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RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES Haing Ngor plays Dith Pran in The Killing Fields. He won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award in 1984 for his portrayal (Photo: Getty Images)

I had great times and I had terrible times working for Sydney, who was famously mercurial—inspired on some days, impossible on others. The problem was simple: He was a tortured man. He had no idea if Dith was dead or alive, and he went to bed every night and got up every morning blaming himself for not having been able to save him. It didn't help matters that Cambodia was suffering the greatest holocaust since the end of the World War II under the dictatorship of the Khmer Rouge, who killed or starved two million of their own people, until the Vietnamese finally invaded Cambodia at the end of 1978 and expelled these homicidal leaders.

In the fall of 1979, Schanberg's agony finally ended. A missionary in a refugee camp in Thailand got word to Times correspondent Henry Kamm in Bangkok that Dith had escaped across the Cambodian border. He was alive! Kamm called Schanberg, Schanberg dashed halfway around the globe, and within days he had reached the refugee camp. "I finally saw a young man," Schanberg remembered last week, "and I said, 'Do you know Dith Pran?' And he went berserk. And he's yelling, 'Your friend is here! Your friend is here!' And I saw Pran, hobbling, and suddenly he breaks into a trot. Then he throws his legs around my waist and we just hold each other for several minutes."

The Killing Fields turned Dith into one of the most famous Cambodians in the world. The movie did more to bring attention to Cambodia's plight than any other event since the war's end"Then I asked him, 'Can you forgive me?' And he said, 'Nothing to forgive, nothing to forgive.'"

"My life was restored," Schanberg told me. "And Dith said, 'I have my second life now.'"

As it happened, Schanberg's redemption occurred at the very moment my own frustrations with the Times were peaking. My breaking point came when a story I wrote for the national desk was eviscerated by the two reporters who had been my collaborators—and the editor who handled it. (As metropolitan editor, Schanberg had nothing to do with it.) It was an improbable tale of Libyans trying to bribe members of Jimmy Carter's administration to get export licenses for C-130 transport planes that Muammar Qaddafi had paid for but had never been allowed to receive because of his support for terrorism. After I challenged the way the story had been handled in a lengthy memo to Abe Rosenthal, he retaliated by making it clear that I was now on his shit list. Two months later, I marched into Schanberg's office and told him I was quitting.

A week after I left the paper for good, Schanberg's story—"The Death and Life of Dith Pran"—appeared on the cover of the New York Times magazine. It was the most personal and, quite possibly, the most dramatic story the Times has ever published. Dith returned to the newspaper and became a photographer for the metropolitan desk. Nine months later, Schanberg reached the end of his rope with Abe Rosenthal, and he was moved out of the news department and on to the op-ed page, where he became a columnist.

In 1984, David Puttnam turned Schanberg's magazine piece into The Killing Fields. Sam Waterston portrayed Schanberg. The movie won three Academy Awards, and, of course, it included the moment of Schanberg and Dith's joint rebirth:

Schanberg: You forgive me?
Dith: Nothing to forgive, Sydney. Nothing.

The movie turned Dith into one of the most famous Cambodians in the world. The journalism he had produced with Schanberg had inspired the movie that did more to bring attention to Cambodia's plight than any other event since the war had ended. And Dith spent the rest of his life doing everything he possibly could for Cambodia.

Schanberg invited me to one of the screenings of The Killing Fields at Cinema II on Third Avenue in Manhattan before it opened. The audience was astonished: It is one of the greatest antiwar movies ever made.

When I walked out of the theater after the final credits, I spotted Sydney standing on the landing between two of the escalators. It was the first time I had seen him since I left the Times, and I ran over to hug him.

We have remained good friends ever since.