The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2023

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2023 41 A Meeting with Terror in Phnom Penh It took place shortly before the Fourth of July in 1997, when I was serving as Ameri- can ambassador in Cambodia. With the end of the school year in the U.S., my wife, Le Son, and our three teen and tween children had just arrived in Phnom Penh so we could spend the summer months together. After a long period of violence, Cambo- dia now seemed to be at peace. The Khmer people, who had suffered so incomparably under the genocidal Khmer Rouge (almost 2 million of the total population of 7 million had perished under the draconian rule of Pol Pot) were slowly recovering under a United Nations–supported peace process and a new democratically elected coalition government, all put in place with critical U.S. involvement across the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations. As deputy assistant secretary in State’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, I had bridged those two political leaderships and was now in Cambodia to carry forward the support of the new government. That night, however, the cease-fire that had provided a several years’ respite from the two-decade-long civil war, abruptly ended as fighting broke out between the two main political factions that militarily occupied villas on Norodom Boulevard in the heart of the capital city. Our ambassadorial residence was right next to one of those heavily fortified villas, with sandbagged fighting positions manned by armed troops right outside the walls of our residence. The first salvo was the firing of a rocket that, without any warning, struck our residence, blowing in the windows and narrowly missing the room where we were all gathered to watch a movie. Had the rocket struck just a few feet differ- ently in either direction, it would likely have wounded or killed us all. This explosion, which shook the house and shattered the windows, was instantaneously followed by an outbreak of automatic weapons fire surrounding the house. Suddenly, our residence was engulfed in an intense firefight. The incessant gunshots from just outside our walls were so loud and numer- ous that the sound permeated the entire house, bringing terror and the threat of imminent death directly into the family room. In those few seconds I acted on instinct, following a deeply embedded parental impulse. Pulling our three children to the floor, my wife and I desperately covered them with our bodies. Now, even 25 years later, my clear recollection is of lying there and praying, as I had never prayed before, begging God to allow any bullets that came into our home to kill me and not our children. It was the moment when I fully understood just how much I loved my children, how absolutely ready I was to give my life to save theirs. I have to believe that Kevin and Irina McCarthy made that same desperate supplication right before they died in Highland Park. Miraculously, none of us were harmed by that initial fusillade. As all this was transpiring, I almost simultaneously followed another instinct, this one inculcated by my experi- In 1995, at the ceremony where he received the Arnold Raphel Award, Ambassador Kenneth Quinn poses with his wife, Le Son, and two of their children, Kelly and Shandon. (Their son Davin was at college and thus not able to attend the ceremony.) Shortly after, they traveled to Cambodia for his posting. COURTESYOFKENQUINN