Nate Thayer

Nathaniel Talbott Thayer (April 21, 1960 – c. January 3, 2023) was an American freelance journalist whose work focused on international organized crime, narcotics trafficking, human rights, and areas of military conflict.

He is most notable for having interviewed Pol Pot, in his capacity as Cambodia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review.

He also wrote for Jane's Defence Weekly, Soldier of Fortune, the Associated Press, and more than 40 other publications, including The Cambodia Daily and The Phnom Penh Post.

On January 3, 2023, Thayer was found dead at home in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

His health had been declining for about a decade.

According to Thayer's brother, the exact timing of his death was not clear.

Nathaniel Talbott Thayer was born in 1960 in Washington, D.C. He was the son of Joan Pirie Leclerc and Harry E. T. Thayer, who was United States Ambassador to Singapore from 1980 to 1985.

His mother was from the Carson, Pirie, Scott family.

His uncle was lawyer Robert S. Pirie, and his great-uncle was Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson II.

Thayer studied at the University of Massachusetts Boston, though he did not receive a degree.

From 1980 to 1982 he was involved with the Boston-based Clamshell Alliance, acting as spokesman during protest events at the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant as well as anti-draft protests.

Thayer began his career in Southeast Asia on the Thai-Cambodian border, taking part in an academic research project in which he interviewed 50 Cham survivors of Khmer Rouge atrocities at Nong Samet Refugee Camp in 1984.

He then returned to Massachusetts where he worked briefly as the Transportation Director for the state Office of Handicapped Affairs.

Thayer himself noted, "I got fired. I was a really bad bureaucrat."

Thayer later worked for Soldier of Fortune magazine reporting on guerrilla combat in Burma, and in 1989 he began reporting for the Associated Press from the Thai-Cambodian border.

In October 1989, Thayer was nearly killed when an anti-tank mine exploded under a truck he was riding in.

In 1991 he moved to Cambodia where he began writing for the Far Eastern Economic Review.

In August 1992, Thayer traveled to Mondulkiri Province and visited the last of the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races (FULRO) Montagnard guerrillas who had remained loyal to their former American commanders.

Thayer informed the group that FULRO's president Y Bham Enuol had been executed by the Khmer Rouge seventeen years previously.

The FULRO troops surrendered their weapons in October 1992; many of this group were given asylum in the United States.

In April 1994, Thayer participated in (and funded) the Cambodian Kouprey Research Project, a $30,000, two-week, 150 km field survey to find the rare Cambodian bovine known as the kouprey.

Thayer later wrote: "After compiling a team of expert jungle trackers, scientists, security troops, elephant mahouts and one of the most motley and ridiculous looking groups of armed journalists in recent memory, we marched cluelessly into Khmer Rouge-controlled jungles along the old Ho Chi Minh trail."

On July 3, 1994, Thayer was asked to help negotiate Prince Norodom Chakrapong's release and safe passage to the airport after the prince had been accused by Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh of plotting a coup d'état.

Thayer was subsequently expelled from Cambodia by Prince Ranariddh, but he returned anyway.

In early 1997, he was again expelled from Cambodia for exposing connections between Prime Minister Hun Sen and heroin traffickers.

Thayer then decided to pursue a fellowship at Johns Hopkins University.

He was a visiting scholar at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

In July 1997, Nate Thayer and Asiaworks Television cameraman David McKaige visited the Anlong Veng Khmer Rouge jungle camp inside Cambodia where Pol Pot was being tried for treason.

Thayer had hoped for an interview but was disappointed:

"Pol Pot said nothing. They made it clear and I believed them, that I was to interview Pol Pot after the trial. Pol Pot literally had to be carried away from the trial—he was unable to walk—and I was not able to talk to him. I did try to talk to him ... he did not answer any questions, and he did not speak during the trial."

Thayer noted, "Every ounce of his being was struggling to maintain some last vestige of dignity."

Thayer believed that the trial had been staged by the Khmer Rouge for him and McKaige:

"It was put on specifically for us, to take the message to the world that Pol Pot has been denounced. They had reported on their radio, on June 19, that Pol Pot had been purged. No one believed them. After five years of lying over their radio, there was no reason anyone should take what they say credibly. It was clear to them that they needed an independent, credible witness to show what was happening."

According to Thayer, Ted Koppel of ABC News made a verbal agreement with Thayer to use footage from the trial on Nightline, then violated that agreement:

"[Koppel] returned home with a copy of my videotape. I gave it to him in exchange for his strict promise that its only use would be on Nightline. However, once he had the copy of the tape, ABC News released video, still pictures, and even transcripts of my interviews to news organizations throughout the world. Protected by its formidable legal and public relations department, ABC News made still photographs from the video, slapped the 'ABC News Exclusive' logo on them, and hand delivered them to newspapers, wire services, and television ... All of these pictures demanded that photo credit be given to ABC News ... The story won a British Press Award for 'Scoop of the Year' for a British paper I didn't even know had published it ... I even won a Peabody Award as a 'correspondent for Nightline'. But I turned it down—the first time anyone had rejected a Peabody in its 57-year history."

ABC News responded that they had "agreed to pay Nate Thayer the sizable sum of $350,000 for the rights to use his footage of former Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. Despite the fact that ABC provided prominent and repeated credit and generous remuneration for his work, Mr. Thayer initiated a five-year barrage of complaints coupled with repeated demands for more money."

In October 1997, Thayer returned to Anlong Veng and became only the second western journalist (after Elizabeth Becker in 1978 ) ever to be granted an interview with the former dictator and, along with McKaige, was certainly the last outsider to see him alive.

Thayer recounted the story of his interview with Pol Pot in his unpublished book Sympathy for the Devil: Living Dangerously in Cambodia – A Foreign Correspondent's Story.

Pol Pot told Thayer:

"First, I want to let you know that I came to join the revolution, not to kill the Cambodian people. Look at me now. Do you think ... am I a violent person? No. So, as far as my conscience and my mission were concerned, there was no problem. This needs to be clarified ... My experience was the same as that of my movement. We were new and inexperienced and events kept occurring one after the other which we had to deal with. In doing that, we made mistakes as I told you. I admit it now and I admitted it in the notes I have written. Whoever wishes to blame or attack me is entitled to do so. I regret I didn't have enough experience to totally control the movement. On the other hand, with our constant struggle, this had to be done together with others in the communist world to stop Kampuchea becoming Vietnamese. For the love of the nation and the people it was the right thing to do but in the course of our actions we made mistakes."