Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the Agency’s actions had been felt viscerally. Secret American plotting was exposed in Cambodia, badly undermining US credibility in the region. For years, Norodom Sihanouk had railed against Eisenhower’s anticommunism, believing the Americans were trying to get rid of him for maintaining a neutral stance. His claims were dismissed as far-fetched or absurd at the time. But he was right. In 1959, a CIA agent was instructed to liaise with Sihanouk’s interior minister to organize a coup, which never succeeded.
