A California Accountant’s Bid to Overturn Cambodia’s Government

Cambodian-American Yasith Chhun was living the American dream in California until the Long Beach accountant hatched a plot to try to overthrow Cambodia’s government.

The coup plot flopped, and Chhun landed in jail.

We talk to Chhun from a Pennsylvania penitentiary, and to a journalist who has chronicled the tale – Adam Piore.

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Marco Werman: Yasith Chhun can’t forget the cruelty of Pol Pot’s rule in Cambodia. He watched the Khmer Rouge behead his father in his house in 1977. Then they enslaved Chhun and sent him to clear minefields. But Chhun escaped and found his way to America in 1982. He set up an accounting business in California and became an immigrant success story.

Yasith Chhun: I’d been in America enjoying my freedom. I see this country is everybody living for sport. My family live in Long Beach, California and I succeed in my career to be accountant. In my business I can make money enough to survive and enjoy, you know, my life here.

Werman: But even after the Khmer Rouge was gone Chhun remained haunted by what he left behind.

Chhun: Cambodians, they have a lot of violence and kill innocents and, [indiscernible 00:47], corruption. I feel like I have to do something to help my people out there. I cannot close my eyes. I see their tears crying out there for help, everyday.

Werman: So in 2000 Chhun, the California accountant, tried to overthrow Cambodia’s government. The coup was ill-conceived. Seven people died, more than 100 were arrested, and Chhun landed in a federal prison in Pennsylvania. Today he’s serving a life-sentence for conspiracy and engaging in a military expedition against the US ally. Chhun says he’s a victim of a changing political climate in the US after 19/11.

Chuhn: I feel that this country, they killed my father, you know so killed father, they put me in jail, what can I do? Is a democracy country and now it turned around because of political climate it changed between green light to red light and they put me in jail. What can I do with I guess a small group and small [indiscernible 01: 42] here.

Werman: Journalist Adam Piore, he has written about Yasith Chhun in the digital publisher The Atavist. He says Chhun lived the American dream in reverse.

Adam Piore: He’s driving a Lexus and he had a nice suburban house. But survivor’s guilt or just maybe he had built a business and he turned his attention back to his homeland and he decided to try and build a movement from the United States.

Werman: What in his background do you think led him to try to bring down his government?

Piore: His father was politically active in support of the Lon Nol regime, the US-backed Lon Nol regime. He’s very anticommunist and he would go to protest in support of the American backed Lon Nol regime against the Khmer Rouge when he was in high school and college. Eventually, after the Khmer came into power some of the villagers told them that his father had been active and his father was beheaded. And you said he saw his father beheaded. And it’s a very traumatic experience. And I think he was driven by the demons of his past to take this action and he may have been a little bit willfully blind. I was living in Cambodia in 1999-2000 and it didn’t seem particularly realistic during that period of time. The country had emerged from 30 years of civil war. People were very tired and eventually Yasith Chhun discovered that he didn’t have as many troops as he thought he had, that people had been misleading him.

Werman: Briefly if you would, just describe the failed coup attempt in 2000.

Piore: So around Thanksgiving in 2000 about 70 or 80 mostly poor Cambodian pheasants charged the Ministry of Defense. The government had been tipped-off ahead of time to their plans and they were easily defeated and arrested. And in the days that followed people were rounded up and then Chhun fled back to the United States to try and do it again I guess.

Werman: I mean a lot of lives were destroyed in this coup attempt. Seven people were killed. 12 were wounded, more than 100 were arrested. Do you think Chhun knew what he was getting into?

Piore: I think he hoped for the best. But I think he was to some extent naive and willfully blind. The prosecutors claimed he was narcissistic, a classic narcissist like Bernie Madoff or something and that he didn’t care. I’m not sure that it’s true but, you know, he had lived through a genocide and he believed that war might bring casualties, I guess.

Werman: The US clearly needs a cooperation of countries in Southeast Asia. Was the prosecutor of Yasith Chhun politically motivated do you think?

Piore: Well that’s what he’s claiming in his appeal. From speaking with the FBI agents and people involved in the prosecution, they insist that there was no political pressure. I do think the political climate changed. The neutrality act which was one of the original things that Chhun was charged with, violating had not been used to prosecute people for many years. There were two other groups that were former Southeast Asian anticommunists who were also sort of for the first time really going after, because I think there was political pressure to go after terrorism in general. So I wouldn’t say that as you said, and his lawyer contended, I mean that’s up to the court to decide, but I don’t have any direct evidence that his prosecution was politically motivated as a quid pro quo, although they pointed a bunch of circumstantial evidence, but there definitely was a change in the political climate, and also he was prosecuted under a number of anti-terrorism laws that have been used since. So that’s certainly came into play. That said, there was a clear imperative for the United States to improve relations with Cambodia. And certainly when I talked to some of the FBI agents involved, their cooperation with the Cambodian authorities in the prosecution of Chhun Yasith and the other people, the Cambodian freedom fighters, led to new alliances, which allowed the agency to eventually open up an FBI office. They worked together. As one of the agents said, it helped develop a collegial type atmosphere whereas before there had been well, just a lot of suspicion.

Werman: Where does Yasith Chhun’s appeal stand right now?

Piore: The last time I checked they had filed the appeal and they were waiting for a government response, which had been delayed several times. And so I don’t know when the government is planning to file its response to the allegations that it was somehow politically motivated.

Werman: Journalist Adam Piore has written about Yasith Chhun in the digital publisher, the Atavist. His article is called The Accidental Terrorist: A California accountant coup d’état. For a link go to the World.org. Adam thank you very much.

Piore: OK, thank you.

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