Charles Kaiser remembers Dith Pran and Syd Schanberg

In Memoriam

Dith Pran died last week of cancer in a hospital in New Jersey at the age of 65. When he worked with New York Times reporter Syd Schanberg in 1975, during the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge, they produced the greatest war correspondence of their time.

Dith was the de facto dean of the Pnom Penh press corps in the 1970s: the go-to man for every savvy Western correspondent covering the war in Cambodia. If you were Elizabeth Becker, a 25-year-old freelance tenderfoot, he might loan you his Volkswagen beetle for weeks (and for nothing) until you got a decent monthly retainer from a newspaper back home. If you were anyone else, he would tell you where to find the best story, pay the bribes to get you there, and always, somehow, keep you alive.

One day I turned to Schanberg and asked, "What ever happened to Dith?" He flinched at the question. But at the same moment, he drew himself up and declared, "Someday, Dith will come out!"By 1975, the New York Times was monopolizing Dith's services. Now he worked exclusively with Schanberg. The intensely ambitious 41-year-old Jewish guy from the Times and the wily 32-year-old son of a civil servant from Siem Reap were unlikely collaborators, but they flourished together. They shared all the same instincts: a passion for Cambodia, a taste for danger, and, eventually, a brotherly love that bound them together, forever.

In the spring of 1975, the two men were documenting the fall of Cambodia at the very moment when Saigon was about to fall to the North Vietnamese, bringing that part of the war in Indochina to an end. Because of America's gigantic involvement in Vietnam, the war there had always received most of the attention of the American press.

But in the newsroom of the New York Times in April 1975, where I was a newly minted reporter, the articles that kept us on the edge of our seats all carried the byline of Sydney H. Schanberg. They had immediacy and a drama unlike anything I had ever read in the paper before. On April 13, 1975, we learned that Schanberg had defied his bosses and stayed behind in Pnom Penh with the trusty Dith. Then nothing for eight days—until we read that both men had taken refuge in the French embassy in the Cambodian capital. Finally, two weeks later, Schanberg reached Bangkok. We all marveled again when we learned how he had been detained by a group of heavily armed Khmer Rouge soldiers on the day Pnom Penh had fallen. Almost as soon as he was detained, Schanberg had been certain he would be executed. "But Mr. Dith Pran saved our lives," Schanberg wrote, "first by getting into the personnel carrier with us, and then by talking soothingly to our captors for two and a half hours and then convincing them that we were not the enemy but merely foreign journalists covering their victory." Apparently, the two of them were the ultimate survivors.

Fast-forward 13 months. In May 1976, Schanberg returned to New York in triumph. He was the new assistant metropolitan editor—a track that could put him on his way to succeeding Abe Rosenthal, the paper's top editor who had returned from his final foreign posting to become metropolitan editor 13 years earlier. On May 3, my friend Marty Arnold (who was also my "rabbi" on the paper) invited me out to lunch to meet Schanberg, who would be my new boss. We all knew the Pulitzers were being announced after lunch, and we all knew Sydney was going to win one for his Cambodian coverage. But no one mentioned that during lunch. Instead Sydney pumped both of us for newsroom gossip and story ideas. Finally, as we were about to leave the restaurant to go back to 43rd Street, I turned to Syd and asked, "What ever happened to Dith?"

Schanberg flinched at the question. But at the same moment, he drew himself up and declared, "Someday, Dith will come out!"

I had no idea what I had done. What I didn't know—because nothing had been written about it in the paper—was that just after Dith had saved Schanberg's life, Dith's life had been jeopardized by his decision to stay on in Pnom Penh with the colleague he loved, after practically everyone else—including Dith's family—had been evacuated. A few days after the two of them had taken refuge in the French embassy, the Khmer Rouge had demanded the expulsion of all the Cambodians inside the embassy. Years later, Schanberg described the moment: "I ask [Dith] if he understands—we have tried everything we can think of but we are stymied. He says yes, he understands. But it is I who do not understand, who cannot cope with this terrible thing. He saved my life and now I cannot protect him. I hate myself." But at that moment in 1976, I knew nothing about that. Later that day, Schanberg accepted the Pulitzer on behalf of himself, and Dith.

Schanberg happened to be the deputy to the most unpopular metropolitan editor in the paper's modern history. For months, we all prayed that he would somehow displace his boss, but we never believed it could happen. Then, the miracle occurred: Just a year after Schanberg's return to New York, Abe Rosenthal made him metropolitan editor. Kids like me rejoiced; that night, we feted Sydney in a boisterous party in a reporter's apartment—the only Times function I ever attended where marijuana was part of the celebration, at least in the kitchen.

I had great times and I had terrible times working for Sydney, who was famously mercurial—inspired on some days, impossible on others. The problem was simple: He was a tortured man. He had no idea if Dith was dead or alive, and he went to bed every night and got up every morning blaming himself for not having been able to save him. It didn't help matters that Cambodia was suffering the greatest holocaust since the end of the World War II under the dictatorship of the Khmer Rouge, who killed or starved two million of their own people, until the Vietnamese finally invaded Cambodia at the end of 1978 and expelled these homicidal leaders.

In the fall of 1979, Schanberg's agony finally ended. A missionary in a refugee camp in Thailand got word to Times correspondent Henry Kamm in Bangkok that Dith had escaped across the Cambodian border. He was alive! Kamm called Schanberg, Schanberg dashed halfway around the globe, and within days he had reached the refugee camp. "I finally saw a young man," Schanberg remembered last week, "and I said, 'Do you know Dith Pran?' And he went berserk. And he's yelling, 'Your friend is here! Your friend is here!' And I saw Pran, hobbling, and suddenly he breaks into a trot. Then he throws his legs around my waist and we just hold each other for several minutes."

The Killing Fields turned Dith into one of the most famous Cambodians in the world. The movie did more to bring attention to Cambodia's plight than any other event since the war's end"Then I asked him, 'Can you forgive me?' And he said, 'Nothing to forgive, nothing to forgive.'"

"My life was restored," Schanberg told me. "And Dith said, 'I have my second life now.'"

As it happened, Schanberg's redemption occurred at the very moment my own frustrations with the Times were peaking. My breaking point came when a story I wrote for the national desk was eviscerated by the two reporters who had been my collaborators—and the editor who handled it. (As metropolitan editor, Schanberg had nothing to do with it.) It was an improbable tale of Libyans trying to bribe members of Jimmy Carter's administration to get export licenses for C-130 transport planes that Muammar Qaddafi had paid for but had never been allowed to receive because of his support for terrorism. After I challenged the way the story had been handled in a lengthy memo to Abe Rosenthal, he retaliated by making it clear that I was now on his shit list. Two months later, I marched into Schanberg's office and told him I was quitting.

A week after I left the paper for good, Schanberg's story—"The Death and Life of Dith Pran"—appeared on the cover of the New York Times magazine. It was the most personal and, quite possibly, the most dramatic story the Times has ever published. Dith returned to the newspaper and became a photographer for the metropolitan desk. Nine months later, Schanberg reached the end of his rope with Abe Rosenthal, and he was moved out of the news department and on to the op-ed page, where he became a columnist.

In 1984, David Puttnam turned Schanberg's magazine piece into The Killing Fields. Sam Waterston portrayed Schanberg. The movie won three Academy Awards, and, of course, it included the moment of Schanberg and Dith's joint rebirth:

Schanberg: You forgive me?
Dith: Nothing to forgive, Sydney. Nothing.

The movie turned Dith into one of the most famous Cambodians in the world. The journalism he had produced with Schanberg had inspired the movie that did more to bring attention to Cambodia's plight than any other event since the war had ended. And Dith spent the rest of his life doing everything he possibly could for Cambodia.

Schanberg invited me to one of the screenings of The Killing Fields at Cinema II on Third Avenue in Manhattan before it opened. The audience was astonished: It is one of the greatest antiwar movies ever made.

When I walked out of the theater after the final credits, I spotted Sydney standing on the landing between two of the escalators. It was the first time I had seen him since I left the Times, and I ran over to hug him.

We have remained good friends ever since.