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Nate Thayer
Nathaniel Talbott Thayer (April 21, 1960 – c. January 3, 2023) was an American freelance journalist whose work focused on international organized crime, narcotics trafficking, human rights, and areas of military conflict.
He is most notable for having interviewed Pol Pot, in his capacity as Cambodia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review. He also 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.
On January 3, 2023, Thayer was found dead at home in Falmouth, Massachusetts. His health had been declining for about a decade. According to Thayer's brother, the exact timing of his death was not clear.
Nathaniel Talbott Thayer was born in 1960 in Washington, D.C. He was the son of Joan Pirie Leclerc and Harry E. T. Thayer, who was United States Ambassador to Singapore from 1980 to 1985. His mother was from the Carson, Pirie, Scott family. His uncle was lawyer Robert S. Pirie, and his great-uncle was Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson II.
Thayer studied at the University of Massachusetts Boston, though he did not receive a degree. From 1980 to 1982 he was involved with the Boston-based Clamshell Alliance, acting as spokesman during protest events at the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant as well as anti-draft protests.
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. He then returned to Massachusetts where he worked briefly as the Transportation Director for the state Office of Handicapped Affairs. Thayer himself noted, "I got fired. I was a really bad bureaucrat."
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. In October 1989, Thayer was nearly killed when an anti-tank mine exploded under a truck he was riding in. In 1991 he moved to Cambodia where he began writing for the Far Eastern Economic Review.
In August 1992, Thayer traveled to Mondulkiri Province and visited the last of the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races (FULRO) Montagnard guerrillas who had remained loyal to their former American commanders. Thayer informed the group that FULRO's president Y Bham Enuol had been executed by the Khmer Rouge seventeen years previously. The FULRO troops surrendered their weapons in October 1992; many of this group were given asylum in the United States.
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Nate Thayer
Nathaniel Talbott Thayer (April 21, 1960 – c. January 3, 2023) was an American freelance journalist whose work focused on international organized crime, narcotics trafficking, human rights, and areas of military conflict.
He is most notable for having interviewed Pol Pot, in his capacity as Cambodia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review. He also 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.
On January 3, 2023, Thayer was found dead at home in Falmouth, Massachusetts. His health had been declining for about a decade. According to Thayer's brother, the exact timing of his death was not clear.
Nathaniel Talbott Thayer was born in 1960 in Washington, D.C. He was the son of Joan Pirie Leclerc and Harry E. T. Thayer, who was United States Ambassador to Singapore from 1980 to 1985. His mother was from the Carson, Pirie, Scott family. His uncle was lawyer Robert S. Pirie, and his great-uncle was Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson II.
Thayer studied at the University of Massachusetts Boston, though he did not receive a degree. From 1980 to 1982 he was involved with the Boston-based Clamshell Alliance, acting as spokesman during protest events at the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant as well as anti-draft protests.
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. He then returned to Massachusetts where he worked briefly as the Transportation Director for the state Office of Handicapped Affairs. Thayer himself noted, "I got fired. I was a really bad bureaucrat."
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. In October 1989, Thayer was nearly killed when an anti-tank mine exploded under a truck he was riding in. In 1991 he moved to Cambodia where he began writing for the Far Eastern Economic Review.
In August 1992, Thayer traveled to Mondulkiri Province and visited the last of the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races (FULRO) Montagnard guerrillas who had remained loyal to their former American commanders. Thayer informed the group that FULRO's president Y Bham Enuol had been executed by the Khmer Rouge seventeen years previously. The FULRO troops surrendered their weapons in October 1992; many of this group were given asylum in the United States.