Sideshow - by William Shawcross (Paperback)

About the Book

In Sideshow, journalist Shawcross presents the first full-scale investigation of the secret and illegal war the United States fought with Cambodia from 1969 to 1973, paving the way for the Khmer Rouge massacres of the mid-70s.

Book Synopsis

From 1969 to 1973 the Nixon White House waged a secret and illegal war in Cambodia.

The bombing was meant to protect American troops across the border. It spread the war, brought the Khmer Rouge to power, and ended in the deaths of a third of Cambodia's people.

William Shawcross tells how it happened. The decisions were made in Washington, most of them in secret, about a country American officials called a sideshow to Vietnam. He describes the book as the foreign-policy side of Watergate.

He interviewed more than three hundred people, among them cabinet ministers, generals, civil servants, journalists, and refugees. Under the Freedom of Information Act he obtained several thousand pages of memoranda, cables, and internal histories from the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA, and the National Security Council. Kissinger declined to see him.

The story runs from the first secret bombing through the 1970 coup, the American invasion, the final bombing campaign, and the fall of Phnom Penh. A cast of characters, a chronology, and full notes support it.

This revised edition adds a new introduction, Shawcross's analysis of how Kissinger handled Cambodia in his memoirs, and the full exchange from The American Spectator between Shawcross and Kissinger's aide Peter Rodman. Rodman wrote that the author "would not dare to reprint" his rebuttal. Shawcross reprints all of it.

The New York Times read it as a spy novel. Travelers to Cambodia read it before they go.

Review Quotes

Remarkable and compelling.... First and foremost an American political thriller.... where American officials spied on each other, lied to each other and falsified reports.... ALL TOO REAL.

Shawcross's 1979 volume was powerful when first published and even more so today: Henry Kissinger in his last book spent nearly 100 pages attacking it. This revised edition includes another onslaught, by Kissinger aide Peter Rodman and Shawcross's rebuttal. Essential title.

Sideshow excels.... It has the sweep and shadows of a spy novel as it portrays the surreal world of power, severed from morality.

Sideshow is both masterly and horrifying.... It presents hard and irrefutable evidence.... should be compulsory reading!

About the Author

William Shawcross, the author of Deliver Us from Evil, lives in London.