Phnom-Penh: What Is Going On?

Cambodia won its independence from the French in 1953 without fighting and managed for years to live next door to the Viet Nam War without becoming a combatant. Now the struggle for Indochina, with all its suffering and sorrow, its clutter and filth, has engulfed the ancient kingdom of the Khmers. Last week TIME Correspondent Don Neff filed this report from its capital:

BARBED wire is going up in lovely Phnom-Penh. Like tentacles from the war ravaging the countryside, the prickly wire now surrounds most important government buildings. Sandbag bunkers, usually occupied by young boys or girls proudly fingering loaded U.S. carbines, dot the streets. Cambodian officers strut about with pistols hoistered on their hips.

Phnom-Penh is a city of rumors. One day hundreds--or is it thousands?--of Communists are said to be already in the capital, waiting for the word to rise up. On the next the enemy is just outside the city. One day his plans are said to be an all-out attack. But there is also a report that his main aim is to isolate the city, cut off all its roads and strangle it. What is going on? -

Reporters hop into chauffeur-driven, air-conditioned Mercedes-Benz limousines and rush out onto the highways. Three, four, five hours later they begin trickling back--the lucky ones--to a lawn-edged pool at the stately, decaying Royal Hotel. Sipping lemonade or good Russian vodka, they trade experiences. Nothing to the north for 20 klicks (kilometers). All quiet at Kompong Speu, but the city is deserted and still smoldering from a Communist mortar attack that morning. "You should have seen this one old lady," says a reporter. "She had a line of bullets up her leg. The goddam wounds were black with flies, and she was just lying there and not saying a word. The town is in ruins."

"And the Vietnamese troops say they are here to help, and what do they do? Loot the villages. Christ."

"Is everybody back?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Oh, this goddam story. I'm sick of it. I've had it. The country is going down the drain and no one gives a damn. And what the hell is really going on?"

Around the pool lie lovely French birds wearing marvelously brief bikinis, nurses and wives and daughters from the French community of 3,000. They twitter and chat, their enchanting laughter wafting across the crystal pool like a breeze of homesickness.

What is going on? Reporters stride through the quiet, tree-shaded boulevards for a rendezvous with the diplomats--the Australians and French, Russians and Americans, Israelis and Vietnamese. They meet in restaurants like the Cafe de Paris and Venice, and over rich red wine and Chateaubriand, served silently by white-coated Cambodian waiters, diplomats and reporters trade information. No one has the whole story. In Phnom-Penh, everyone is a gatherer of bits and pieces of information. "Did you hear?" the reporter asks, and then delivers a nugget of information to the diplomat. The diplomat reciprocates. They go their separate ways to another meeting, another exchange. Out of the morass of data--often contradictory, often mere speculation--comes a growing sense of the big picture.

There is only one regular briefing by the Cambodians each day, held at 9 a.m. in a second-story cabaret. As though symbolic of the lack of credibility shared by all briefing officers, the man responsible for informing the world press is named Major Am Rong. The name provides endless amusement for reporters and diplomats alike--a respite from the anxiety. Though Major Am Rong has enough information to answer questions for half an hour, the space reserved for written releases is empty except for a plaque. Stenciled on it is a legend: NO NEWS TODAY.

The American embassy is going through the throes of reorganization and self-doubt. Located in former servants' quarters behind a modest villa occupied by Charge d'Affaires Lloyd M. Rives, the embassy is in a sullen mood. Columnist Joseph Kraft had written a devastating article about the military attache, Colonel William Pietsch, 47, accusing him of not knowing what is going on. That same weekend, after only a month or so in the country, Pietsch was hastily pulled back to the Pentagon.

Toward dusk, as the shadows lengthen around the Royal pool, the reporters and diplomats talk. The joke is that if a rumor travels twice around the pool in substantially the same form, then it must be true. As night descends over the exquisite spires and curved roofs of the city, prostitutes aboard pedicabs come silently out of the shadows like butterflies beckoning for attention. The bars close early and the streets are soon deserted. At Madam Chum's, a few bleary-eyed Westerners smoke away their despair for 600 per pipe of opium. Geckos croak in the darkness. The city is silent. What is going on?

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