers.

Even so, somebody had obviously doctored the transcripts. One document purported to quote Nicoletti, without explaining where he had been speaking, when, or to whom. The name of the translator had been blacked out, which was appropriate, given the ludicrous nature of his statement. According to Rainsy’s transcript, “Mr. Thomas Nicoletti said: ‘Those men who threw the grenades are not ordinary people. They are not students who live in the pagoda with the monks. They are Hun Sen’s soldiers. They are probably the worst people in the world. In doing my job here, I don’t have any political bias.’” Nicoletti scoffed, “I never said that.” But the Thai press picked up the statement anyway.

Ralph Horton, head of the FBI’s office in Bangkok, was furious. Didn’t this prove his point? He had told Nicoletti that the case “was politicizing the FBI.” Could he have asked for better evidence? Horton quickly put out his own statement, saying the bureau had drawn no such conclusions.

A few days later, it appeared that Rainsy was making good on his threat of violence. “I was advised by the police generals from both parties that one or two Khmer hit teams were after me,” Nicoletti said. “The day after that, the
Phnom Penh Post
published a photo of me,” showing him working at the crime scene, interviewing a witness. “Quinn also advised me that he had independent information that I was targeted.”

So Nicoletti flew to Bangkok to discuss the situation with Horton. He’d been in Horton’s office just a short while when the phone rang. A marine guard at the front gate said someone was there to see Nicoletti. It turned out to be a messenger from Rainsy who said he needed to talk to the agent. Horton and Nicoletti were appalled. “They’d
followed me here,” Nicoletti said. For Horton, who had never wanted the FBI to get involved with this case in the first place, “that was the icing on the cake. I couldn’t argue with him anymore.” Nicoletti left.

With that the FBI investigation effectively ended. Other agents would later return to Phnom Penh to dabble in the case. But it never moved much beyond the state it was in when Nicoletti went home. Some reports since then have said Nicoletti had been close to filing for a possible indictment, but he insisted that while the evidence was strong, “the investigative results were not up to United States standards. If I had been able to spend another two or three weeks there, a lot more would have been accomplished.” As it was, for years to come Rainsy would continue insisting that Hun Sen was guilty, while Hun Sen could plausibly dismiss the charge because no firm evidence had ever come out to prove it. Wasn’t that the Cambodian way?

W
hile politicians battled in Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge leaders luxuriated in the wealth they were still accruing from lumber and gems. A good portion of western Cambodia remained under their full control. Their troops still harassed and killed at will.

Hun Sen recognized that he could not defeat the Khmer Rouge. The Vietnamese army had tried for ten years and failed. Skirmishes with Khmer Rouge troops generally ended as inconclusive standoffs. The two sides were locked in a stalemate. What’s more, though the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces were supposed to have 148,000 soldiers and staff, Hun Sen had discovered that almost 10 percent of them didn’t exist. His Ministry of Defense realized that military commanders had put 13,000 “ghost” soldiers on the payroll so that they could collect and pocket their salaries, just as Lon Nol’s soldiers had done in the early 1970s. But now, twenty-five years later, the commanders had invented a new trick: These ghost soldiers had given birth to 15,244 ghost children—all of whom entitled their “fathers” to
add child allowances to their pay. “I know there are some high officials including officials at the Ministry of Defense who have made deals with their lower commanders to hide the ghost soldiers in order to put cash in their pockets,” Hun Sen said. He offered them amnesty if they came forward.

When Hun Sen realized he couldn’t defeat the Khmer Rouge, he offered them amnesty, too. In mid-1996, small squads of Khmer Rouge soldiers began leaving the forest and defecting. Hun Sen let them keep their land. Then in August 1996, Ieng Sary, who with Pol Pot had founded the movement and served as Democratic Kampuchea’s foreign minister, announced that he and some of his allies were turning coat.

Hun Sen arranged an elaborate welcoming ceremony for them in Pailin, their “capital.” He allowed Ieng Sary to continue living there as a private citizen—with full control of the gem mines and timber rights that continued to enrich him. From that moment the Khmer Rouge movement began a slow and steady march toward its demise—but not before playing an important part in one more act of Cambodia’s ongoing political drama.

 

In the spring of 1996 Sam Rainsy, Norodom Ranariddh, and Khieu Samphan, who had been the Khmer Rouge president, met secretly in Paris—to plot strategy. No record of that meeting exists, but Quinn hypothesized, “Perhaps they were looking to do some things to shake things up.” All of these characters mistrusted each other. Each had tried to stab the others in the back at one point or another in the recent past. But they held a common passion. All of them held a virulent hatred of Hun Sen. The fruits of this meeting became visible the next year.

The day after Rainsy’s contentious meeting with Nicoletti in May 1997, when the agent refused to give him the report and Rainsy warned him that he was in danger, suddenly the Khmer Rouge got interested in the grenade-attack investigation. Khmer Rouge leaders devoted their daily radio broadcast to a vicious diatribe against Nicoletti and the FBI,
saying the bureau was a tool of the Hun Sen government. The speaker threatened reprisals. Never before had the Khmer Rouge shown interest in the grenade-attack investigation. Why now? Was this a part of Rainsy’s threat?

All the while Phnom Penh was growing increasingly tense. By the spring of 1997 gun battles on the streets were becoming commonplace. Senior government officials from both the CPP and Funcinpec built sandbag bunkers around their houses; guards stood behind them, their automatic-rifle muzzles pointed toward the street.

Both Hun Sen and Ranariddh had personal bodyguard forces that now numbered in the thousands. Not infrequently the two sides exchanged fire. Some soldiers and bodyguards were routinely killed. Just outside Phnom Penh both sides reinforced encampments for large numbers of their personal militia members. “The place was stirred up,” Quinn said, and he made a practice of driving around the city in the evening to “look at the guards outside the houses. Were they slumped down, smoking a cigarette, or maybe asleep?” If so, Quinn knew he could relax for the night. “Or did they have their helmets on, standing behind the sandbag with weapons out?”

It was obvious: A war was about to begin. Diplomats from Europe, Asia, and elsewhere began arriving to talk to Hun Sen and Ranariddh. Don’t do it, they would say. Call it off. But no one was listening.

The embassy looked at all the intelligence and made an estimate of when the fighting would start. They placed the date on or about July 1. But then, out of the blue, Washington told Quinn that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright wanted to stop by for a visit at the end of June, as part of a larger visit to the region. The country was tumbling toward violence, but “she wanted to talk about a success story, and see Angkor Wat,” Quinn said.

Albright was an inveterate tourist. Whenever she could she would visit countries that also gave her an opportunity to see major attractions. Of course, she did plan to meet with Hun Sen and Ranariddh, as other visiting diplomats had, and warn them not to squander the advances Cambodia had made, thanks to the UN occupation and the
$3 billion the world had invested in the state. So she was planning a two-day visit, one day in Phnom Penh for business and the second day at Angkor Wat.

Quinn had been sending regular cables telling the department about the deteriorating situation. But he had no way to know who actually read them. A few days earlier three influential senators—John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts; William Roth, Republican of Vermont; and Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee—had written Albright a letter, saying that despite receiving almost $3.5 billion in international aid in recent years, Cambodia “has become the single fastest-growing narcotics transshipment point in the world; scores of journalists, human-rights workers and political activists have been killed in political violence; the government has failed to establish critical constitutional bodies or pass some of the country’s most basic laws; and corruption has infested and overrun almost every government institution.” Was this really the nation that everyone had spent $3 billion to create?

But these concerns fell on deaf ears. Albright was coming to celebrate a new democracy—though, in Washington, she also said, “I will make very clear that it is important for them to proceed down the democratic path.” But Quinn could see that major violence was now inevitable. He told the State Department she shouldn’t come. “People will set out to embarrass her,” he wrote. “There will be violence. That will make her look weak.” He feared that a bombing, grenade attack, or some other violent act by someone trying to embarrass the government would force her to flee. He was looking out for his secretary, but the department “reacted badly,” Quinn said. The tenor was, “What’s wrong with the ambassador? He isn’t on the team. She’s already announced she is coming.”

In mid-June 1997 real fighting broke out between the two bodyguard units in Phnom Penh. Both sides fired assault rifles at each other and tossed grenades. Explosions rattled the city. Thousands of residents locked their doors, closed their shutters, and huddled together, trembling. One rocket landed in the yard just beside Quinn’s house. It happened to be Quinn’s birthday. “My family had arrived”
for the celebration, he said. “They stayed in the States while I was there because there was no high school for my kids in Phnom Penh. We were watching a video,
The Thin Man
, when we heard a click. I asked, ‘Did you hear that?’ Then a big boom. We threw the kids on the floor. My wife and I lay on top of them.” No one was hurt, and damage was minimal. But he called the State Department Operations Center to advise them of what had just happened.

Quinn was vindicated. The next day the department announced a change in plans. Yes, Phnom Penh was a dangerous place. Perhaps Ranariddh and Hun Sen could come out to meet Secretary Albright at the airport and have their talk. Then she could fly on to Angkor.

Needless to say, Ranariddh and Hun Sen were not talking to each other. They spoke with their guns. But they did manage to agree on one thing: There was no way two heads of state were going to drive out to the airport to meet with a
foreign minister
—even the American secretary of state. What were they, her supplicants? Ranariddh was a prince, heir to the throne, and the head of state. Hun Sen had been the nation’s undisputed ruler for a decade—and obviously planned to assume that status again, very soon. If she wanted to see them, she would have to drive into town, come to their offices. No, they told her. We won’t do it. Ranariddh showed considerable tact when he explained the decision. “She wanted us to come to the airport,” he told reporters, “but Hun Sen and I agreed that if we just met her at the airport, we would be breaking the principles of protocol.” But then he couldn’t seem to help himself and added, “It’s insulting.”