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