IN ThE ULTIMATE SENSE, this book had its beginnings in

the small Cambodian village of Kompong Phloeung, where for

twenty-one days in August x97o I was a prisoner of a mixed force

of North Vietnamese and Cambodian guerrillas. Our little town

was as remote as any place could be. The last time a white man

chanced that way, I was told, was during the first Indochinese

war. But isolated as Kompong Phloeung was, its people had heard

of George McGovern. One day, during a conversation with an

English-speaking Vietnamese of~cer, Nguyen Cao Ky s name

came up, and I started to repeat McGovern s famous characteriza-

tion of the South Vietnamese Vice President. The soldier cur me

off. "Ah, yes," he said, "Senator McGovern called him a tin-horn

dictator. Tell me, what is this tin horn of which the Senator