Remembering the King of Cambodia

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 22:22:00 +0000

On a Monday morning in January 1979, my boss Jerry Toobin, the news and public affairs director at WNET, New York City’s public TV station (and father of journalist Jeff Toobin), walked into our work area and said to me and my fellow cubicle mates, “Bill Moyers would like to talk with Prince Sihanouk. Anybody got an idea how to find him?”

Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, who just died on October 15, age 89, was in the United States to speak at the United Nations. After years of house arrest, he had fled Cambodia ahead of invading Vietnamese troops and was on his way to the UN to protest the invasion on behalf of the infamous Khmer Rouge, Cambodia’s ruling regime.

Interest was high — it was less than four years since America had left neighboring Vietnam and Cambodian dictator Pol Pot had begun the genocide that murdered 1.7 million of that country’s people (the brutality vividly depicted in the movie, “The Killing Fields”).

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Remembering the King of Cambodia