An Intercept investigation, years in the making, reveals previously unpublished, unreported, and underappreciated evidence of hundreds of civilian casualties that were kept secret during the conflict in Cambodia and remain almost entirely unknown to the American people. This week on Intercepted, host Murtaza Hussain talks to Nick Turse, an investigative journalist and contributing writer for The Intercept, about his work to uncover the mass violence Kissinger ordered and oversaw in Cambodia while the U.S. carpet-bombed the country between 1969 and 1973. Turse’s investigation, “Kissinger’s Killing Fields,” is based on previously unpublished interviews with more than 75 Cambodian witnesses and survivors of U.S. military attacks in 13 Cambodian villages so remote they couldn’t be found on maps. Their accounts reveal new details of the long-term trauma borne by survivors of the American war.
“It was very hands on. Kissinger was picking where bombs would be dropped in Cambodia,” Turse says. “The authentic documents associated with these strikes were burned and phony target coordinates and other forged data were supplied to the Pentagon and eventually Congress.” Experts say Kissinger bears significant responsibility for attacks in Cambodia that killed as many as 150,000 civilians — six times more noncombatants than the United States has killed in airstrikes since 9/11.
Transcript coming soon.