A-t-on LU Chomsky (4) ? Chomsky aux prises avec le tissu de mensonges sur le Kampuchéa révolutionnaire

— Noam Chomsky à François Ponchaud,  Massachusetts, M.I.T., 4 August 1978.

Dear Father Ponchaud,

Thank you for sending me a copy of your letter to Barron. I am glad that you have given your authorization for the public use of your account of the Famiglia Cristiana matter, which is the only part of the letter to which I expect to make any reference. I note, however, that you regard it as a public document, and that you describe it in your accompanying letter to me as "une démarche scientifique rigoureuse." So regarded, it has some curious aspects.

You state that those who accuse Barron "de répandre un flot de mensonges sur le Kampuchea ne se basent que sur des a priori idéologiques..." Since I am the person cited as having made this accusation (as indeed I did), you are therefore asserting that I base myself solely on a priori ideological assumptions. This statement gives some insight, perhaps, into what you regard as rigorous scientific analysis. As you know very well, of course, the statement is false. That is, even in the one article of mine that you have seen, grounds are presented for the judgment that I made, and there is no basis there for your further claim. If you had any acquaintance with other work of mine, you would discover that your a priori claim is not only false but ludicrous. In fact, it is particularly ironic that you should put it forth. Your own expressed support for the Khmer Rouge contrasts rather strikingly with my complete and consistent refusal to express any such support, and with a long history of articulate opposition to Leninist movements of any sort.  I say this not to justify myself, but to bring out clearly what your conception of rigorous scientific work must be. As in the case of the "quotations" that you described to me in your letter, and about which I have already written, I must conclude that your conception of rigorous science is a rather odd one. Before continuing to laud yourself in this way, I would suggest that you might give the matter a little thought.

Quite apart from your false statement, based on no evidence whatsoever in this rigorous scientific contribution, it is surprising that you cannot make the elementary distinction between apologetics for the Khmer rouge (your ideological a priori) and an effort to discover the truth, in the writings of people who are guilty of clear falsehoods (as in the case of Barron; cf. my article for a few example) or others, like yourself, who present as quotations variously attributed to different individuals what turn out to be remembered slogans. I continue to believe, as I wrote in the original review, that your book is a serious one that deserves attention and that gives a good deal of insight into the current situation, despite the continuing record of carelessness and apparent disregard for elementary standards of accuracy that appears in your letters, always combined with a self-characterization that is rather at odds with what appears.

You state in your letter to Barron that it did not seem to you that it was your responsibility to clarify the facts about the matter under discussion; rather, it was the responsibility of the Kampuchean authorities. This is a very curious position for someone who is devoted to the truth.  On such a commitment, it is, plainly, a responsibility to clarify what one knows to be true, particularly in an important case such as this, where, as you know, the apparently fabricated interview has been made public in a book that cites you as the sole expert witness, and has been very widely discussed in Europe and the United States, and even in serious Asian journals that one would expect to show better judgment, and has furthermore been used as a basis for a call for intervention in the U.S. Congress. For someone devoted to the truth, the responsibility of the Kampuchean authorities is a matter of total irrelevance. Your shift of the responsibility to them befits a prosecutor, but not someone devoted to making the truth known.

You speak further of "le silence complice qui entoure la souffrance...." That is again a curious judgment. Where has there been this "silence." Surely not in the United States. As noted in my review of your book, and as you surely know, the Cambodian events (including known fabrications) have been very widely discussed in the United States, in dramatic contrast to other major massacres -- e.g., the Indonesian massacres of the mid-1960s or the current massacres in Timor, which may well compare in number, and almost surely do in proportion of the population, to what has happened in Cambodia. The Readers Digest is a mass circulation journal. The Barron-Paul account was widely circulated further in other mass circulation journals as I noted. Your book achieved a record as the most rapidly reviewed French book in the U.S. in recent history -- perhaps ever -- and Lacouture's review was very widely noted in the press, though his "corrections" were not. Furthermore, there has been very substantial press coverage of Cambodia, primarily. Henry Kamm recently won a PUlitzer Prize for his coverage of Cambodia, primarily. The fact is that in the mass media, the specialized journals, the Congress, and elsewhere,  Cambodia has been one of the most extensively covered stories of recent times --I wlll not say one of the best-covered, since there has been so mach falsification and fabrication. Much the same has been true in other countries. Your concept of "silence" seems a strange one. The international circulation of Readers Digest alone belies this claim, and as you know, that is just a tiny fraction of what has appeared.

Your praise for the Barron-Paul book also seems to me very odd. After all, if you have read the single article of mine that you received you know that quite apart from the Famiglia Cristiana material, there are very serious inadequacies, and in that review we did not attempt to be anything like exhaustive.  As a person with such a comrnitment to discovering the truth, you might, I think, be a bit more concerned about these matters.

On quite another matter, I continue to be surprised that you feel that I should send to you copies of personal correspondence to friends, and that you seem to dismiss my statement that the publication of such personal correspondence without authorization is dishonest journalism. Is this, perhaps, your concept of honest journalism ? I will simply repeat what should be obvious. I could not imagine insisting that you send me copies of your personal letters to your friends, nor do I care what you say in such letters.  It is a diff erent matter, of course, when a letter is presented as a public document, as your letter to Barron, with its false and indeed slanderous statements, discussed above.

I can only repeat that despite all of this, I continue to find the book itself a valuable and serlous one, and I continue, I hope not too naively, to hope that you wlll reconsider some of the other things that you have written, which do not deserve these characterizations, in my opinion.

Sincerely yours,

Noam Chomsky

— François Ponchaud à Noam Chomsky ,  Paris le 4 septembre 1978.

Monsieur,

Bien que vous soyez le linguiste le plus éminent des USA, je tiens à vous faire savoir que « Toute autorisation est donnée par l’auteur pour reproduction, in extenso seulement » signifie que ma lettre doit être publiée en totalité ou pas du tout. Je tiens en effet à ce que vos lecteurs sachent de quels qualificatifs vous traitez les personnes qui ne partagent pas vos points de vue. J’accepte de discuter des opinions différentes des miennes, mais non de me faire injurier d’une manière malhonnête et gratuite. D’autre part, par un savant découpage selon une dialectique dont la rigueur scientifique m’échappe, on peut faire dire à ma lettre l’inverse de ce que j’ai voulu dire ; Je vous conteste donc le droit de ne retenir que le passage concernant la pitoyable histoire de Famiglia Cristiana, la seule qui apparemment semble présenter pour vous quelqu’intérêt d’école, passant sous silence les horreurs du drame khmer [il peut pourtant y aller de la vie de nombreux Cambodgiens ! ].

Je me demande d’ailleurs si vous avez lu mes précédentes lettres, ou tout du moins, si vous les avez comprises. Dans votre lettre du 5 juin, vous me disiez, pour vous excuser, que la publication de votre lettre à Malcolm Caldwell était l’œuvre d’un « unscrupulous journalist », d’un « dishonest journalist ». Dans votre lettre du 4 août vous me reprochez implicitement de citer ces termes, me demandant ma conception du journaliste honnête !

De même, dans une courte lettre accompagnant la copie de ma lettre à John Barron, j’ironise sur votre « démarche scientifique rigoureuse » qui « me vaudra un nouveau qualificatif aussi agréable que celui dont vous m’avez gratifié dans votre lettre à Caldwell » ! Dans votre lettre du 4 août vous me reprochez de me vanter moi-même de suivre une démarche scientifique rigoureuse ! [la lettre de Ponchaud du 3 juillet 1978 pouvait en effet être comprise ainsi, voir plus haut] Il est probable que des nuances d’une langue étrangère échappent , même à un linguiste de votre renom. Comme linguiste, je m’étonne d’autre part que vous n’ayez pas donné votre opinion sur « Vicissitudes de la linguistique au service de l’idéologie abstraite », puisque l’étude de Steve Heder vous paraissait « Quite interesting » ! Elle l’est en effet, car elle montre comment on peut utiliser ses embryons de connaissances pour défendre une idéologie. Vous avez autorisation de publier ma réponse, « In extenso seulement ».

Veuillez agréer, cher Monsieur, l’expression de mes salutations distinguées,

François Ponchaud

CC. John Barron

— Noam Chomsky à François Ponchaud,  Massachussets, M.I.T., 28 September 1978.

Dear Pather Ponchaud,

Thank you for clarifying your intentions concerning your "open letter" to Barron. The main reason I wrote you was to inform you of the sections to which I intended to make reference, to ensure that this was in accordance with your concept of quoting in context.  I see that it was not, and am to know that before publishing anything further on this matter. I could not believe, frankly, that you really meant that you insisted that the "open letter" be quoted in toto or not at ail.  I see that you did mean exactly that.  Since, obviously, no one (certainly not I) is going to quote this five-page later completely, it follows that you have ensured that no one will quote it at all (except, of course, for Barron and others of his type ; I assume you will raise no objection if they quote selectively from it).  In this way, you succeed in maintaining your silence, in effect, about the interview that you know for certain to be fabricated, while perhaps being in a position to mislead the more gullible into believing that you have been forthright about the matter. I find this as  cunous as I do the various falsehoods that I pointed out to you in your open letter, concerning which you did not respond, thus converting these falsehoods into lies; I trust that the distinction is clear. Returning to your (effective) silence about the Famiglia Cristiana interview, which -- as you know -- has been exploited for such purposes as motivating Congressional support for military intervention in Cambodia, how you square this with your alleged concern that the truth be made known, or for that matter, with your conscience, I have no idea, and quite frankly, at this point, do not much care.

Since you did not choose to respond to my pointing out to you that you were making false and slanderous comments in a "public" document, and since your continued commitment to keeping silent in effect on the alleged interview is now obvious to both of us, I see no point in maintaining any further pretenses concerning your alleged commitment to truth and fact, and will therefore terminate this correspondence, with no further comment on what you, I, or others have written.

There is one additional reason why I have no further interest in pursuing this correspondence, one that you will comprehend at once, I have no doubt. I have been comparing the French, British and American editions of your book. I presume that nothing further need be said.

[Précisons au lecteur, d’après ce qu’en dit Torben Retbøll dans l’instructif et condensé « Kampuchea and the Reader’s Digest », Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol.11, n°3, 1979, pp.22-27 (cf. document 22 en annexe) que la « redoutable boutade » sur « il suffit d’un million… » était retirée de l’édition américaine de juin 1978, mais non de l’édition anglaise simultanée, et que la préface à l’édition américaine comprenait une remarque sur « l’attitude responsable et la précision de pensée si caractéristiques à Noam Chomsky », mais que ce passage était remplacé dans l’édition anglaise par des attaques sans fondement contre Chomsky]

Sincerely yours,

Noam Chomsky

— Torben Retbøll à François Ponchaud,  Vester Skerninge, Danemark, September 13, 1978.

Dear Mr. Ponchaud,

Thank you for your letter of June 9 as well as for the enclosed article in reply to steve Heder. I have read this with much interest, but since I know no Khmer I do not consider myself competent to judge on this matter. Personnaly, i have not written anything on this subject, one way or the other.

Since writing to you the last time I have read the english translation of your book, and if you do not mind my unsolicited opinion I would like o make a few comments on this. As far as I can see it is mostly the same as the French original, apart from minor updatings and revisions. Thus, you still claim that rice stcocks in phnom Penh would have sufficed for two months (page 37), although I understand from Chomsky that you have conceded to him that this view saw not entirely correct. According to Long Boret, the old government’s last premier, the city had only eight days worth of rice on hand on the eve of surrender. One might, of course, object that he would warn of starvation in order to influence American congressmen, but in the first place, his warning did not – to my knowledge, at least – reach the West until it was reported in the New York Times on May 9, 1975, when it was too late to influence anybody. And secondly, his testimony was corroborated by US AID officials who estimated that there was a six day supply of rice (NYT, July 14, 1975). In any event, this evidence is not cited and then rejected, but is simply left out altogether.

On page 70, you say that the Khmer Rouge believed that it was impossible to re-educate the cadres of the former regime, but this statement is contradicted by yourself on page 88 when you say that « many refugees speak of being subjected to “construction” or re-education , », and again on page 208 when you say that since 1976, people trying to get away « are aparently sent to re-education camps . » and your citation of the Thai paper Prachachat which follows immediately afterwards still foes not make it clear that the reporter was, in fact, interviewing a « neutral » person who claimed to have talked to a member of the Khmer Rouge. Thus, the chain contains an additional link which you omit entirely. Similarly, it is unclear who makes the remark about « overturning the basket. » This, at least, was obvious in the French original, whereas the English edition merely says that « the article concluded… » but perhaps this is due to the translator ?

On page 92, you do not explain the background and the proper meaning of the « redoutable boutade » which I understand that you have discussed with chomsky. Nor have you marked that you yourself gave a rather different version of this slogan in Le Monde of February 18, 1976. Thus, this statement – which would appear to mean simply that the Cambodian people will solve any task no matter how many or how few they are – is still being interpreted as expressinga deliberate wish to exterminate the population (cf. the Far Eastern Economic Review, August 25, 1978). A t least this was how it was read by Jean Lacouture when he reviewed your book in the New York Review of Books on March 31, 1977. However, as you know, Lacouture did not quote you correctly, so he said « only 1.5 or 2 million young Cambodians, out of six million, will be enough to rebuild a pure society » and concluded that this went beyond barbarism. And this quotation – taken from a review which Lacouture was later forced to retract as distorted and falsified – appears on both front and rear covers of the Penguin paperback edition of the book (only, even Penguin Books cannot quote correctly, so they have left out the figure of 2 million). And here it is certainly presented as evidence of an official wish to exterminate millions and millions of people. In a recent review of your book in the English Tribune, Malcolm Caldwell says of this case that « I do not believe that this could have been done without Ponchaud’s approval . » I would be much interested in knowing whether this assumption is correct.

I think it was very useful to have a more detailed discussion of the reliability of refugee accounts in the preface to the English edition – there was hardly anything on this in the French original. However, i am afraid that you are misrepresenting the views of Porter and particularly Chomsky-Herman when on page 13 you claim that « they say there have been no massacres » - and again when on page 16 you say that « their only sources of evaluation are deliberately chosen official statements . » I doubt that you could find evidence in support of these contentions. It is true that Porter-Hildebrand do cite several official documents and sometimes use them somewhat uncritically, but to my knowledge, the only official statement cited by Chomsky-Herman is the Famiglia Cristiana interview with Khieu Samphan, which – incidentally – they questioned seriously, even before you informed them that it might be a fraud.

At the end of your book you mention the Cambodians living abroad who have returned to their country after April 1975 and claim that they have been killed on their arrival in Cambodia (pages 209-210). I would be much interested in knowing how you can say this with certainty. You add that most were students or trainees in various trades who had gone to France before the fall of Phom Penh, and then you go on : « I have heard of no refugee making that choice. » I have : On May 3, 1976, the Washington Post carried a dispatch from Bangkok by Lewis Simons who reported that « four refugees who fled o Thailand seven or eight months ago voluntarily returned to Cambodia. » He added that « the four were the first to go back from Thai refugee camps to what is now officially called Democratic Kampuchea. » I considered this a remarkable case but so far I have searched in vain for more details than the 9 lines in this report by Lewis Simons. The story was not picked up by other papers (quite unlike Jean Lacouture’s review of your book, for instance), and nobody cared to send out a reporter to interview them before they left. Apparently, this was not relevant information to the press. (for your reference, I enclose a xerox).

Finally, I should like to raise two more points which do not have a direct bearing on your book. First, kampuchea is now opening its borders for foreign visitors more and more, for instance two Danes and three Swedes recently toured the country. I have no doubt that such visits are what is usully called « guided tours , « but how much so and how does this take place ? in this conection I was very interested to see a casual and short discussion of this subject in your speech for the international Cambodia hearing in April in Oslo, and I would be very grateful if you could elaborate somewhat on this point. Have you, for instance, tried to check out such accounts by demanding dates and the names of the people who were visiting when such arrangements were being made ? Have you tried to investigate to which extent these delegations are all travelling along the same roads and visiting the sam locations (apart from Phnom penh and Angkor Wat) ?

Secondly, I should like to draw your attention to an article in the French paper Libération of March 16, 1976 ; which I came across some time ago. It is a reaction to your articles in le Monde of february 17 and 18, 1976. I did not know if you are already familiar with it, but in any event I enclose a xerox and I would be very interested in hearing if you have any comments to the claim made in this article. I thank you for time and attention.

Sincerely,

Torben Retbøll.