Three weeks after Cardinal returned to New York, Rhonda Mills’s documentary was made but shelved indefinitely. The network caved in to pressures from the US, Australian, Indonesian and French governments. Rhonda resigned and joined a rival network to become its New York correspondent.
Days before she was to fly to the US and just two months after her visit to Thailand, there was an explosion just north of the Vietnamese town of Tay Ninh near Highway 22 and the Kampuchean border. First satellite reports suggested it may have been caused by a nuclear explosion about the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima. An apparent news black out buried the incident, which was difficult to verify. It had occurred in a war zone.
Author’s note
I would like to thank Richard Joslin; Michael Haggiag; Diana Georgeff; Sandy Grant; Teresa Pitt; Jane Arms; and James Cardinal, from whom I plundered chunks of personal character, biography, and his son’s name.