Quote Originally Posted by Rick
Lytov's argument is that in actuality Pol Pot shared his authority with Khiey Samfan (sp.?), who was the theoretician who got off clean; he didn't know that his grandiose plans would lead to such destruction. Pol Pot, Lytov says, was the quiet implementer behind the scenes who didn't lay claim to the role of an ideologist or orator.

Is this supported by what you've read?
You mean Khieu Samphan.

I totally disagree with that interpretation, and I think that anyone who has read any books on Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge would, too.

First, Pol Pot was definitely an orator -- to the very end, without any real hopes of getting back to power, he was still holding seminars in his jungle base.

Second, no one would agree that Pol Pot shared his authority with Khieu Samphan in any real way. The latter wrote a PhD thesis in economics in Paris at the time, and more or less laid the theoretical basis (if any) for the Khmer Rouge idea that, in Cambodia, the urban population contributed nothing to the economy.

But there was no question of who was the real leader -- Khieu Samphan seems to be INTj IMO; he provided the theoretical framework but was not in any way the leader. When Prince Sihanouk resigned from the position of symbolic head of state in the Khmer Rouge regime, Pol Pot appointed Khieu Samphan to that position, but again, as a symbol -- later, during the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, when the Khmer Rouge tried to show a more "presentable face" to the outside world than Pol Pot's, Khieu Samphan was chosen as its major representative. But he remained "Brother Number Five" to Pol Pot's "Brother Number One".

To the very end, it was Pol Pot who had the power to put others to death, even as a rebel leader in the jungle.