Just start Fred by saying, what did Dr. Kissinger tell you was the reason he appointed you and what did you think the reason you were being appointed to the job in Phnom Penh.

I think that he...

Sorry, could you say "I think Dr. Kissinger"...

I think that uh...Dr. Kissinger wanted to follow the president's idea with, going along with the Nixon doctrine and have ah an individual go over there and run a small military assistance program, a non-military person, and hhhhis point was to have this person ah ah run the program with as few people as possible. So, I started with ah originally went over by myself and wound up with two officers and two enlisted men from the ah Army.

And, what happened ah when you were there? What was your impression of the military situation and Lon Nol’s ability because you had a lot of dealings with Lon Nol?

Yes, indeed. I, uh, shortly after I got there I had spent ah a good deal of time trying to make an assessment of the situation and ah my view was that the Cambodians were certainly amateurish army without much capability. A tremendous amount of enthusiasm, and I found on the enemy side where the briefings I had received indicated a great pessimism on our part.

I think what had happened was the enemy was moving north to interfere with Lon Nol ah just at the time the incursions across the border were made and they were lightly armed. They didn't think they needed very much and I don't think they did either, but ah they were caught up around Phnom Penh and ah to the ah and surrounding Phnom Penh at the time of the incursions and they were just not very well armed. And, they weren't very well supplied and by the time I got there in early June, they weren't really much more, very much more capable than the Cambodians were.

But, I think it wouldn't, it was just because their communications, the batteries had run out or their radios, they didn't have any ammunition to speak of, and they weren't in any position to ah put up the fight that normally the the VC or NVA Divisions ah were prepared to do.

And, what was the effectiveness on the morale of FANK via Lon Nol's army?

Oh, Lon Nol’s army was ah ah they were elated. They were running around on Coca Cola trucks and they would rush out to defend the cities ah ah you know streets or the roads that entered the city. They ah, of course, about that time they interjected the ah Khmer soldiers from former special forces troops or Mike force they called them.

They put four battalions of them and they were extremely capable, and they, of course, were ah the fire brigade for FANK and did most of the real fighting. It ah, I think they ah, but the morale of the FANK was sky high and there were all kinds of people in the streets of the capital drilling. They had kids as young as fourteen years old, and college students.

What about the ah meetings you had with Lon Nol? Ah. What impression. did you gain of him as a sort of leader, military or otherwise?

Well, I think, I felt that he was uh...

Start with Lon Nol.

I felt Lon Nol was ah ah a very dedicated man to his country. He ah, he certainly ah ah worked long and hard. He was not, I didn't think he was a particularly astute soldier ah but none of the FANK really were. There were very few of them that that were. I don't think the FANK itself had fought any ah had really had any ah combat experience since the French ah Indochina ah experience they had several years before and they ah they were ah FANK was not not a professional army at all, and Lon Nol himself, I think he tried very hard.

He certainly ah he had, he hated to give up territory and ah ah he would delay to the last minute. For instance, up around what they called the ah Golden Triangle up there in Laban Siek. I mean when we eventually withdrew the FANK troops into Vietnam and then brought them back around to Cambodia. But, he ah resisted that ah right up to almost the very last minute when it was too late. But, ah, ah, he was...Do you want me to stop? Oh.

You don't have to cut...

Okay.

Just pick it up from the...

Yeah.

"...they pulled them back through..."

He, they pulled them back...

Keep where I am, okay?

...through Vietnam and ah ah some of them were trained in Vietnam. The Vietnamese set up training camps for them. They re armed them there and then sent them back...

Sorry, we've got [inaudible] again...

Okay. Sorry.

They ah, as they went through Vietnam, they were ah ah trained and armed and then brought back into Cambodia ah to join the FANK again. But, I don't, I think that ah, I always felt Lon Nol tried very hard but he just simply was not ah he was not a world leader, he was not a (clears throat) he had he had the respect of many people in Cambodia, but I don't think that ah he wasn’t someone you'd compare to ah oh Eisenhower or de Gaulle or someone like that.

And, during this period there was a lot of squabbling going on between the State Department, Defense, JCS, White House, etc. How did you feel about that being in the center of it because you had your own channels of communication?

Yeah. Well, I felt that ah ah I had gone over, having talked to Mr. Kissinger and Haig and ah ah been told that it was going to be kept at a very low key and that ah it was not going to be a second Vietnam where the Americans actually ah wound up running the show and ah ah I tried very hard to keep it that way by ah playing it as low key as possible.

I think though the successes that occurred between ah June of 1970 and the ah oh perhaps ah into October, November. Now, they, they weren't really successes. It was just that the enemy didn't have any capability either, but the FANK appeared to be ah ah making great strides and the enemy did withdraw from just across the river at Phnom Penh but I think he withdrew because he needed supplies.

But ah that apparent success I felt, I still feel, ah stirred up the juices of ah ah the JCS and many of the military and Mr. Kissinger to the point that if a little bit of success is ah obtained with practically nothing. If we give them more, we'll get more success. And didn't feel that was true at all. Besides it it was not what I had been told I was sent over there to do, to keep it down low.

The State Department, of course, went more along with my ah viewpoint. That ah the less people we have there the better and ah ah the the ah the lower the aid level is the better. We were being assisted by the Australians and the Australians were giving them trucks and they gave them two or three hundred trucks, I believe, and ah so I felt that's enough trucks.

But, for instance, our own military ah ah I think they'd punch a computer and it says a battalion should have ten trucks ah then the FANKs should have ten trucks per battalion, which I felt was absolutely ridiculous. In the first place, they didn't know how to drive them and the second place there isn't that much road to run them on.

But I, there was this ah ah feeling, as you say. There was a, on the one side, there was the military and the White House that felt more must be better and the other side, the State Department and the side I believed in that enough was enough. Don't, don't overdo it.

What about your encounters with Alexander Haig? You knew him from Korea, I think...

Yes, I had known him...

...motive. Say, I knew the general...

Ya. I knew General Haig, I had known him since ah oh 1949 when he was a lieutenant. And ah he had been a student when I was an instructor at the Army War College subsequently, but ah ah Haig ah ah, of course, was Kissinger's Chief of Staff I assume and ah ah so when I was called it was ah ah, I was first called by Mr. Kissinger but then he knew that I knew Al Haig and so I dealt mainly with Haig as far as making appointments on, to go to the White House to get briefed ah...

And then Haig... Of course, he had been to Cambodia I believe in April or somewhere around there, talked to Lon Nol at some length, told him he was sending somebody out to ah assist him in the program and ah ah so after I left I saw General Haig. I guess he must have come out there about ah two or three months later on a trip.

At that time he stayed with me in my home there in Cambodia as he did every time he came while I was there. And ah he seemed to be, of course, very pleased that ah the first two or three times he was out. And, in the end, in April of '71 I asked him to be ah relieved and sent back to the States because the ah the situation as far as I was concerned was totally out of hand. They had ah brought in the...

Okay, we're out of film...

We'll just pick it up from the...

We're talking about Haig and how by May 1971 you asked to be relieved... Just pick up there.

Oh, yeah, by May of '71 I had asked ah General Haig to relieve me and let me go back to the United States because ah I felt the situation had ah gotten out of hand in ah the early part of 1971 with the passage of the Supplemental AID Bill by the Congress. Ah. My responsibilities to manage the program that the president had set up ceased and by law the secretary of defense ah is the manager of all foreign assistance.

In, in effect it formalized the the Cambodian assistance program and it ah with a couple of hundred million dollars at the time... I had gone from forty million dollars when I went there to about a hundred and so when they passed the supplemental it actually was two hundred. But, it wasn't two hundred for Cambodia. A hundred of it went to pay back what the President had taken from other programs in the early part of the ah ah war and then the next hundred was for the next year.

Now, ah ah I at, had five people in my program myself and ah then I had two officers and two enlisted men, all of whom spoke French, and ah ah we managed the program from inside Cambodia. Now, obviously, the ah the logistics part of it was handled in ah MACV. General Abrams' outfit had set up a group they called the Cambodian Support Group of about forty people and they would gather the equipment together ah prepare the aircraft to supply the, or ship it up the river.

And with the passage of the supplemental and the ah the responsibility going to the secretary of defense, ah, they formed what they called the Military Equipment Delivery Team I think it was. MEDTC. And, ah, most of the people in the MEDTC were the former support group in General Abrams' headquarters. They drew a general from ah ah a division in Vietnam, a brigadier general named Theodore Mataxis and he was the commander and ah but by the time they got themselves organized, they replaced ah my little group of myself and four people with a general and about a hundred and thirteen people.

And and at first they didn't allow any of them to come to Cambodia. They all had to operate out of Vietnam. But, then by simply pressuring the ah State Department and the president they wound up... First they could send I think it was twenty, and then the general and twenty of his people came in. A few weeks later they got permission for ten or twelve more. Well, before I knew it there were about ah ninety of them in country and ah they ah had set up their quonset huts and ah outside of the Embassy and ah ah I really had very little to do as far as the program was concerned. My duties shifted to other, ah other type activities.

And, that was why I asked Haig to send me home, and he did. I, I came home in June of 1972. And, then the MEDTC continued to grow after that. And, then, as you know, they they got themselves involved working with the attaché’s office in the later subsequent bombings in Cambodia and ah ah and in effect they took over most of the military activities for the FANK headquarters, which, which was what I hoped to preclude, a mini Vietnam is what it amounted to with Yankees running all over the place and making all decisions and ah ah providing all guidance.

Wait for this to pass.

Move on to ask you about ah Moorer and can you talk about the time that you met Admiral Moorer and he came...

I met Admiral Moorer first when ah when I was first ah selected for this. I went over to the JCS and had a meeting with him and ah ah, of course, I had been told by Kissinger and ah ah Haig that that I would be operating, not as an army officer, that I was a civilian and that I would run it as a civilian and ah from the very first I got the impression that ah Admiral Moorer when I went into his office in the JCS that ah he felt that I was going to be his boy in Cambodia and I tried as tactfully as I could to tell him that that wasn't so, that ah I was going ah to run the program as the President had directed it be run and that I did not report to him, that I reported to the Secretary of State.

And so ah ah I don't think I was ah too well received by Admiral Moorer, and ah subsequently on one of his visits to Cambodia he ah... I had just received a message from Mr. Kissinger telling me ah how satisfied they were, the President particularly, with what I was doing in Cambodia. This was in ah well in the fall of 1970, and ah Admiral Moorer got a, got me alone. I had just received the message the day before.

And keep up the good work and all that kind of thing and ah he ah met me alone and told me that Mr. Kissinger had told him to tell me that damn it I was to stop doing things the way I was to do it and take orders from him and ah...So, I told him, I said well, I just received a message from Mr. Kissinger saying just the opposite that ah he was very satisfied and I said I'll be happy to pass on your message to him that ah ah, and try to straighten it out and he said oh no, well maybe it wasn't Henry. Maybe it was somebody else that said that and that was about the last time I ever spoke to Admiral Moorer ah when I was in Cambodia.

What about your ah first inklings of the way that things were going out of your original control? What was the evidence you had and what did you try and do about it?

Well, I think it ah, I was ah, it was evident to me that when the military all the way through...Now General Abrams was extremely helpful to me and he understood exactly what Mr. Nixon wanted and he, and he helped me ah in every way he could. Now, I wouldn't say that for all the members of his staff nor the members, some of the people in the Department of Defense and some of the people in the Army.

But General Abrams who was at that time the MACV commander was, indeed, my greatest supporter over there, and where I began to see it come apart was ah ah in those early days...you want me to just stop.

All right, stop.

Okay.

All right. I think ah I first noticed that things beginning to ah get out of hand as far as I was concerned ah in the fall of 1970 when ah I had made an analysis of what the Cambodians needed. They really needed weapons, ammunition, communications equipment, medical equipment and a certain amount of patrol men to run the few vehicles and aircraft that they had an ah ah those were the ah generally the items that I would request from General Abrams.

Now, the ah ah as as the military began to get more and more involved in it they would, they came up with much more sophisticated lists than I had. For instance in the fall of 19 ah ah 70 I was called back for consultation in the Department of Defense and at the White House and at State Department, and ah at one of my meetings with the Department of Defense people, Mr. Nutter who was then the Assistant Secretary ah for International Security Affairs I believe ah they had a meeting with the JCS and the Department of Defense people.

And they had they had come up with lists that I think were sort of computerized lists. They would punch their button of what a battalion ought to have and it would tell them ah five hundred soldiers in a battalion. They should have a thousand pairs of boots so each soldier would have two boots and they should have ah so many pair underwear and so many socks and ah got up to ponchos ah these things you know you throw over your head in the rain and every soldier had to have a poncho. Well, at that time there were about a hundred thousand ah ah people in the Cambodian army and ah ponchos cost about fourteen dollars a piece and and I said ponchos are ridiculous because ah ah the Cambodians had been standing in the rain for a thousand years and they never needed a poncho and of all the things they don't need now is ah one each poncho for every Cambodian.

And, Mr. Nutter supported me on that. And, so, they knocked the ponchos off the list at that time, and I had other things I wanted taken off the lists. The number of trucks I felt was to eh eh too large, and he was helpful in this sort of thing. Mr. Nutter was helpful at that time, but the way things happen ah by the time you I got back to Cambodia and had been back three or four months, the ah ah ah the juices had all been stirred up again and and ah the successes I had had on my trip slowly faded away.

But, it was quite early. I'd say in the fall of '70 I could see it starting. Then, of course, in the early part of 1971 when the MEDTC was formed and I really then had... They were very courteous for a while and would ask my opinion of their ah their requests and then in the end they just stopped asking me at all because I would object and I would send messages back to the State Department and the White House objecting to these what I considered ah ah massive unnecessary supply lists that they had.

They ah other problems for instance they ah the MEDTC, of course, did not speak French and so they felt that all of the FANK records should be kept in English so they started schools to teach the poor FANK how to read and write English and ah...

Okay, we're out of film, I'm sorry.

That was a nice place uh to run out...we did not...

Just start...

Yeah. With the ah, we kept the records in French and ah...

Say we kept the military...

The military records, ah ah supply records primarily...

Could you just...

...in French.

Could you give it as a whole sentence, sorry.

Yes. We kept the ah military supply records in French. The Cambodians, of course, all of their records were French when I arrived, and we just continued to ah operate and let them keep their own records. When the MEDTC got organized they couldn't speak French or read it so they decided it should all be in English, and the way to do that was to teach the poor Cambodians how to speak English. Well, of course, this required more money out of the program that wasn't going to the war.

Ah. Another similar exercise they went through was the Cambodians had a petroleum distribution system that ah involved ah fifty five gallon drums. When ah ah an outfit needed gasoline they'd load four or five fifty-five gallon drums and drive it out to the unit and pick up the empties and ah leave the full ones.

Well, that's not the way the Americans... The Americans hadn't done that since WWI. So, the way you do it is you set up big tank farms and bring in tankers and you deliver gas to pumps and stations and ah again to me ah ah a tragic waste of money that was totally unnecessary but that's the only way the Americans knew how to do it. The ah ah and I think that was one of the problems. They just didn't know how to go in and improvise or use the existing system particularly if they didn't understand it.

At this point what what was Kissinger doing? Why was he allowing this to happen? Did he have any interest or what, what was it do you think...

Oh, I think, I think he had a...

Say I think Kiss...

I think that Dr. Kissinger had a a deep interest what was going on in Cambodia and he ah he felt that ah the Cambodians he believed they were ah ah doing a very fine job. Ah. They really weren't doing a very good job. They did keep four or five North Vietnamese and VC Divisions occupied from time to time but ah ah they certainly weren't winning any war at that time. Just holding their own.

But, he was encouraged because I think early on in the summer of 1970 he had been convinced just as many people in the JCS were convinced that the whole Cambodian Program was gonna just fall apart, that the enemy was going to overrun them and I, I think that ah ah actually I feel that ah ah what happened in Cambodia, we had hunted for years when I was in the special forces in Vietnam and at the time I was with the State Department in Cambodia ah you would read these reports that ah ah that the Cambodians ah or not the Cambodians that the ah I'm trying to think of it the the headquarters for the enemy was called something that we were all looking, COSVN, was the name of it. They were, they were looking for COSVN and we would have great exercises and involve three or four divisions. They'd think they'd found it.

Then when they'd get in to the area they'd find a few little thatched schoolhouses with chairs and I always felt that you could not run an army as large as the NVA, VC army that was fighting our forces and the Vietnamese forces ah without a major headquarters and it, you didn't run it under a palm tree some place. But when I, and when I got to Cambodia and went around and looked, in the Chinese Embassy and the many buildings of the Chinese Embassy and the Viet Cong Embassy and the North Vietnamese Embassy, all of whom had been thrown out by Lon Nol about a month before I got there ah there were fabulous radio systems and antenna systems ah there were records there. There was American money. There were American soldiers ID cards in drawers.

Ah. There was an international air field. The communications. You could telephone any place in the world from Phnom Penh and I became convinced that COSVN had always been in Phnom Penh. Maybe some field commands occasionally out in the in the ah under the palm trees but but generally speaking I felt that ah ah that COSVN was in Phnom Penh. And, that was one of the problems the the ah the enemy had at the time I got there because their whole headquarter system, their communications system had been destroyed by Lon Nol when he threw them all out and they it took them about a year, a year and a half to reorganize it up north in a town called Crotiae [unidentifiable] is where I think they reorganized COSVN.

So, that in that period which looked like FANK was doing so well for many reasons. As I say the enemy didn't have supplies. Ah. Their major headquarters had been totally disrupted and they had to reorganize that. They really didn't do much in ah in Vietnam either during that period. But, the ah ah the Cambodians ah ah ah lived on this euphoria that they were winning and I think back to Dr. Kissinger he did too.

And, he he simply felt that ah the Cambodians were doing so well give them a little bit more and they'll do better. And, it just simply didn't work that way. What happened in the end was they kept giving them more and more and a thin strata of of capable personnel in Cambodia was so overwhelmed that the Americans in the MEDTC had to begin to be the chief three of the army, the chief four of the army, the ah ah well every, every part of the army was was in the end in effect run by somebody on the American side.

Can you tell me now what you knew about the bombing. Just say what I...?

Yes. With respect to the bombing I mentioned it a little bit earlier...

That went beyond the film what you said...

All right. With respect to the bombing, ah, I didn't know anything about it. It ah ah nor did anybody in the Embassy know anything about it. I'm speaking of the diplomatic side of the Embassy. I think the attachés knew about it. I think the MEDTC knew about it but when I was there, I'm speaking of, nobody in the Embassy knew about it.

Subsequently, Mr. Enders who was the DCM he knew about it, and he, in fact, participated in it. It ah assisted in the in the selection of targets I understand but at the same time at then I was back in Washington in the State Department.

Mr. Rogers, the Secretary of State did not know about the bombing and ah ah we subsequently found out oh some time in 1973 when the ah ah Senate had their investigation on the thing and it came out that, but I, it ah, ah the ambassador didn't know about it. It ah it was a very well kept secret with the military.

What about the ah...

The beginning when he said about the bombing.

If you just keep looking at the...

Oh, okay.

Ahm. What was the ah operation that most struck you as an example of the incompetence of or the naïveté of the FANK. Was Chenla II one of those?

Probably Chenla II would be ah ah they had they had done Chenla I earlier and were fairly successful with it. Chenla II ah they they simply got themselves, I think, ah ah vastly overextended and ah also they they did not have a very good intelligence of the enemy's capabilities. They thought they were perfectly capable, they meaning Lon Nol and some of his officers, obviously some of, I think, the battalion commanders and ah that level regimental commanders in the field had a much better feeling for for for the enemy capabilities than than did the ah FANK headquarters itself. To include Lon Nol.

What about corruption within FANK itself? What evidence did you have of it? Was it, was it a major factor in...?

Ah. I didn't know too much about the the corruption within FANK. I was, I was suspicious of of ah ah...For instance, some of the officers would have ah very, very nice parties. But, I didn't know whether there, those parties... I mean parties where you'd go and you'd go with your wife and there'd be evening dresses and ah I didn't know whether those were from their funds or from ah government funds.

If they were government funds, ah, they, obviously were coming out of some program from the United States. I mean they, they, where else they'd get the money at that time. But, but as far as individuals and knowing of any any ah corruption they, I didn't see it. I mean I didn't see it. The FANK officers did not drive ah ah fancy cars particularly. I mean they had they had ah their cars that were there before we got there. I think they belonged to Sihanouk at ah ah, but I didn't ah didn't know mu... didn't see much of it.

What were your feelings at on the last week of your time in Phnom Penh towards the war and towards what was happening? What did you feel about it after all that time you spent there. Two years.

Well, I felt that the ah ah ah the war was what I called getting out of, out of hand.

Say at the time of my, at the end of my stay...

At the end of my tour in Cambodia in ah June of 1972 I felt that ah ah the situation ah that I had tried to create early on had ah gone to pieces and was totally out of hand. I felt there were there were too many Americans in Cambodia. The program was far beyond the capability of the FANK. The the ah that that that little by little the Americans were beginning to take over. It was becoming a mini Vietnam. Ah.

The ah ah the Cambodians themselves were becoming discouraged in that in that they could see themselves being put back on the back burner while the Americans stayed on the front burner. I, I think they ah they were disillusioned by, the enemy by that time had started to ah ah just begun to pick up a little bit of...Chenla II was over but that had been a great blow to them.