Nate Thayer, daring journalist who interviewed Pol Pot, dies at 62

The 'mad genius' journalist conducted an exclusive interview with the Cambodian genocidal leader and covered his show trial, another global scoop.

Nate Thayer, a daring journalist and cartoonist whose career was crowned with an exclusive interview in the Cambodian jungle with Pol Pot, the leader of one of the world's worst convulsions of Massacres of the Last Century, died at his home in East Falmouth, Mass. He was 62.

His body was found on Tuesday, but it's unclear exactly when he died, his brother, Robert Thayer, said. He said his brother had been suffering from multiple ailments for a long time.

Mr. Thayer interviewed Pol Pot in October 1997 after months of clandestine meetings with Khmer Rouge guerrillas, which Pol Pot led. After crossing the border from Thailand, Mr Thayer sat with him in a clearing, facing a broken man whose supporters had turned against him as his movement crumbled into opposing factions.

During Pol Pot's four years in power in the late 1970s, two million people - as much as a quarter of Cambodia's population - died of execution , torture, starvation or overwork as he attempted by force to create a pure, pre-modern communist regime. state.

In the interview, he offered a bland defense of the carnage.

"I came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people,” he told Mr. Thayer, who quoted him for an article published in the Far Eastern Economic Review, an Asian news magazine.

“Even now, and you can look at me, am I a savage?” he asked during the interview, which was videotaped by David McKaige and Marc Laban, whom Mr. Thayer had hired. "My conscience is clear."

He added: "I only made decisions about very important people . I did not oversee the lower ranks."

Mr. Thayer had competition for the New York Times' Elizabeth Becker interview, but when she arrived at the border, he used his connections to block his entry and maintain his exclusivity.She had done the last American interview with Pol Pot 18 years earlier, for the Washington Post, and had narrowly survived an attack by unidentified armed men.

Mr. Thayer's interview was his second clandestine trip across the border. Earlier that year, his Khmer Rouge contacts told him took them to an outdoor show trial in which Pol Pot, the movement's founder, was denounced by comrades.

"Crush! Crush! Crush Pol Pot and his gang! shouted the crowd,” Mr. Thayer reported. "There, slumped in a simple wooden chair, clutching a long bamboo cane and a rattan fan, an anguished old man, frail and struggling to maintain his dignity, watched his vision crumble in utter defeat."

A little less than six months later, in April 1998, a sick Pol Pot died at age 73.

The Jungle Reunion produced minor drama of its own when Mr. Thayer gave Ted Koppel of ABC News' "Nightline" show the US broadcast rights to its video.

The network immediately distributed stills and video around the world with credit to ABC, which Mr. Thayer said violated their agreement and took back its own article. ABC News said he followed standard practice, paying him for the material, giving him credit but presenting it as his own.

He has refused to share