The chartered DC-8 out of Los Angeles was bound for a city that has been off-limits to U.S. flights since 1975: Phnom-Penh. On board were 82,000 lbs. of food and medicine and 134 lbs. of San Francisco Bureau Chief Gavin Scott. The airlift, "Operation California," was sponsored by ten American corporations and church groups. Scott, who was one of four journalists allowed to hitch a ride, thus became one of the few American newsmen in years to be given a firsthand look inside the capital of war-ravaged Cambodia. His report on that extraordinary two-day sojourn appears in this week's World section.

"The 31 -hour trip in a windowless cargo plane was a little tedious," says Scott of his journey, "but in 20 years as a TIME correspondent, few stories have proved more riveting." Since the U.S. has no diplomatic relations with Cambodia, Operation California agents had to arrange their mission with the Cambodian embassy in Moscow. "Bona fides was eventually established with help from the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia," Scott explains, "but a green light came only four days before we took off.'

For Scott, who had served as TIME'S Saigon bureau chief from 1972 to 1974, the journey was both an exciting new adventure and an exercise in nostalgia. He revisited the magazine's old outpost at Villa No. 10 of Phnom-Penh's Samarki Hotel, where he had spent many a week monitoring the war. There, he says, "I found a shambles of broken glass, overturned furniture and mangled typewriters." The scene stirred memories for Scott: "I recalled that on the last night of U.S. bombing in Cambodia, the windows of the old hotel were rattling as usual. Then came dawn and a welcome silence. I flew over to Bangkok, drove north to Korat Air Force Base and interviewed the kid said to have dropped the last bomb." Scott's welcome last week was not marred by the hostilities of the past. "The Cambodians were glad to see us," he says. "They were grateful for the food and medicine that Operation California brought and anxious to demonstrate the calamitous situation in which that soft and lovely country finds itself."

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