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Nate Thayer, who interviewed Khmer Rouge’s Pol Pot, dead at 62
- His 1997 interview with the genocidal leader of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge marked the first time in two decades that Pol Pot met with a journalist
- Thayer spent most of his career focused on Asia, reporting from combat situations like the Myanmar border and investigating North Korea
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Nate Thayer, the larger-than-life American freelance journalist who scored a massive scoop with his 1997 interview with Pol Pot, the genocidal leader of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, has died at 62, his family said on Wednesday.
Thayer was discovered dead by his brother Rob Thayer at his Falmouth, Massachusetts home on Tuesday.
“He had a lot of ailments, he was seriously ill for many months,” the brother told Agence France-Presse.
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Nate Thayer spent years reporting on Cambodia politics and society, including the Khmer Rouge, the brutal communist regime that left more than one million people dead between 1975 and 1979.
01:45
Comrade Duch, chief torturer of Khmer Rouge regime, dies in prison aged 77
Comrade Duch, chief torturer of Khmer Rouge regime, dies in prison aged 77
Beginning in 1989, he worked for the Associated Press, and then publications like the Phnom Penh Post and the Far Eastern Economic Review, building contacts in the dangerous jungle border region of Thailand and Cambodia.
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