Dean [ the US Ambassador in Cambodia ] to find the films and also instructed Bush to seek a
meeting with Sihanouk. The Prince refused, and during the first ten days of April, as the noose
around Phnom Penh tightened, he continued his public tirades" against the US and its Cambodian
puppets. [fn 13]^On the same day, April 11, Ford announced that he would not request any further aid for
Cambodia from the US Congress, since any aid for Cambodia approved now would be
"too late" anyway. Ford had originally been asking for $333 million to save the
government of Cambodia. Several days later Ford would reverse himself and renew his
request for the aid, but by that time it was really too late.
On April 11 the US Embassy was preparing a dramatic evacuation, but the embassy was
being kept open as part of Kissinger's effort to bring Prince Sihanouk back to Phnom
Penh.
"It was now, on April 11, 1975, as Dean was telling government leaders he might soon be leaving,
that Kissinger decided that Sihanouk should be brought back to Cambodia. In Peking, George
Bush was ordered to seek another meeting; that afternoon John Holdridge met once more with
Pung Peng Cheng at the French Embassy. The American diplomat explained that Dr. Kissinger
and President Ford were now convinced that only the Prince could end the crisis. Would he please
ask the Chinese for an aircraft to fly him straight back to Phnomn Penh? The United States would
guarantee to remain there until he arrived. Dr. Kissinger wished to impose no conditions." "On
April 12 at 5 AM Peking time Holdridge again met with Pung. He told him that the Phnom Penh
perimeter was degenerating so fast that the Americans were pulling out at once. Sihanouk had
already issued a statement rejecting and denouncing Kissinger's invitation." [fn 14]Sihanouk had a certain following among liberal members of the US Senate, and his
presence in Phnom Penh in the midst of the debacle of the old Lon Nol forces would
doubtless have been reassuring for US public opinion. But Sihanouk at this time had no
ability to act independently of the Khmer Rouge leaders, who were hostile to him and
who held the real power, including the inside track to the Red Chinese. Prince Sihanouk
did return to Phnom Penh later in 1975, and his strained relations with Pol Pot and his
colleagues soon became evident. Early in 1976, Sihanouk was placed under house arrest
by the Khmer Rouge, who appear to have intended to execute him. Sihanouk remained
under detention until the North Vietnamese drove Pol Pot and his forces out of Phnom
Penh in 1978 and set up their own government there.
In following the Kissinger-Bush machinations to bring Prince Sihanouk back to
Cambodia in mid-April, 1975, one is also suspicious that an included option was to
increase the likelihood that Sihanouk might be liquidated by the Khmer Rouge. When the
Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh, they immediately carried out a massacre on a grand
scale, slaying any members of the Lon Nol and Long Boret cabinets they could get their
hands on. There were mass executions of teachers and government officials, and all of the
2.5 million residents of Phnom Penh were driven into the countryside, including seriously
ill hospital patients. Under these circumstances, it would have been relatively easy to
assassinate Sihanouk amidst the general orgy of slaughter. Such an eventuality was
explicitly referred to in a Kissinger NSC briefing paper circulated in March 1975, in
which Sihanouk was quoted as follows in remarks made December 10, 1971: "If I go on
as chief of state after victory, I run the risk of being pushed out the window by the