A reporter's story of living the news

A reporter's story of living the news

Foreign Correspondence -- A Journalist's Biography;
Peter Barnett; Macmillan Publishers Australia 2001; 410 pp

JAKARTA (JP): Australian journalist Peter Barnett, now 70,
recently published his biography, comprising tales from a life
spent in Australia, Asia and the U.S.

It makes for interesting reading as he was one of Australia's
longest-serving ABC foreign correspondents, with 13 years spent
in Washington D.C.

He also has several important Indonesian connections. For two
years (1962-1963), he was posted in Jakarta by Radio Australia,
witnessing the years of "living dangerously".

He portrays Sukarno, the great orator, who had the magnificent
obsession of regaining West New Guinea from the colonial clutches
of the Dutch. He gives thumbnail sketches of the players around
president Sukarno, such as Gen. Abdul Haris Nasution, "the
chieftain of one of the world's mightiest armed forces", Dr.
Subandrio, "a most intelligent man who presents his policy views
with clarity and cunning of an experienced lawyer", as well as
Aidit the communist and Ali Sastroamidjojo the nationalist.

On a more personal level, Peter married Siti Nuraini Jatim, a
well-known Indonesian poet, in Melbourne in 1970 when Siti was
working at Radio Australia. She was a descendent of an
aristocratic Sumatran family and had married a rising author,
Asrul Sani, in the 1950s (they had three daughters but later
divorced). Nuraini and Peter had a son, Adam.

Peter converted to Islam, guided by the Chicago-educated
Islamic scholar Prof. Nurcholish Madjid, making Peter a familiar
figure in Melbourne's Muslim community today.

In Foreign Correspondence, Peter relates his life story,
tracing his origin from the sleepy West Australian town of
Albany, how he grew up and became a cadet and reporter of a small
newspaper; how he wandered through Europe and America in the mid-
1950s in search of a faith, becoming involved with the Moral
Rearmament (MRA) headquartered in Caux, Switzerland, a group of
anti-communist idealists.

In 1961 he covered Vietnam while the war with the communists
was raging, interviewing South Vietnam's president, Ngo Dinh Diem
-- "the most garrulous man I ever met" -- who was later killed in
a CIA-sponsored coup. He also met with Diem's sister-in-law
Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu, the so-called Dragon Lady, "who was
contemptuous of compassion and justice".

Then, after his two-year stint in Indonesia, Peter joined
hands with Japanese media organization NHK to coproduce a
television documentary. The subject was The Asian Highway -- the
East/West link. They started their journey in Tehran, went north
first to the Caspian Sea, then headed south by van and jeep
toward Kabul, passing through deserts and god-forsaken places,
across the Khyber Pass to New Delhi, through Benares, the holy
city of the Hindus, arriving at Calcutta, which exhibited utter
poverty, and ending the trek at Dacca in then East Pakistan,
nowadays Dhaka in Bangladesh.

It had been a journey of six weeks beset by severe climate and
physical strain. Peter is at his best writing this travelogue,
using to the fullest extent a reporter's eye for details and
human interest.

His next assignment was in Borneo, where Indonesian troops
were infiltrating the common border with Malaysia.

Peter wrote: "We now moved inland to the jungle areas of
Sarawak where British, Ghurka and Malaysian troops manned
isolated outposts. A few months later Australians joined them --
the first and only time me were at war with Indonesia."

Today that "little war" between Australia and Indonesia in the
jungle of Sarawak is totally unknown to the younger generations.
So, for the sake of historical records, we should be thankful to
Peter Barnett for reminding us of the important events in our
past.

Peter's accounts as White House correspondent provide
fascinating reading and deeper insight into American politics. He
accompanied several presidents on their international travels --
Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter -- against a backdrop
of rising tensions, like the increasing opposition to the Vietnam
War as manifested during the Democratic Party Convention in
Chicago when riots broke out, and later on during the Watergate
affair which forced Nixon to resign.

Peter presents some striking information about the American
presidents he knew. He writes that Johnson was excessively pro-
Australian; Nixon was not a likable man, was reliant on drugs,
required psychiatric counseling for deep depression, and he also
beat his wife. Carter was a complicated man, always polite and
never raised his voice, and, according to one senior Democrat,
perhaps the most intelligent U.S. president since Woodrow Wilson,
while also being "the meanest son of a bitch of them all".

Though all in all this is interesting, the book would have
been more complete if Peter also revealed more technical aspects
of being a journalist, giving some samples of the kind of news he
wrote, its content, its composition, its language and the like in
order that it could be studied by young reporters and students of
journalism.

The final chapter is devoted to his elder brother Harvey, who
died in 1995, a victim of melanoma. Harvey Barnett served for 19
years in the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation (ASIS)
-- Australia's equivalent of the CIA. In 1976 Harvey was invited
to join the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO)
and five years later became director-general. He retired in 1985.
Harvey was deeply religious and was particularly committed to the
Subud movement, an organization that blends Islam, Christianity
and Javanese mysticism,

This is interesting to me because I knew both Barnett brothers
personally, particularly Harvey who I had close contact with
during the time he served in the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.
He regularly came to my house on a Sunday evening for a chat,
swapping information about the political situation. I sensed that
Harvey was not an ordinary diplomat. He was instrumental in
persuading the Melbourne Age to appoint me as its Jakarta
correspondent for more than a year in 1967.

Years later when Harvey visited me, I always greeted him with,
"Hello, spook", whereupon he broadly smiled. The last time I saw
Harvey and his wife Deirdre was in Melbourne when I attended the
39th Asia-Pacific Film Festival held in Sydney in 1994.

Now he is gone, and I miss my "Australian spook".

-- H. Rosihan Anwar