Tagliabue's Finale on the Bulgarian Connection: A Case Study in Bias

fragmentation bombs dropped to maximize civilian casualties. From this town to a distance of thirty kilometers, "no house in the villages and hamlets had been spared. Bridges had been destroyed, fields up to the rivers were holed with bomb craters."7 After Decornoy's reports, there could be no doubt that the U.S. Air Force was directing murderous attacks against the civilian society of northern Laos. These reports of terrible destruction were repeatedly brought to the attention of the media, but ignored or, more accurately, suppressed. Later described as "secret bombings" in an "executive war," the U.S. attack was indeed "secret," not simply because of government duplicity as charged but because of press complicity.

Not omy did the media fail to publish the information about the attack against a defenseless civilian society orseek to investigate further for themselves, but they proceeded to provide exculpatory accounts that they knew to be inaccurate, on the rare occasions when the bombing was mentioned at all. As the bombing of Laos began to be reported in 1969, the claim was that it was targeted against North Vietnamese infiltration routes to South Vietnam (the "Ho Chi Minh trail"), and, later, that U.S. planes were providing tactical support to government forces fighting North Vietnamese aggressors, a far cry from what Decornoy had witnessed and reported, and a much more tolerable version of the unacceptable facts.S

Keeping just to the New York Times, through 1968 there was no mention of the bombing apart from tiny items reporting Pathet Lao complaints (Dec. 22, 31,1968). On May 18,1969,the Times reported U.S. bombing in Laos, alleging that it was "directed against routes, including the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail, over which the North Vietnamese send men and supplies to infiltrate South Vietnam." A June 14 report states that "American planes bomb targets all over Laos, especially along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in an effort to harass the Pathet Lao, the Communist-led rebel movement in Laos, and to stop tbe flow ofenemy supplies to South Vietnam." Charles Mohr reported on July 16 that U.S. bombing "is directed against infiltration routes from North Vietnam that pass through Laos en route to the South." There is a July 28 reference to "200 American bombing sorties a day over northeastern Laos," directed against North Vietnamese forces, and Hedrick Smith adds from Washington on August 2 that the United States "has been bombing North Vietnamese concentrations" in Laos. T. D. Allman repOI1ed bombing sorties "in tactical support" of government forces fighting the North Vietnamese and "harassing attacks against Communist positions all over northeast Laos" on 25, the latter providing Ii<

the first glimpse of something beyond the approved version. Further reports of U.S. air power in tactical support and "to cut North Vietnamese supply routes" appear on September 7, followed by Allman's report ofsuccesses of a government offensive with forces "stiffened by Thai soldiers," supported by "the most intense American bombing ever seen in Laos" (Sept. I8). Then followed reports from Washington and Vientiane (Sept. I9, 20, 23, 24, 30) confirming that the U.S. Air Force was providing tactical support for government combat missions in addition to bombing North Vietnamese infiltration routes, including a September 23 Agence-France-Presse dispatch reporting "bombing of Pathet Lao areas by United States aircraft," thus implying that the bombing went well beyond infiltration routes and combat operations, common knowledge in Paris and Vientiane but yet to be reported here.

In short, the terror bombing of northern Laos, although known, remained off the agenda, and reporting in general was slight and highly misleading, to say the least. Elterman observes that the war in Laos and Cambodia was virtually "invisible" in the media through 1969, apart from the leftist National Guardian, which gave substantial coverage to what was in fact happening.9

On October I, I969, the New York Times finally ran an account by T. D. Allman, whose valuable reporting throughout the war appeared primarily overseas, concluding that "the rebel economy and social fabric" were "the main United States targets now," and that the American bombardment had driven the population to caves and tunnels during the daylight hours, making it difficult for the Pathet Lao "to fight a 'people's war' with fewer and fewer people." Control of territory was now of lesser importance, he wrote, "with United States bombers able to destroy, almost at will, any given town, bridge, road or concentration of enemy soldiers or civilians."lo

This confirmation ofwhat had long been known in restricted peacemovement circles, and consciously suppressed in the mainstream press, passed without particular notice. The CIA clandestine army had swept through the Plain of Jars in the preceding months, evacuating all remaining civilians to areas near Vientiane, where they and their harrowing stories were largely ignored by the well-represented media, although available elsewhere.II

Walter Haney, a Lao-speaking American who compiled a detailed collection of refugee interviews that was described as "serious and carefully prepared" by U.S. Ambassador to Laos William Sullivan, quotes remarks by a UN official in Laos as "the most concise account of the bombing":

By 1968 the intensity of the bombings was such that no organized life was possible in the villages. The villages moved to the outskirts and then deeper and deeper into the forest as the bombing reached its peak in 1969 when jet planes came daily and destroyed all stationary structures. Nothing was left standing. The villagers lived in trenches and holes or in caves. They only farmed at night. {Each} of the informants, without any exception, had his village completely destroyed. In the last phase, bombings were aimed at the systematic destruction of the (material} basis of the civilian society. 12

A staff study by a Kennedy subcommittee concluded that a main purpose of the U.S. bombardment was "to destroy the physical and social infrastructure" in areas held by the Pathet Lao, a conclusion well supported by the factual record.H

There were also eyewitness reports of the destruction of northern Laos by Western reporters, but published overseas. T. D. Allman flew over the Plain of Jars in late 1971, reporting that "it is empty and ravaged" by the napalm and B-sz saturation bombing being "used in an attempt to extinguish all human life in the target area"; "All vegetation has been destroyed and the craters, literally, are countless" and often impossible to distinguish among the "endless patches of churned earth, repeatedly bombed." At the same time, the WashingUJn Post published the statement of Air Force Secretary Robert Seamans, who reported from northern Laos that "I have seen no evidence of indiscriminate bombing"; it is the North Vietnamese who are "rough," and the people are not "against the United States-just the opposite." The Lao-speaking Australian reporter John Everingham traveled in 1970 "through dying village after dying village" of the Hmong tribesmen who had been "naive enough to trust the CIA" and were now being offered "a one-way 'copter ride to death' " in the CIA clandestine army, in the remains of a country where bombing had "turned more than half the total area of Laos to a land of charred ruins where people fear the sky" so that "nothing be left standing or alive for the communists to inherit." No U.S. journal, apart from the tiny pacifist press, was interested enough to run his story, although later the media were to bewail the plight of the miserable remnants of the Hmong, put on display as "victims of Communism." In 1970, the Bangkok World (Oct. 7) published an AP report on U.S. bombing that was "wiping out" towns, and by ]972 such repons sometimes appeared in the U.S. pressY' Nayan Chanda visited the Plain of Jars, reporting overseas that from the air it "resembles a luna. landscape, pockmarked as it is with bomb

craters that are a stark testimony to the years of war that denuded the area of people and buildings" during "six years of 'secret' bombing" by U.S. aircraft, while "at ground level, the signs ofdeath and destruction are even more ubiquitous," including the provincial capital, "completely razed," as had been reported earlier by refugees who were ignored. Following the practice ofAmerican volunteers during the war, American relief workers with long experience in Laos attempted to bring information about postwar Laos to the media-with little effectand inform us privately that their accounts were seriously distorted by New York Times reporters "by the device of omission and taking the negative side of balanced statements we made" and similar means.15

The U.S. government officially denied all of this, continuing the deception even after the facts were exposed and known in some detail to those concerned enough to learn them. Many regarded the U.S. war in Laos as "a success" (Senators Jacob Javits and Stuart Symington), or even "A spectacular success" (a former CIA officer in Laos, Thomas McCoy).16

In scale and care, the extensive analysis of refugee reports by a few young American volunteers in Laos compares very favorably to the subsequent studies of refugees from Cambodia that received massive publicity in the West after the Khmer Rouge takeover, and the story was both gruesome and highly pertinent to ongoing U.S. operations. But there was little interest, and published materials, which appeared primarily outside ofthe mainstream, were virtually ignored and quickly forgotten; the agency of terror was inappropriate for the needs of the doctrinal system. Media failure to report the facts when they were readily available, in 1968, and to investigate further when they were undeniable, by late 1969, contributed to the successful deception ofthe public, and to the continuing destruction.

When the war ended, ABC News commentator Harry Reasoner expressed his hope that Laos and its "gentle folk" could return to peaceful ways after "the clowning of the CIA and the vicious invasion of the North Vietnamese."17 The "clowning of the CIA" included the destruction of"the rebel economy and social fabric" in northern Laos, with unknown numbers killed in areas that may never recover, and the decimation ofthe Hmong who were enlisted in the CIA cause and then abandoned when no longer useful. Nothing remotely comparable may be attributed to "the vicious invasion of the North Vietnamese"which did, however, include such atrocities as killing twelve U.S. Air Force men in Match 1968 at a U.S. radar base near the North Vietnamese border used to direct the bombing of Nonh Vietnam and operations in North Vietnam by U.S.-led mercenaries. 18

The New York Times reviewed the war in Laos at the war's end, concluding that 350,000 people had been killed, over a tenth of the population, with another tenth uprooted in this "fratricidal strife that was increased to tragic proportions by warring outsiders." The "fratricidal strife" might well have been terminated by the 1958 coalition government had it not been for "outsiders," with the United States playing a decisive role throughout, a role completely ignored in this purported historical analysis apart from a few misleading comments. At this late date, the Times continued to pretend that the U.S. bombing was directed against North Vietnamese supply trails-nothing else is mentioned. The crucial events of the actual history also disappear, or are grossly misrepresented. Subsequent reporting also regularly obliterated the U.S. role in creating the devastation and postwar "problems" attributed to the Communists alone, a shameful evasion in the light of the undisputed historical facts. 19

Once again, the media record, less than glorious, is well explained throughout by the propaganda model.

6.2. CAMBODIA

6.2.1. "The decade of the genocide"

Few countries have suffered more bitterly than did Cambodia during the 1970s. The "decade ofthe genocide," as the period is termed by the Finnish Inquiry Commission that attempted to assess what had taken place,20 consisted of three phases-now extending the time scale to the present, which bears a heavy imprint of these terrible years:

Phase I: From 1969 through April 1975, U.S. bombing at a historically unprecedented level and a civil war sustained by the United States left the country in utter ruins. Though Congress legislated an end to the bombing in August 1973, U.S. government participation in the ongoing slaughter continued until the Khmer Rouge victory in April 1975.21

Phase to the II: From April murderous rule 1975 through 1978 Cambodia was subjected of the Khmer Rouge (Democratic Kampu- j chea, DK), overthrown by the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodiaj in December 1978.... 1

Phase III: Vietnam installed the Heng Samrin regime in power in Cambodia, but the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) coalition, based primarily on the Khmer Rouge, maintained international recognition apart from the Soviet bloc. Reconstructed with the aid of China and the United States on the Thai-Cambodia border and in Thai bases, the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, the only effective DK military force, continue to carry out activities in Cambodia of a sort called "terrorist" when a friendly government is the target.

We turn now to the travail of Cambcdia during these grim years, and the way it has been depicted, first with some preliminary observations and then in further detail, phase by phase.

6.2.2. Problems of scale and responsibility

The three phases of the "decade of the genocide" have fared quite differently in the media and general culture, and in away that conforms well to the expectations of a propaganda model. Phase I, for which the United States bore primary responsibility, was little investigated at the time, or since, and has never been described with anything like the condemnatory terms applied to phase II. The vast number ofCambodians killed, injured, and traumatized in this period were, in our conceptualization of chapter 2, "unworthy" victims.

Phase II, the Pol Pot era, is the "holocaust" that was widely compared to the worst atrocities of Hitler and Stalin, virtually from the outset, with massive publicity and outrage at the suffering of these "worthy" victims.

Phase III renewedthe status of the people of Cambodia as worthy victims, suffering under Vietnamese rule. The Vietnamese being official enemies of the United States, they quickly became the villains of the piece, responsible for unspeakable conditions within Cambodia and guilty of unprovoked aggression. Meanwhile, the United States backed its ally China as it conducted a punitive invasion of Vietnam in February 1979 and reconstructed the defeated Pol Pot forces.

In the early stages of phase III, it was alleged "that the Vietnamese are now conducting a subtle 'genocide' in Cambodia," a charge tacitly endorsed in a CIA demographic study, which estimated a population drop of700,000 during "the first year of the Heng Samrin rule."22 This new "holocaust" was constructed on the basis ofserious misinterpreta-

tion of available evidence, as was demonstrated by Michael Vickery in a response to William Shawcross's warnings of "the end of bodia,"23 but not before it had left its mark on popular perceptions, and many distortions and, indeed, contradictions persist. In his Quality of Mercy, Shawcross agrees that, as Vickery had concluded, there was no large-scale famine of the character initially reported,24 but he later wrote that the Heng Samrin regime "was responsible for creating many ofthe conditions that caused the famine" in Cambodia. These conflicting accounts were noted by Australian Cambodia scholar Ben Kiernan, who suggested a partial explanation: "There was a threat of famine, as the Heng Samrin government proclaimed in mid-I919. But it was offset by the small but crucial December-January harvest, which Shawcross hardly mentions, and by the massive international aid program, which he regularly denigrates."25

The eagerness to uncover Vietnamese villainy in "ending Cambodia," the easy reliance on sources known to be unreliable,26 and the subsequent evasions after the accusations dissolve are readily explained by U.S, (indeed, general Western-bloc) hostility to Vietnam, which led the United States to align itself quietly with Pol Pot and to transform its alleged concern over Cambodians to the victims of the Vietnamese occupation.

Phase III also had a domestic U,S. aspect that is highly relevant to our concerns. In an intriguing exercise, characteristic of system-supportive propaganda campaigns, it was charged that the horrors ofphase II were passed over in "silence" at the time. This alleged fact, developed in William Shawcross's influential book Quality ojMercy, elicited much commentary on "Holocaust and Modem Conscience," the: subtitle of Shawcross's book, and on the failure of civilized people to react appropriately to ongoing atrocities. In "Phase III at home" (p. 288), we will turn to the merits of this charge with regard to phase II. As for phase I of "the decade of the genocide," the charge of silence is distinctly applicable, but it was never raised, then or now, nor is phase I designated a period of"holocaust" or "genocide" in mainstream literature, Phase 1 elicited no calls for international intervention or trials for crimes against humanity, and it has since been largely expunged from the record. In retrospect, the harshest critics within the mainstream attribute "the destruction of Cambodian society" during phase I to "years ofwarfare" and "careless policies ofthe White House," nothing more,27 The issue of U.S, bombing of Cambodia did arise during the Watergate hearings, but the primary concern there was the failure to notify Congress.

Michael Vickery suggests an "interesting comparison which an in-

vestigative journalist might make" if truly concerned about the problems ofthe region-namely, between Cambodia, during phase III, and Thailand, "where there has been no war, foreign invasion, carpet bombing, nor revolution, and where foreign investment is massive and the sympathy of the most advanced western powers is enjoyed," but where conditions in the peasant society were so terrible that "since 1980 substantial foreign 'refugee' aid near the border has been given to 'Affected Thai Villagers,' whose health and livingstandard, much to the shock of foreign aid personnel, were found to be little better than the condition of Cambodian refugees."28 No such comparison was undertaken, nor was there even a flicker of concern over simultaneous reports, buried in appropriate obscurity, about the tens of thousands of children, many under ten years old, working as "virtual slaves" in Thai factories resembling concentration camps,29 nor over the normal conditions of peasant life in the region, now exposed to the visitors flocking to the border camps to witness the consequences of Communist terror and express their compassion for its victims.

The actual scale of the slaughter and destruction during the two authentic phases oflarge-scale killings during the "decade ofthe genocide" (phases I and II) would be difficult to estimate at best, and the problems have been compounded by a virtual orgy offalsification serving political ends that are all too obvious.3o The Finnish Inquiry Commission estimates that about 600,000 people in a population of over seven million died during phase I, while two million people became refugees.31 For the second phase, they give 75,000 to 150,000 as a "realistic estimate" for outright executions, and a figure ofroughly one million dead from killings, hunger, disease, and overwork. Vickery's analysis is the most careful attempt to sort out the confused facts to date. He accepts as plausible a "war loss" of over 500,000 for the first phase, calculated from the CIA estimates but lower than their conclusions (see note 31), and about 750,000 "deaths in excess of normal and due to the special conditions of OK," with perhaps 200,000 to 300,000 executed and a total population decline for this period of about

4 00,000.32

These estimates, the most careful currently available in print to our knowledge, suggest that the toll under phase II of "the genocide" is somewhat greater than that under phase I, although not radically different in scale. But before accepting these figures at face value we must bear in mind that part of the death toll under phase II must be attributed to the conditions left by the U.S. war. As the war ended, deaths from starvation in Phnom Penh alone were running at about 100,000 a year, and the U.S. airlift that kept the population alive was immedi-