TIM LESTER: MEDIA TOUGH GUY?

Fairfax Press's poorly disguised attempt at taking down Independent Senator Steve Fielding.

With an Australian federal election around the corner, the Kiwi media examine Tim Lester's media tough guy shtick...

Scoop - New Zealand's top independent news website.


http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1007/S00246/aus-fed-election-journo-takes-down-senator.htm

Australian Federal Election: Journo Takes Down Senator?
By Sasha Uzunov

In what can only be described as a bizarre and poorly disguised takedown, Fairfax newspapers’ reporter Tim Lester has belittled Independent Senator Steve Fielding over a trip to Afghanistan to visit Australian troops, which coincided with the Federal Labor government announcing the next election to be held on August 21 this year.

Lester, formerly a television reporter with the ABC and Nine Networks, is a self styled "media tough guy" and “defence expert” who made a name for himself covering the conflict in East Timor (Timor Leste) in 1999.

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In an article for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald newspapers titled: “Steve Fielding, MIA [Missing In Action] in Afghanistan,” dated 22 July 2010, Tim Lester of Timor Leste fame wrote:

www.theage.com.au/federal-election/steve-fielding-mia-in-afghanistan-20100721-10l65.html

“STEVE Fielding's eccentric political career could end at next month's federal election, yet the Victorian senator has spent five vital days of the campaign on secret missions in southern Afghanistan.”

The story includes a digitally altered photo of an Australian soldier whose face is obscured with a Steve Fielding mask. You can get the gist of the story, ridiculing a politician for visiting troops in the field!

Lester, who has never served in uniform but acts as a “defence expert,” further wrote:

“The senator declined to give details of what Australian forces had shown him in Tarin Kowt [Australian Army base in Afghanistan]. ''Some of the missions are secret,'' he said. ''A lot of the stuff has been high security.

“The senator was already in Afghanistan when he learnt new Prime Minister Julia Gillard had called the election.

“Senator Fielding won only 2 per cent of the primary vote in 2004, but was elected on Labor preferences. He is widely expected to lose his Senate spot in next month's election, though he rates his chances at 50-50.

“He said his absence for the crucial opening days of the campaign ''will probably damage my re-election''.

“However, his secret trip did not stop his campaign. While abroad, he issued seven press releases from his Melbourne office on domestic issues. None mentioned the Afghanistan trip.

''We're sending people here, you know … with their lives at risk to … make the world safer and the least that I could do was, you know, not to pull out for the sake of a couple of days with my own re-election campaign,'' he said.

“ ''I thought it would probably be selfish doing that, selfish if I did come back.''

“Although claiming an early departure on his behalf from Afghanistan would have sent ''all the troops the wrong message'', he later conceded he had asked defence officials in Tarin Kowt ''about trying to get back and … is there any ways of getting back early''.”

My response to all this is so what? The Senator was right in going to Afghanistan and right in trying to get back early. After all, the electors of Australia pay the wages of both the Senator and of the soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. In a democracy such as Australia and neighbouring New Zealand, politicians and soldiers are answerable to the people!

Maybe Lester has forgotten this?

In essence this is a nothing story by a journalist who has been a war correspondent flexing his muscle or flashing his Media Sheriff’s Badge in trying to show how tough he is.

But people in glasshouses should not throw stones!

In 1999 as a serving Australian soldier I had the good fortune to be a man-servant in uniform to a high ranking Army officer in the Australian Defence Forces’ (ADF) Media Support Unit in East Timor. As well making great coffee, espresso, cappuccino and Turkish, for the Commanding Officer (CO) Lieutenant Colonel “Wild Bill” Pickering I had the privilege of observing some of Australia’s top war reporters in action.

I remember when Tim Lester, then with the ABC, was being farewalled from Timor in late 1999. I was standing a few metres away when Lester struggled to place a souvenir Australian Army bush hat on his head, his fellow ABC colleague Ginny Stein, an excellent and tough reporter in her own right, giggled and joked to expatriate Australian film maker based in Bangkok, Lyndal Barry:

“Tim would have to be the most unwarlike male war reporters I’ve come across. He is so disorganised. I have to do everything for him.”

Both women then broke out in hearty laughter.

Lester who hails from the deep south Australian state of Tasmania was proclaimed a local hero by his home state newspaper, The Examiner, in September 1999:

www.examiner.com.au/news/local/news/general/lester-enjoys-work-despite-danger-says-dad/1319926.aspx

“Longford woolgrower Michael Lester remembers that his son Tim was an established journalist working in Sydney when he started paying $30 a half-hour for elocution lessons.

“Tim Lester has progressed and progressed in his career, reaching the coveted status of foreign correspondent, working as the South-East Asia correspondent for the ABC. He was among the last two ABC journalists to leave East Timor, fleeing Dili on Tuesday in a dramatic escape from the escalating drama.

“Lester was flown to Darwin, where he is understood to have remained yesterday. His father was looking forward to speaking to him again. ``He is very involved and very dedicated to his work and certainly he's suited to it,'' Mr Lester said. “

In 2008 Lester, as a reporter with the commercial network Nine, complained the ADF would not be his taxpayer funded cab service in Iraq to observe Australian troops pulling out. He moaned:

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s2269473.htm

“I am one of the reporters who wanted the necessary transport and protection to cover our 550 combat troops as they leave Tallil Air Base in Southern Iraq.”

But surely the great Tim Lester of Timor Leste fame would not need ADF transport and protection to navigate through a warzone in Iraq?

Britain’s top war reporter Sir Max Hastings, in his autobiographical account of his career, Going to The Wars, tells of taking a private taxi to the Golan Heights during the 1973 Yom Kippur War that pitted Israel against its Arab neighbours and of driving with a colleague into the Sinai desert, after not receiving any assistance from the Israeli government.

What the Australian public deserves and needs are journalists willing to report the story without the Australian media’s obsession with the “media tough guy/gal” reporter shtick and doses of Hollywood.

The irony is that one of Australia’s top war reporters, John Martinkus, and formely with SBS TV’s Dateline program is cooling his heels in Tasmania as an academic instead of reporting in Afghanistan. Furthermore we need journalists of the calibre and strength of Ginny Stein, now with SBS Dateline, in Afghanistan as well.

(END)

FAIRFAX CRUSADE AGAINST 1 COMMANDO REGIMENT

In 1998, a year before the break out of conflict in East Timor, Lieutenant General Frank Hickling, then Chief of the Australian Army, wisely undid some of the damage caused by defence experts in their running down of the Army's warfighting capability. It seems the Australian media have failed to scrutinise these "failed defence theorists" in light of recent controversies in Afghanistan. Hickling is pictured (second from left) with then Major General Peter Cosgrove, the 1999 East Timor mission commander. Photo source: ADF.

FAIRFAX'S "CURIOUS CRUSADE" AGAINST 1 COMMANDO REGIMENT
By Sasha Uzunov

Fairfax newspaper reporters Jonathon Pearlman and Tom Hyland are ferociously targeting the Australian Army’s 1 Commando Regiment over an alleged botched raid which resulted in the killing of children in Afghanistan last February. Soldiers from that unit, largely reservist, could possibly face legal proceedings.

But there are three important issues being missed here in the Fairfax’s crusade: due process of law, the presumption of innocence and who shapes Australia’s defence policy.

Here’s a recap. Pearlman wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald on 5 December 2009

www.smh.com.au/national/soldiers-may-be-first-to-face-charges-for-combat-since-vietnam-20091204-kaxw.html?skin=text-only

A NIGHT-TIME raid in which five Afghan children were killed has cast a cloud over Australia's elite forces and could result in combat-related charges against Australian soldiers for the first time since the Vietnam War.

TEAM UZUNOV on 7 December 2009 reported the other side of the story in www.scoop.nz.co

The Australian Army’s elite reservist unit, 1 Commando Regiment, is being made a scapegoat over allegations of misconduct in Afghanistan, a former unit member has told TEAM UZUNOV.

The experienced ex-Commando said that he was deeply concerned over claims that poorly trained and led members had breached rules of engagement during a raid on house in Afghanistan which resulted in the deaths of 5 local children after grenades had been thrown last February.

“My concern is the unit has been left out to dry by the Defence Department even before judgement has been passed. Let due process of law take place,” he said. “If people were innocent then that should be shouted from the rooftops but if people were guilty then throw the book at them.”

“Whatever the outcome of the investigation, the responsibility is with the government of the day as well Defence Department bureaucrats. It is they who send troops to war.”
-------------------------
Tom Hyland, the “defence expert” for The Sunday Age in "Deadly Afghan raids expose leadership failings" on 21 March 2010 wrote:

link:
www.theage.com.au/world/deadly-afghan-raids-expose-leadership-failings-20100320-qn9t.html

“Now, 12 months on, members of the unit await a decision on whether they will face criminal charges over the deaths of Amrullah and the children, killed on February 12, 2009.”
-----------------------
Tom Hyland quote:, Sunday Age, 21 March, 2010

" Along the way, it has exposed a rivalry almost as old as the army itself, between full-time troops and part-time reservists - chocos, some regulars call them, chocolate soldiers who can't take the heat."
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TEAM UZUNOV quote, 7 December 2009,

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0912/S00060.htm

Traditionally a fierce rivalry has existed between the Australian Regular Army (ARA) and the Army Reserve (Ares). Reservists are known as “chocolate soldiers” or “chockos” for allegedly not being able to withstand combat and melt under pressure.

Some Regular soldiers and officers see the reservists as allegedly incompetent or as “weekend warriors.” Some reservists regard their full time colleagues as “lifers” unable to think outside the box.
------------------
Tom Hyland, Sunday Age, 21 March 2010

"The regiment's experiences have triggered an intense debate within army ranks - about Special Forces tactics, and wider questions about a political and military preference for sending Special Forces, rather than large infantry units, to conflicts like Afghanistan."
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2005 UZUNOV STORY ON THE OVER USE OF THE SAS (extract):

http://teamuzunovmedia.blogspot.com/2009/01/minister-on-afghan-fact-finding-trip.html
The Herald Sun newspaper
A grand political warrior

by Sasha Uzunov21 January 2005

...Some have criticised General (Peter) Cosgrove on his over reliance on the SAS to do the fighting in East Timor that would normally have been taken up by the regular infantry. But I think this criticism is unjustified.

Criticism should be aimed at the government of the day (Howard 1996-2007) and those at home squeamish about seeing a 19 year old lad away from home for the first time fighting a war. Better to send the SAS, whose identity cannot be revealed...

TEAM UZUNOV – 9 September 2008

http://teamuzunovmedia.blogspot.com/2008/09/failed-nelson-howard-doctrine-on.html

NELSON-HOWARD MILITARY DOCTRINE: contradiction?

To top that off, a legacy of the Nelson-Howard military doctrine has the Special Forces doing most of the fighting (in Afghanistan), because of the fear of casualties to our regular infantry units. The long term effect could be burn out of our Special Forces. But the irony is if we withdraw our SF units and do not replace them with infantry units, then the pressure on Taliban is eased. It is one contradictory military doctrine, to say the least.

Both Pearlman and Hyland are quite correct to scrutinise the above story and we would encourage them to do so in an even handed manner. We would encourage them to examine overall defence policy and who shapes it.

Here is a key point that has been missed: why is it Australian Defence Policy to use Special Forces in an infantry role in Afghanistan, as well as throwing Army reservists in the deep end? Who caused this dramatic shift in defence thinking?

Hyland has gone on the record as calling anyone, other than fellow Fairfax journalists, who scrutinises defence experts or defence policy engaged in a “curious crusade.” See link: www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9078&page=0

What Pearlman and Hyland will not touch upon is the change came about in Defence policy when two key “experts” Professor Paul Dibb and ex-Fairfax journalist turned government advisor Hugh White decided to cut back the number of full time infantry soldiers with the consequences of using reservists in combat roles.

Here’s a blast from the past:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8179
Generals and Diggers saved the day in Timor – 20 November 2008

Influential Defence expert and former Fairfax journalist, Hugh White, has revealed that Australia’s involvement in East Timor succeeded because of the Indonesian military’s (TNI) reluctance to fight a full scale war; this is partly true.

"Interfet succeeded as well as it did largely because Habibie and the TNI allowed it to succeed," White said.

Interfet was the name of the 1999 Australian led mission to restore order after East Timor declared its independence from 24 years of harsh Indonesian occupation. BJ Habibie was the then President of Indonesia who permitted East Timor to hold a UN supervised referendum.

White, who was the deputy secretary (strategy and intelligence) in the Defence Department, and the mastermind behind the Interfet mission, fails to mention four big factors behind the success.

They are: the brilliant leadership of two Australian Army generals, Frank Hickling and Interfet Commander Peter Cosgrove, the calibre of the Special Forces, the SASR, and the ordinary digger when confronted by the pro-Indonesian militia groups.

There was a secret war in East Timor fought by Indonesian Special Forces: Kopassus. The objective was to inflict as many casualties on Australians and New Zealanders in the hope that their respective governments would withdraw.

The Howard government at the time deliberately used the Army’s elite Special Forces unit, SASR (Special Air Service Regiment), to do most of the fighting in East Timor: fighting which should have been performed by the infantry.

The political logic was that the public and media would accept SASR casualties rather than a 19-year-old infantryman, fresh out of home or from a small country town.

But political logic does not necessarily make good military sense and vice-versa. In East Timor the pro-Indonesian militia tried to inflict as many casualties as possible on our infantry units, including battalions made up of many reserve/part time soldiers, in the hope that Australia would withdraw.

White is quiet on the issue of throwing reservists into the deep end after the regular army had been gutted; it was only the quality of the ordinary Australian soldier which stopped a disaster from happening.

It was General Frank Hickling’s foresight in 1998 as the Chief of Army that should be acknowledged. He issued his famous “back to basics” order that all Australian soldiers, regular and reserve, must sharpen their war fighting skills. He was concerned at the rundown of the Army.

Ironically, it was White and another defence expert, Paul Dibb, who were the prime movers in cutting back Army numbers in the late 1980s. Neither have ever served in uniform.


Here’s more on Dibb and White

http://teamuzunovmedia.blogspot.com/2008/09/rudd-real-mccoy-on-defence.html

September 23, 2008 - RUDD THE REAL McCOY ON DEFENCE?

Whatever PM Rudd’s true motivation is, you have hand it to him he is a very clever strategic/foreign affairs operator that many pundits have not given him the credit. Let me explain by drawing a comparison with Bob Hawke, another ALP Prime Minister (1983-91), also with messianic tendencies.

Hawke was known as the great conciliator whose claim to fame was his ability to bring opposing groups to the negotiating tables and hammer out a deal. During his Prime Ministership he brought in British academic Professor Paul Dibb and ex-Fairfax journalist Hugh White. Their brief was to transform the defence department with a number of reports, Defence White Papers and so on. Instead we ended up with a mess that took over a decade to bring under some form of control.

Mr Bruce Haigh, a former diplomat revealed during an interview with SBS TV’s Dateline program on 27-9-2000 that:

“Defence is the department that’s divided amongst itself, as far as I can gather, and there are certain people inside Defence who’ve taken a certain line for a long period of time - the Paul Dibb line, if you like, which is high-tech, US-alliance - and you’ve got others who are saying, "No. We’ve got the situation to the north- we need to have more people in uniform, we need to have them trained, we need to have night-vision equipment provided for them. “… the Australian Army can see what needs to be done, but many of the civilian Defence personnel, who’ve built their careers on playing up to this particular line, are arguing the other case, and feeling increasingly isolated, because they are not facing reality. That’s the problem.”

Respected Brigadier Jim Wallace, former Special Forces Commander, wrote in 2003:

“Unfortunately, Australian defence policy has been mainly wrong for the whole of this period. Even after we committed troops to East Timor, Professor Paul Dibb, the policy's chief architect, was standing in front of parliamentary committees vowing that Australia would not be conducting what he called "expeditionary" operations out of the region. This was despite a series of major UN deployments over many years to places as far afield as Rwanda and Somalia. Afghanistan and Iraq have hopefully now discredited this logic.

“At the same time, Dr Hugh White was arguing in initial drafts for the 2000 white paper to reduce the size of our army to about 19,000, on the basis that, like Professor Dibb, he didn't see the Government needing options for deployment out of the region, particularly for sending the army. The result has been an incredible demand on the dedication and professionalism of our special forces as they have again been thrown into the breach that our supposedly expert defence planners couldn't predict.”

Professor Dibb’s response was to make the snide remark on the ABC TV Lateline program on July 11, 2002 that Wallace was a “retired brigadier.”

The moral of the story is if your a big name Fairfax journalist you have a "Special Media Licence" to scrutinise or a 'Media Sheriff's Badge" which no one else seems to be entitled to.

TALIBAN TELEPHONE TRICKS

Exclusive
DEFENCE SAYS TALIBAN DIDN’T MAKE CRANK CALL
By Sasha Uzunov
copyright 2009

Australian soldiers serving in Afghanistan have been warned as a security measure not leave personal mail, postcards or any other correspondence or emails unsecured or not properly disposed of after it was allegedly falling into the hands of the Taliban terrorists, and used in psychological warfare.

An American military source contacted TEAM UZUNOV to allege that an Australian female soldier from Western Australia had a letter inadvertently fall into the hands of the Taliban who then telephoned her parents back home threatening the soldier’s life.

Australia’s Defence Department Media unit, to its credit, has spent over a month investigating details but has denied the veracity of the allegation.

A Defence spokeswoman said:“The Australian Defence Force (ADF) has no record of the incident that is raised in your question.

“The ADF practices strict information security procedures that protect operational and personal information from falling into the hands of our adversaries.”

Mr Neil James, Executive Director of the Australia Defence Association, noted:“Perhaps the problem in this instance, if it occurred as described, resulted from improper disposal, that is a letter ended up at the tip instead of being shredded.

“The ADA is not aware of any Australian cases of families at home being targeted by the Taliban. However, in the era of the Internet, satellite phones, Taliban propaganda on blog sites being absorbed subjectively by so many, general misinformation on the war being so common, and sympathy for the Taliban among at least some in Australian society, it certainly seems possible.
As with Vietnam, the longer the war goes on the greater the risk that Australian extremists may resort to such harassment (or worse), either out of direct sympathy with and support for the Taliban, or as extreme and callous publicity seeking for their own extremist causes”.

“The harassment of families of personnel deployed during the Vietnam War certainly occurred. It was quite vicious in several cases and included vandalism of houses, constant telephone calls and personal confrontations involving foul-mouthed abuse and occasionally assault. The perpetrators were Australian extremists opposed to us being in Vietnam and some sabotage of military equipment and bases also occurred.”

Mr James said that during the Vietnam War (1962-72) the laws and legal loopholes of that era did not allow prosecution for actions, deliberately or recklessly taken, that aided the enemy the ADF were fighting on behalf of us all, even where some Australians disagreed.

Since the passage of the Security Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Act, 2002, an Australian citizen anywhere in the world again commits treason if he or she (among other things: intentionally assists, by any means whatsoever, an enemy, at war with the Commonwealth; intentionally assists, by ‘any means whatsoever’, another country or organisation that is engaged in armed hostilities against the ADF; or forms an intention to do any of the above acts and manifests that intention by an overt act.

The Executive Director of the ADA added: “this is as it should be in any liberal democracy where our defence force is lawfully committed to UN-endorsed action by a democratically elected government on behalf of us all. Members of our defence force, quite rightly, cannot disobey lawful orders.

“We therefore owe a responsibility to the ADF not to let them down in any way, no matter how much some Australians might disagree with the Government’s decision to send them. Lawful and peaceful dissent is OK, aiding the enemy is not. All dissent and associated action should be directed at our Government not the diggers”

(end)