Nate Thayer is most notable for having interviewed Pol Pot, in his capacity as Cambodia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review.
30 Facts About Nate Thayer
1.
2.
Nate Thayer wrote for Jane's Defence Weekly, Soldier of Fortune, the Associated Press, and more than 40 other publications, including The Cambodia Daily and The Phnom Penh Post.
3.
On January 3,2023, Thayer was found dead at home in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
4.
Nate Thayer's health had been declining for about a decade.
5.
Nate Thayer, who was United States Ambassador to Singapore from 1980 to 1985.
6.
Nate Thayer's mother was from the Carson, Pirie, Scott family.
7.
Nate Thayer's uncle was lawyer Robert S Pirie, and his great-uncle was Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson II.
8.
Nate Thayer studied at the University of Massachusetts Boston, though he did not receive a degree.
9.
Nate Thayer began his career in Southeast Asia on the Thai-Cambodian border, taking part in an academic research project in which he interviewed 50 Cham survivors of Khmer Rouge atrocities at Nong Samet Refugee Camp in 1984.
10.
Nate Thayer then returned to Massachusetts where he worked briefly as the Transportation Director for the state Office of Handicapped Affairs.
11.
Nate Thayer later worked for Soldier of Fortune magazine reporting on guerrilla combat in Burma, and in 1989 he began reporting for the Associated Press from the Thai-Cambodian border.
12.
In October 1989, Nate Thayer was nearly killed when an anti-tank mine exploded under a truck he was riding in.
13.
Nate Thayer informed the group that FULRO's president Y Bham Enuol had been executed by the Khmer Rouge seventeen years previously.
14.
On July 3,1994, Nate Thayer was asked to help negotiate Prince Norodom Chakrapong's release and safe passage to the airport after the prince had been accused by Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh of plotting a coup d'etat.
15.
Nate Thayer was expelled from Cambodia by Prince Ranariddh, but he returned anyway.
16.
Nate Thayer then decided to pursue a fellowship at Johns Hopkins University.
17.
Nate Thayer was a visiting scholar at the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
18.
Nate Thayer believed that the trial had been staged by the Khmer Rouge for him and McKaige:.
19.
In October 1997, Nate Thayer returned to Anlong Veng and became only the second western journalist ever to be granted an interview with the former dictator and, along with McKaige, was certainly the last outsider to see him alive.
20.
Nate Thayer visited Anlong Veng again on April 16,1998, only a day after Pol Pot had died.
21.
Dunlop wanted Duch to provide clues that would reveal his identity, and Nate Thayer began probing Duch's story that he was Hang Pin, an aid worker and a born-again Christian:.
22.
Dunlop and Thayer were first runners-up for the 1999 SAIS-Novartis Prize for Excellence in International Journalism, presented by The Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, for "exposing the inside story of the Khmer Rouge killing machine".
23.
In 2015, Nate Thayer was the author of a controversial series of articles about racially motivated demonstrations which occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, in the wake of the shootings which were carried out by Dylann Roof.
24.
The Columbia Journalism Review concluded that Nate Thayer's "attribution was sloppy and he represented quotes that were said in other places as if they were said to him" but that it did not appear to be a case of plagiarism.
25.
In December 2022, Nate Thayer posted a four-minute segment to Facebook of Webber's animated documentary "The Man Who Killed Pol Pot", about Nate Thayer's exploits.
26.
On Facebook in August 2022, Nate Thayer wrote that he had been afflicted with "two strokes, two heart attacks, two bouts with Covid, sepsis infections which went viral and left me with heart and other damage".
27.
On January 3,2023, Nate Thayer was found dead at home in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
28.
In 2000, Nate Thayer returned to the United States and bought a farmhouse in Maryland.
29.
Nate Thayer illuminated a page of history that would have been lost to the world had he not spent years in the Cambodian jungle, in a truly extraordinary quest for first-hand knowledge of the Khmer Rouge and their murderous leader.
30.
Nate Thayer was the first person in 57 years to turn down a prestigious Peabody Award, because he did not want to share it with ABC News' Nightline who he believed stole his story and deprived him and the Far Eastern Economic Review of income.