(r)evolution

Sept. 11, 2001

Everyone remembers exactly where they were that morning; I was on the 22nd floor of the USA TODAY tower overlooking downtown Washington when the plane ploughed into the Pentagon, clearly visible across Arlington National Cemetery. Because a radio report said another plane was heading toward our building, my colleagues evacuated. I suppose I should have done the same -- after all, by then I was just a business guy building the travel website, and I hadn't done any journalism for more than two years -- but my bad habits from years as a foreign correspondent took over. All those obscure stories, filed with such great struggle (in Kompong Thom, Cambodia, in 1993 I had to sweep the crickets out of my suitcase-sized satellite phone dish, then connect my Tandy computer via accoustic couplers). Now here was the biggest story in the world, and I had phones, computers at my fingertips and a perfect view. I stayed, started writing the main story with the help of a late-arriving colleague, and kept updating it all day. I was grateful to have something to do that kept my mind off the overwhelming horror.

Nate Thayer vs. Pol Pot

As much as I loved reporting, the highlight of my years at the Far Eastern Economic Review was editing Nate Thayer, one of the greatest investigative reporters of his generation. Nate broke the story in 1997 that Cambodia's ex-dictator, Pol Pot, was still alive and had been purged from the Khmer Rouge, the movement responsible for the deaths of some 2 million Cambodians when it held power from 1975-1979. He followed up a few months later with the first interview with Pol Pot in 18 years, shedding light on how utopian leftism absorbed in university classrooms and cafes in Paris translated to genocide back in Cambodia. Pol Pot committed suicide after he heard Nate's report, picked up by the Khmer service of VOA, that the Khmer Rouge were about to turn him over to international authorities for trial.

In an era of instant communication, when scoops are matched in hours and sometimes minutes, the Pol Pot stories went unmatched for months. That's because Nate had spent years developing contacts within the Khmer Rouge, Thai intelligence, and elsewhere to gain this access, and seized an opening when the movement turned in upon itself. By no means a Khmer Rouge apologist, he presented a straight, unvarnished picture of the past and present, and confronted Pol Pot with the evidence that he was a mass murderer. With journalism dominated by repackaged content, reporters spoon-feed by anonymous sources with agendas, and few publications besides The New Yorker and The Atlantic willing to back long investigations, these stories stand as journalistic monuments I feel privileged to have helped build.