Intrepid larrikins defied Pol Pot's killers

The Australian ^ | August 15 | Mark Dodd and Marianne Harris

[PghBaldy]

IN late November 1978, in the Killing Fields of Cambodia, a 35-year-old Sydney pub and club worker Ronald Keith Dean signed a confession that he was an operative for the CIA. Three weeks later, another Australian, David Lloyd Scott, signed a similar statement detailing years of anti-communist activity and a long career with the premier US spy agency. Dean and Scott, two knockabout Aussies, who had embarked on a Southeast Asian yachting adventure and strayed into contested waters, thinking they were in Thailand, were, of course, nothing of the sort. Captured by the Khmer Rouge and undoubtedly terrified in Pol Pot's S-21 death camp, they produced a final act of defiance. Now with the discovery of confessions which were buried in a Cambodian archive and testimonies to a war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh, the full details of their capture, interrogation and murder are emerging. Their forced confessions, which have emerged 30 years after their deaths, cast new light on the enduring mystery over their disappearance and have again thrown into stark relief the brutality and paranoia of the Pol Pot death machine. They also tell a tale of bravery and creativity under the gravest pressure, with Scott spinning a yarn of how Muresk College in Western Australia was a CIA training farm that churned out "active probationary CIA agents". Scott, a former roadie with West Australian rock band Bakery, thumbed his nose at his captors, naming members of the band entourage, such as manager John Hopkins, as a CIA agent and saying he was recruited into the CIA by a "Mr Magoo". Dean also treated his torturers with contempt, spinning a fanciful tale of being recruited into the CIA in Prague.

[PghBaldy]

I was thinking about Year Zero (in relation to Obama), and found this at Wikipedia... I know it is more than a month old, but searched and couldn't find it here.

[Lazamataz]

I wish Australians spoke English.

[MissesBush]

Any comment from Joan Baez? And I suppose Sidney Shamberg or however you spell his name just blames the US.

[Oratam]

Larrikins?

[Hans]

What a gift to mankind the leftists are. Bright, thinkers everyone. When they encounter perceived resistance they kill with gusto. I promise you when our own left looks out at a field of conservatives their steely minds ask, 'if only we could rid ourselves of these pests'.

[sitkaspruce]

And who were the four Americans? And what happened to them?

[PghBaldy]

I had to look it up- free spirits, people who oppose authority, rebels- that's how I read it.. but here is def: lar⋅ri⋅kin  [lar-i-kin] Show IPA Australian Slang. –noun 1. a street rowdy; hoodlum. –adjective 2. disorderly; rowdy. Origin: 1865–70; orig. uncert. Related forms: lar⋅ri⋅kin⋅ism, noun Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/larrikin

[Oratam]

Aussie slang is often impenetrable.