Lon Nol (13 November 1913 – 17 November 1985) was Prime Minister of Cambodia from 25 October 1966 to 1 May 1967 (succeeding Norodom Kantol and preceding Son Sann) and from 14 August 1969 to 11 March 1972 (succeeding Penn Nouth and preceding Sisowath Sirik Matak), as well as President of the Khmer Republic from 10 March 1972 to 1 April 1975 (succeeding Cheng Heng and preceding Peter Khoy Saukam).
Biography[]
Lon Nol was born in Kampong Leav, Cambodia in 1913, the grandson of a provincial governor. He was educated in Siagon, French Indochina and joined the civil service, himself rising to the rank of provincial governor by 1945. An ally of Norodom Sihanouk, he was Minister of Defense from 1955 to 1966, when he supervised a number of campaigns against Khmer Rouge communist guerrillas. As Prime Minister from 1966 to 1967, he suppressed a peasant revolt in Samalut. Again Prime Minister from 1969 to 1972, he opposed Sihanouk's policy of neutrality and in 1970 led a coup which deposed him. He established close ties with the United States and South Vietnamese forces in Saigon, allowing them to operate in Cambodia. On 10 March 1972, he took full power as President of the Khmer Republic, but by 1974 his inept leadership had reduced his control to Phnom Penh and Battambang. After the fall of Saigon, he was flown out by US helicopters in April 1975. He went into exile in Hawaii, and he died in Fullerton, California in 1985 at the age of 72.