-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- from: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_lobaido_news/20000218_xnlob_us_armed_p.sh tml Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_lobaido_news/20000218_xnlob_us_arme d_p.shtml">U.S. armed Pol Pot, say eyewitnesses</A> ----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ U.S. armed Pol Pot, say eyewitnesses Expert: 'They had to be fair to both sides of the conflict' ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Editor's note: WorldNetDaily international correspondent Anthony C LoBaido has traveled extensively in Cambodia during the past nine months. His reports on Cambodia's notorious Killing Fields have included examinations of Pol Pot's Nazi-style experiments, the U.N. harboring the would-be assassin of Cambodia Prime Minister Hun Sen, and the alleged British SAS involvement in training the Khmer Rouge. In this update, LoBaido shows how U.S. anticommunist forces unwillingly were tricked into arming and training the Khmer Rouge. By Anthony C. LoBaido © 2000, WorldNetDaily.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE, Burma -- In a dark sideshow to the ongoing United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in Bangkok, Thailand, U.N. chief Kofi Annan has met twice with Communist Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen to hammer out the final details of the upcoming trials of the Khmer Rouge genocidal killers. Pol Pot and his cadres were responsible for the murder of 1.7 million Cambodians in the Killing Fields genocide perpetrated between 1975 and 1979. Yet, in the ensuing quarter century, not a single Khmer Rouge soldier or leader has been brought to trial or justice. Pol Pot died in 1998. Pol Pot in 1994, four years before his April 15, 1998 death. Now, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen -- a former Khmer Rouge leader who defected to the Vietnamese side -- is negotiating with the U.N. in an effort to get the world body to approve of Cambodia's handling of the upcoming trials of two Khmer Rouge leaders. The U.N. wants to place its own lawyers and other legal experts on the panel that will try the 74-year-old, one-legged ex-Khmer Rouge Gen. Ta Mok -- known as "The Butcher" -- as well as "Duch," a professed born-again Christian who ran the infamous S-21 prison in Phnom Penh. Hun Sen, whose son recently graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, is reluctant to give operational control of the trials to the U.N. He points out that the U.N. gave Pol Pot a seat in exile during the 1980s, after Hun Sen's Vietnamese Communist government invaded Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge. Hun Sen wants a trial, "run by Cambodians to judge Cambodian subjects." While Hun Sen and Annan spar over legal minutiae at the United Nations meetings in Bangkok, WorldNetDaily continues to piece together the involvement of the British Special Air Service and the U.S. Special Forces in supplying and training the Khmer Rouge. Between 1985 and 1989, the British SAS trained anti-Vietnamese Cambodians in sabotage and other soldiering skills -- yet never trained any Khmer Rouge killers. Indeed, the British soldiers trained only those Cambodians loyal to the former deposed Cambodian King. However, recent interviews and research in regard to alleged American involvement with the Khmer Rouge have brought new developments to this twisted tale of genocidal insanity. American soldiers speak out "I served with the 374th Tactical Airlift Wing following the 1973 cease-fire in Vietnam," said Tom Berta in a recent interview with WorldNetDaily. "I went to Utapao RTAFB Thailand in June of that year. We had seven C-130 aircraft, and by mid-July we had 20 and were doing the bulk of the 374th's airlifts. We ran guns into Cambodia, lots of guns, 50 flights a day in July and August. "I was there in Thailand and watched the C-130's get loaded every day from June through Sept 1973. I personally flew with our aircraft on many occasions, at least 20. The CIA exercised what it called the 'Third Option' and sold arms to the Khmer Rouge," said Berta. Nina Morrison, a former pilot with the CIA front company Air America, refused to undertake any flights to arm and supply the Khmer Rouge. "The SAS were there doing training in Cambodia all right," Morrison told WorldNetDaily. "Just like they were involved recently in East Timor." Mr. Nol at the Memorial Stupa at The Killing Fields. His brother was killed by Pol Pot's henchmen. "The world in general has become a lot more complicated. As such, journalism must also adapt and become more thorough and complex to put all of the missing pieces together. In regard to the Khmer Rouge, this is dangerous work indeed," said Morrison. "True history has a way of disappearing into the night." In regard to the alleged American involvement with the Khmer Rouge, Morrison added, "I do not have words to express my disappointment in our government's position in world affairs, for it does not reflect the foundation upon which this great Republic was created." Other Americans, like Bert Bueno, a 40-year-old civil engineer from California, tell another story -- the story that many American soldiers had absolutely no idea what was happening in Cambodia. "In 1979, I was sailing in waters off of Cambodia during a Western Pacific cruise. One of the countries we had liberty at was Thailand," he told WorldNetDaily. "I had no idea that Cambodia was killing millions of people. When I saw the movie "The Killing Fields" in later years, I was in shock. "I have always wanted to go back and do something. One day, this evil is going to reach our borders of America, and the people are going to say, 'Why didn't anyone tell us this was coming?'" Retired U.S. Special Forces Maj. Carl Bernard, the point man in the Pentagon's attempt to train the anti-communist Hmong hill tribes of Laos to fight against the Stalinist Pathet Laos government is knowledgeable in the field of special forces training in Southeast Asia. "Not many American G.I.s even knew the Hmong were fighting in Laos on their behalf, taking out Soviet supplies on the Ho Chi Min trail heading for Vietnam," Bernard told WorldNetDaily. "As for the Khmer Rouge, it is a shadowy world that is only beginning to come out into the light." U.S. 'gave assistance to Pol Pot' According to Bernard, there is no single source that is more knowledgeable regarding U.S. involvement in the training of the Khmer Rouge than Special Forces point man U.K. Pappy. "Yes, the U.S. and others were giving assistance to Pol Pot. When I complained, the State Department came out with their reason -- they had to be fair to both sides of the conflict," Pappy told WorldNetDaily. "Like most of the reasoning at the State Department most of the time, it has nothing to do with honor, only expedience. Now it may come out to the rest of the world that we were supporting Pol Pot. I hope this bites someone in the ass." Pappy said that in the fall of 1987 he made a trip to Thailand with Gen. Vang Pao to visit Hmong/Lao fighting camps along the Thai-Lao border. There were still groups fighting inside Laos that were using Thailand as a launch site. "When U.S. Congressman Bill McCollum learned I was going to Thailand, I was asked if I would check on something for him. Three C-141 planeloads of equipment was sent from Okinawa to Thailand. There was both military and humanitarian equipment on these planes. The military equipment was to be used by the Cambodian forces fighting Vietnam, and the humanitarian supplies would go to the refugees camps in Thailand," added Pappy. WorldNetDaily's Anthony LoBaido in Cambodia. However, according to Pappy, the supplies from these three loads were lost. No accounting could be giving for them -- something that is not unusual in Thailand. "I learned for sure at this time that all supplies sent to the Cambodian forces were to be split between the pro-West forces [of the deposed King Sihanouk] and Pol Pot. The State Department didn't want to be unfair, just in case Pol Pot took the country back." According to Bernard, "Few in the West realized that Pol Pot was flying around Thailand in state-of-the-art helicopters in the 1980s and 1990s waiting to retake power in Cambodia when the time was ripe." For his part, Pappy went on to say that Rep. McCollum's office gave him a contact. When he called the U.S. Embassy and asked a top official what had happened to the equipment, he "could visualize him bouncing off the walls in his office." "I asked the official if any of this [supplies] was going to communist forces, or Pol Pot, and just why had they disappeared? He got huffy, wanted to know my name and serial number, and other details. Of course, I told him where he could go. I got no info from him." Pappy then turned to a Thai colonel who was in command of the Thai guards on the eastern border at the time. Pappy had developed a working relationship with the colonel, he said. "I learned that some of the equipment that was given to the pro-West forces had among them flack jackets. During the delivery, an American, who thought words didn't mean anything, told Cambodian anticommunists that the flak jackets were armored vests. The little Cambodians took these flack jackets and charged the Vietnamese forces. Many of their men were killed in a frontal assault from bullets passing through the 'armored vests.'" Pappy said that neither "Pol Pot or his cadres got any of those 'armored vests.'" "Of course, when I got back to the states, I sent a report to my contact in the White House on the slaughter of the pro-West, anti-communist Cambodian forces. I'm not on good speaking terms with some of those guys in the State Department who were involved. They had to do some real lying to get out of that one," said Pappy. "I was also given the same info from some American contacts. But, I know personally that the U.S. was giving material aid to Pol Pot, right along with his enemies, the pro-West Cambodians. Things sure tend to get messy when you leave the ranks, don't they? A little bit of justice While Pappy, Bernard, Morrison, Berta and many others interviewed by WorldNetDaily lament the Western involvement with the Khmer Rouge, there is one silver lining that can now be told. SAS elite Special Forces soldier Ray Billingsley recently told WorldNetDaily that he and another SAS officer, who were in Cambodia between 1985 and 1989 to train pro-West, anti-Vietnamese forces along the Thailand-Cambodia border, used the flak jacket misappropriation to their advantage. "After the fall of Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge took hundreds of thousands of survivors of the Killing Fields and made them walk in a death march to the Thai border," Billingsley said. "Once they arrived at the border, the survivors were put in work collectives. We in the SAS were able to find out who some of the Khmer Rouge killers were -- you know, the men who ran the Killing Fields and did actual killing of men, women and children." "We gave them the flak jackets and told them they were armored vests. When they charged the Vietnamese, they were shot dead. It was only a small gesture, but it did bring a sense of closure and justice in our little corner of that ugly war." The work of Billingsley and other concerned Western anti-communists will have to be magnified manifold if justice is to be done in connection with Pol Pot's henchmen scheduled to go on trial in March. "It's going to be a show trial. Two men tried and convicted -- one of them a born again Christian to boot," said Morrison. "They'll sweep it under that rug. The Western corporations will move in and it will be business as usual in Cambodia. It should make every decent American and Brit sick to their stomach. The Khmer Rouge killed almost two million people, and Hun Sen's idea of justice is a trial for only two men? I'll say this, they really are one in a million." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Anthony C. LoBaido is an international correspondent for WorldNetDaily. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ © 2000 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This page was last built 2/17/00; 11:20:52 PM Direct corrections and technical inquiries to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please direct news submissions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! 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