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.

Related Stories on Scoop

• Sasha Uzunov: ASIO’s Poor Record 02/03/2010
• AFP Hasn't Been Asked To Investigate Moran Murder 09/12/2009
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• 'Witness’ To Timor Murders Steps Forward 23/11/2009

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)

Evans dispels Vietnam Biggles myth

Above: Ex-Australian Foreign Minister, Gareth Evans, nicknamed Biggles after a fictitious British World War One Fighter Ace (below).

Exclusive: GARETH EVANS DISPELS VIETNAM BIGGLES MYTH
By Sasha Uzunov

Australia’s former high profile Foreign Minister and International trouble shooter, Gareth Evans, has finally put to rest a long running urban legend about a combat plane ride he allegedly took during the Vietnam War in the late 1960s.

The former politician was recently appointed Chancellor of the Australian National University in Canberra.

“Gareth Evans (ANU Chancellor) has asked me to convey to you that he was not the person in your anecdote. He believes there may have been a journalist of the same name in the region around that time,” Mr Simon Couper, an ANU spokesman said.

In 1983 Evans, as Federal Attorney General and a Senator, was the nicknamed Biggles, a fictitious larger than life British World War I fighter ace, for using the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) to spy on anti-dam protestors in Tasmania’s wilderness.

As Foreign Minister from 1988 to 1996, Evans was criticised for being too close to Indonesia during its brutal occupation of East Timor and his cynical deployment of Australian soldiers into combat in Kuwait, Somalia, Rwanda and Cambodia in an attempt to win the Nobel Peace Prize and become United Nations Secretary General.

A former Australian diplomat, the New Zealand born Alastair Gaisford has been critical of Evan’s failure to save Australian David Wilson, who was kidnapped and later murdered in Cambodia in 1994.

A number of high profile Australian Army pilots who saw combat action in the Vietnam War with the Army Aviation Corps unit 161 Recce Squadron made the interesting claim that a journalist “Gareth Evans” was given a joyride in a Cessna spotter plane in Vietnam, circa 1967-68 One of the pilots has also claimed that the name "Gareth Evans" is in the flight log book.

According to Mr Ashley Ekins, an official historian of the Vietnam War with the Australian War Memorial, there was a “Gareth Evans” who was a journalist in Vietnam. One of Evans’ articles is in the footnotes of the book, an official history of Australia’s Vietnam War, called ‘On the Offensive.’

Mr Ekins said:

“The reference you mention is to a newspaper article in The Sun of 11 October 1967 (On the Offensive, p. 253, p. 567 n. 71) quoting Brigadier Stuart Graham, commander of the 1st Australian Task Force.

“I’m unable to confirm whether the writer of that article, Gareth Evans, was the same Gareth Evans who later served as Attorney General and Foreign Minister in the Hawke and Keating Labor governments. However, it seems unlikely. Gareth Evans the politician initially pursued a career in law.

“Notwithstanding his later expressed position on Vietnam, as President of the Student Union at the University of Melbourne in 1965, Evans supported Australian and American involvement in the Vietnam War in student debates and letters to the Melbourne Age on 7 May 1965 and The Nation on 15 May 1965 (although he was opposed to the sending of conscripts).”

The authorised biography of Gareth Evans, the ex-Foreign Minister, by ex-Foreign Affairs (DFAT) staffer, Keith Scott, makes no mention of any specific visit to Vietnam during the 1960s.
There is a reference to Evans being on a United States Navy ship in the south Pacific and later backpacking through South East Asia and Indochina before taking up a post as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in the United Kingdom in August 1968.

In 1965 Evans as President of Melbourne University’s student union (SRC) threw his weight behind the Vietnam War though he opposed conscription (the draft). He was born in 1944 and just missed out on the national service call up when it was reintroduced for Vietnam.

He was selected by the United States State Department as a student leader to undertake an overseas trip talking about the War but later grew opposed to it.

Mr Noel Turnbull, an arts patron, public relations guru, academic and former journalist, knew Evans during their university days.

“I am not aware of Gareth making a private visit to Vietnam,” he said. “You should ask him directly.”

Mr Turnbull, who is regarded as a living legend within public relations circles in Australia, was himself conscripted for Vietnam War service as an Army Artillery officer in 1968.

There was a Gary Evans who worked as a journalist for the Brisbane Courier Mail, The Sunday Mirror in London and the Australian Associated Press, and did a stint as a Vietnam War correspondent. He is now a member of The Australian Press Council. A message was left for him at the APC over whether he was the Gareth Evans in question. No response as yet. We will keep you posted on any further developments. Link: www.presscouncil.org.au/pcsite/about/members/journmems.html

(end)

Links:

www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8673&page=0
When politicians should step aside - On Line Opinion - 19/3/2009

http://teamuzunovmedia.blogspot.com/2009/03/cambodia-murder-controversy.html
Team Uzunov: Cambodia murder controversy

http://teamuzunovmedia.blogspot.com/2009/07/15th-anniversary-of-david-wilson-murder.html
Team Uzunov: 15TH ANNIVERSARY OF DAVID WILSON KIDNAPPING/MURDER

www.smh.com.au/opinion/by/alastair-gaisford
Alastair Gaisford - National Times - smh.com.au

"WITNESS" TO TIMOR MURDERS

Explosive allegation: 'WITNESS’ TO TIMOR MURDERS STEPS FORWARD
by Sasha Uzunov

A man who claims he was an Australian soldier on the East Timor-Indonesia border and viewed through binoculars but was powerless to stop the brutal murder of 3 United Nations aid workers in Atambua in 2000 has had an application for a disability pension rejected by Australia’s Department of Veterans Affairs DVA).

The man, who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, is being represented by Mr Brian O'Neill, advocate and pension officer with the Returned Services League, Australia’s veteran peak body.

Mr O’Neill contacted Sasha Uzunov, the Director/Producer of documentary film Timor Tour of Duty, to tell of the man’s plight.

“He witnessed through his binoculars from the border, the mutilation and killing of the three UN workers on 6 September 2000 near Atambua in Indonesian West Timor,” Mr O’Neill said.

Three United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) employees Samson Aregahegn of Ethiopia, Carlos Caceres-Collazo of Puerto Rico and Mr Pero Simundza of Croatia were killed when their office was attacked by militia in Atambua, Indonesian West Timor.

In the official 6RAR tour of East Timor journal (2000) on page 34, the Officer Commanding of Bravo Company, 6RAR, Major John McCaffery wrote:"...after the events of the 6th of September 00 in Atambua and the frustration and anger at the inability to affect the situation as it unfolded..."

The man was an experienced soldier with Bravo Company, 6RAR, the Brisbane based infantry battalion. As a member of a patrol he was following up a blood trail left behind by militia and a day later on 6 September 2000 ended up at Patrol Base Sparrow, southwest of Balibo. PB Barrow is close to the Indonesian border and about 12 km from Atambua township and used as an observation post by Australian soldiers.

“It was here that he saw smoke billowing from the area near Atambua and went up a hill to get a better sight. It was here that he saw through binoculars many of the Militia moving around the UN building with machetes. He observed the armed men entering and leaving the building and observed three people dragged out of the building. They were covered with blood and had been hacked and beaten to death,” Mr O’Neill said.

“He was very frustrated with what he called the stupidity of the Rules of Engagement and that they could not do anything about it. He briefed his chain of command by radio."

Under the Rules of Engagement, Australian soldiers were forbidden to encroach upon or fire into Indonesian territory regardless of the situation. Indonesian Special Forces, known as Kopassus, and militia groups regularly crossed the border in a secret war against Australian and New Zealand soldiers and international peacekeepers as payback for East Timor’s independence from Indonesia.

The man’s claim for psychological trauma was rejected by DVA on the grounds that it was physically impossible for the killings to have been viewed through army binoculars, which might have a standard magnification of x6 or x10 or x20, from 10 or so kilometres away. DVA, for reasons unknown, never called the Bravo Company Commander, Major McCaffery, to give evidence but relied upon a report compiled by Writeway, a private research company.

However, 6RAR's then Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Mick Moon revealed to Writeway: "On a good (and very clear) day you can just see Atambua in the distance from a Patrol Base called Sparrow."

The Writeway report concluded: "It is most likely that the veteran...was at...Sparrow where the veteran may have been able to see Atambua from a distance and see the smoke from fires in the UN compound. He would not have been able to make out individual figures. This could hardly be classified as 'witnessing the killings.' "

"I don’t know all the facts to this story,” Uzunov said. “I’m hoping people with information will come forward to help this man confirm his story. Anyone who can help should contact Mr O’Neill.”

Legendary infantry Battalion 6RAR took part in the famous Battle of Long Tan in 1966 during the Vietnam War, which pitted over a hundred Australian soldiers against 2,000 or more Vietnamese Communist troops. In the last 20 years 6RAR had been reduced because of massive defence budget cuts. In 1999 the unit was strengthened with army reservist.

Respected military journalist John Hunter Farrell and editor of Australian Defender magazine wrote:

"Emerging from Vietnam as the best known of the Royal Australian Regiment’s nine infantry battalions, 6RAR has lived a volatile life, blasted by the winds of change that have swept the Royal Australian Infantry Corps since the withdrawal from Vietnam. 6RAR hit the bottom of the barrel...when the Australian Regular Army’s most revered infantry battalion was reduced to a skeleton staff of less than 200 heads."

The militia believed that 6RAR would be an easy target when it arrived in East Timor in early 2000. However, in 1998 the far-sightedness of Lieutenant General Frank Hickling, the Chief of Australia's Army, ensured that all troops, both regular and reserve, were combat ready and kept causalities to a minimum.

Nevertheless, 6RAR came under ferocious militia attack. In one infamous case, on 2 August 2000, 1 Platoon Alpha Company was engaged in a shootout and with two militiamen being killed.

Hunter Farrell wrote: www.australiandefender.com.au/stories/etim/ad_halet.htm

"The bodies of the two dead Militia told a big story. Clothed completely with TNI [Indonesian Army] issue DPM uniforms and wearing basic webbing, the KIA [killed in action] Militia were clean- and shorthaired. Underneath their DPM they wore civilian clothes. They carried plenty of ammunition and grenades and had local fruit in their pockets. Weird talismans of silver coins and weird stringy bits of dark frayed organic material were worn in little crocheted bags around their necks along with quantities of a red pharmaceutical drug in thin clear sealed sachets. While not clinically tested it was suspected that the liquid was Ba – a new super speed which is sweeping Asia - which would go a long way in explaining KIA Two’s 200 metre final. "

A former US Army officer and a southeast Asia specialist has confirmed that one of the militia killed was an Indonesian Army intelligence officer who was "on leave and freelancing for the militia."

"I've seen the photos of the dead man in uniform," he said. "What I find surprising is that this was an incredible intelligence find for the Aussies but none of the squad leaders (corporals) in the patrol received any medals or recognition. If they had been Americans they would have been awarded Silver Star medals for gallantry."

Uzunov's film, Timor Tour of Duty, reveals the Indonesian military's secret war against Australia, New Zealand and international peacekeepers in East Timor.

The film made its international debut in New York in late October 2009 and was the subject of controversy on Indonesian websites and blogs with one pundit claiming that it "re-opened old wounds" between Indonesia and Australia over East Timor."

Leading Australian academic Dr Damien Kingsbury has hailed the film:

"There is a prevailing view that Australia's military intervention in East Timor ten years ago was an untroubled affair - it was a successful operation without casualties. The reality, however, was that while casualties were limited, there were many tense moments, and exchanges of fire with Indonesian Special Forces, along the challenging and at times confronting border areas patrolled by Australian soldiers.

"Sasha Uzunov's documentary 'Timor Tour of Duty” graphically captures some of these exchanges and the very real impact that it had on the lives of the soldiers involved.

"Uzunov's experience as an Australian soldier in this area and in his own two tours and through his wider experience as a war correspondent, makes 'Timor Tour of Duty' as close to what it was like, without actually being there, for Australian soldiers in the troubled border region of East Timor between 1999 and 2003."

The film also received a commendation---a 2009 Platinum Reel Award from the Nevada Film Festival.

(end)

links:

Official film website:
http://timortourofduty.blogspot.com/

news story clipping:
www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/29/2727819.htm

Film preview/trailer:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2xXh76i99M

CLINTON AND EAST TIMOR INDEPENDENCE

10th anniverary of East Timor independence vote - 30 August 2009

ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political

debate

www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9366&page=0

Should Clinton get the Nobel Peace Prize for Timor?
By Sasha Uzunov - Friday, 28 August 2009

August 30 will mark the tenth anniversary of East Timor’s successful vote for independence from Indonesia after 24 years of brutal Indonesian rule. Is former United States President Bill Clinton deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize for stopping a genocide at the hands of the Indonesian military against the Timorese people?

In the lead up and in the aftermath of the historic United Nations sponsored referendum in East Timor, pro-Indonesian Timorese militia groups went on a murderous rampage at the behest of the Indonesian authorities.

The Clinton Administration was so concerned that on February 22, 1999, US Assistant Secretary of State, Stanley Roth told Australian diplomat Dr Ashton Calvert that a peacekeeping mission was unavoidable in East Timor. Dr Calvert speaking on behalf of the Australia’s Federal government said the Timorese had to sort it out themselves, in effect they were on their own.

Roth then called Australia’s reluctance to get involved as being “defeatist”. A case of Clinton tough love!

On March 7 Australia’s haughty Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, denied that it was official Indonesian government policy to support the militia groups. “But there may be some rogue elements within the armed forces who are providing arms of one kind or another to pro-integrationists who have been, you know, fighting for the cause of Indonesia,” he said.

In late September 1999, Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard sent in the troops as part of the Interfet Mission but the pretence was that our soldiers were simply keeping apart the two warring “Timorese” factions, those who wanted to stay within Indonesia and those who wanted independence.

But we now know that there was a secret war in East Timor with the Indonesian Army’s (TNI) Special Forces, the dreaded Kopassus, dressed up and pretending to be militia and attacking and killing Timorese civilians and later Australian and New Zealand soldiers.

Defence Department bureaucrat and former Fairfax journalist, Hugh White, revealed that Australia’s involvement in East Timor succeeded because of the Indonesian military’s reluctance to fight a full scale war. This is rather disingenuous. You do not find the Taliban in Afghanistan declaring a full scale war but resorting to guerilla tactics of hit and run and ambushing.

Kopassus’s objective was to inflict as many casualties on Australians and New Zealanders in the hope that their respective governments would withdraw. The Howard government used the elite Special Air Service Regiment (SASR), whose mission is normally to go behind enemy lines to gather information, in a war fighting role.

But Kopassus was not stupid because it had received training from the SASR in the late 1980s and focused on hitting the regular infantry battalions that had deployed to Timor as part of the Interfet mission: airborne infantry unit, 3RAR (Parachute), 2RAR from Townsville and 5/7RAR(Mechanised) from Darwin. In October 1999, a hundred soldiers from Charlie Company, 2RAR, were involved in the biggest shootout since the Vietnam War at a place called Motaain, close to the town of Batugade and on the Indonesian border. It was only the cool thinking of a junior commander Lance Corporal Paul Teong who helped to avert a bloodbath.

The Interfet Mission then handed over control to the United Nations Transitional Administration for East Timor (UNTAET) in January 2000, and the Australian media believed the militia had been defeated. But the militia was simply biding its time and waiting to strike at what it thought was a soft target, Australian Army reservists.

Legendary infantry battalion 6RAR from Brisbane would be the next to go to Timor. It had, over the past decade, been gutted by the cost cutting of White and another defence expert, Paul Dibb, Neither have ever served in uniform. 6RAR had to be rebuilt with reservists grabbed from other units around Australia, including reserve unit 5/6 RVR, Melbourne’s own infantry battalion. When 6RAR arrived in East Timor in early 2000 it came under ferocious militia attack but held its own.

In 1998, a year before East Timor erupted, the far-sighted Chief of the Australian Army, Lieutentant General Frank Hickling, a combat engineer who saw action in Vietnam, went from unit to unit ordering his senior commanders that he wanted all full time and reserve soldiers to sharpen up their war fighting skills. He was concerned that the army’s combat troops had gone soft because of the focus on peacekeeping missions. It was his foresight that kept Australian soldiers, both regular and reservist, alive on the battlefield in Timor despite the cutbacks from the bureaucrats.

However, the militia refused give up its mission.

On June 14, 2001 a small Australian Army patrol of eight soldiers from 4 Section, 2 Platoon , Alpha Company, 4RAR, lead by Corporal Kevin “Bambi” Campbell, a former SASR trooper, was attacked by militia near the Indonesian border. Bambi’s patrol used the radio call-sign One-Two-Alpha.

Scott Sherwin, is now a family man and tree surgeon living outside Newcastle, New South Wales, and Pete, who suffers from Post Traumatic Syndrome Disorder (PTSD), survives on a military pension in Melbourne’s outer-eastern suburbs.

Both remained silent for years and had bottled up emotions but were now ready to re-examine that fateful day of June 14, 2001.

In the official 4RAR Battalion book on the East Timor mission, the incident was listed as occurring on June 1, 2001. But this was a printing error. The shootout occurred during Operation Predator (June 14-16, 2001), which was a search for militia along the border areas.

The Australian Army newspaper, on August 16, 2001, reported: “On the other hand, there have been several serious incidents. One, as recently as mid June, involved a contact with five armed men and a section from 4RAR.”

At 12.50pm, in a place known as AO Sparrow, One-Two-Alpha came under gunfire and grenade attack from a militia group consisting of five to eight men, believed to be Kopassus. Pete, as a scout, was at the front of the patrol when the shooting erupted.

Scott Sherwin, as the assault machine gunner, was at the rear and had to run forwards to support his comrades. Pete initially saw a local man dressed in a white civilian shirt swinging a machete through the thick vegetation called lantana. It looked quite innocent. Seconds later his patrol was fired upon and everybody hit the ground.

“If the enemy were to fire back, I would be a visible target,” Scott recalled “So I let go of my fears of dying at the time, and just ran and fired.”

But it is this memory which keeps on replaying through Scott’s mind over the years and the thoughts of “what if the militia had fired directly upon him?”As a trained soldier, Scott went into auto-pilot on that day. The army calls it contact drills. Soldiers are taught to react in a certain way when fired upon. It helps to keep fear and confusion to a minimum.

Another troubling idea that raced through Scott’s head was remembering that New Zealand soldier Private Leonard Manning was killed by militia near the town of Suai on July 24, 2000 and his body was later found mutilated.

“I think in the back of our minds we knew that if we were caught behind or captured that we would be killed or we’d be cut up then killed,” Scott said. “So our choices were quite limited.”

It seemed on that date, June 14, 2001, fate was smiling upon the soldiers of One-Two-Alpha when Pete felt the blast of one of the militia grenades, and unbelievably suffered only a scratch and, as he said, “went back to firing”. The main (machine) gunner was thrown back when a grenade landed two metres in front of him and he too got up without injury!

During the contact, three militiamen were believed to have been killed or wounded. The others probably dragged the dead or wounded back across the border into Indonesia.

“They weren’t just locals with guns,” Pete said. “They had some form of military training. They would pepper-pot the way we were trained. That is one soldier fires whilst another moves.”

The SASR was called in to track the withdrawing militia but then, inexplicably, the search was called off. A reconnaissance patrol with a tracker dog two weeks later found trails that led all the way back to the border.

The standard operating procedure (SOP) for the Kopassus/Militia was that if it was involved in a contact with UN peacekeepers, any dead or wounded were to be dragged across the border back into Indonesia. No evidence was to be left behind. The Viet Cong during the Vietnam War also dragged away dead or wounded to deny information to US and Australian troops.

Ugly rumours began to circulate that One-Two-Alpha had staged the contact to hide a UD, unauthorised discharge, that is someone from the patrol had illegally or negligently fired. The Indonesian authorities were claiming that three innocent sandalwood smugglers, without any militia links, had been murdered and were only carrying crow-bars.

“Why you would need crow-bars to cut trees with?” Pete said. “They were the first crow-bars that ever fired shots.” A United Nations investigation was launched and the members of One-Two-Alpha were forbidden to talk about the incident but were later cleared of any wrongdoing.

Bambi Campbell was given a UN Commander’s Commendation certificate but missed out on an Australian Army bravery medal. Likewise Clinton missed out on the Nobel Peace Prize. Sometimes doing the right thing does not mean recognition! More importantly, in 2002 the long suffering East Timor became the newly independent nation of Timor Leste.

(end)

About the Author

Sasha Uzunov is a freelance photo journalist, blogger, and budding film maker whose mission is to return Australia's national defence/ security debate to its rightful owner, the taxpayer. He also likes paparazzi photography! He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1991. He served as a professional soldier in the Australian Army from 1995 to 2002, and completed two tours of duty in East Timor. As a journalist he has worked in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan. His blog is at Team Uzunov.

Other articles by this Author

» The Anzac bards - August 11, 2009
» Gallipoli good, Vietnam bad - July 21, 2009
» A special licence to investigate - June 24, 2009
» Science v sorcery: the risky business of predicting the future - May 22, 2009
» Vietnam nightmare ends with newsman’s death - April 24, 2009
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Generals and Diggers saved the day in Timor

The fighting quality of the Aussie digger that saved the day in East Timor not Desk Warriors.

Private Carl "The Enforcer" Lloyd, Alpha Company, 4RAR, East Timor, 2001.

Photo by Sasha Uzunov.

On Line Opinion - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8179&page=0


GENERALS AND DIGGERS SAVED THE DAY IN TIMOR

by Sasha Uzunov

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.

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 a field 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."

War is a serious business and it needs to be left to the professionals, not arm chair generals.

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Links:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24591926-5013871,00.html
Howard fear for Diggers in Timor

John Lyons, November 03, 2008
The Australian newspaper

MIKE KELLY'S RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE

Colonel Iron Mike Kelly, Australian Army Lawyer then serving in Iraq, talked about his heroics in Africa but ignores Timor hero living in his electorate. ADF photo.

IRON MIKE'S RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE
When we get to Africa we gonna get it on, 'cause we don't get along!
Float Like a Butterfly and Sting Like a Bee
Army Lawyer fights off Somali Warlord

IRON MIKE KELLY IGNORES HERO BUT TALKS ABOUT HIS OWN HEROICS

By Sasha Uzunov

Colonel “Iron Mike” Kelly, the Federal MP for Eden-Monaro, and the Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support in the Rudd Goverment, is ignoring an Australian Army hero living in his electorate who was involved in combat in East Timor.

In what would make Boxing legend Muhammed Ali proud, the good Colonel, an Army Lawyer turned politician, had his own rumble in the jungle with a Somali warlord.

But the Colonel, in the lead up to his election to Federal Parliament last year, has regaled the media with his own heroics as an Army Legal Officer in Somalia in 1993.

And it sounds something straight out of the hit US TV shows JAG or maybe CSI: New York!

Iron Mike Kelly told the Canberra Times newspaper about his struggle with a Somali warlord:

“The court erupted into mayhem as a berserk Gutaale launched at his nemesis and the pair became embroiled in a life or death wrestling match.

“As storm clouds brewed in the night sky, the melee spilled out into the street, where a large crowd of Gutaale's cronies, keeping an eye of the proceedings, had gathered.

“The two Australians present fixed bayonets to attempt to restore order.

Dr Kelly described the scene vividly.

"Gutaale basically had a death grip on me and my shirt and webbing were getting torn.

"The crowd was getting worked up and it was raining heavily it was like a scene from a bad movie," he said.

"He had a good grip on me and it was all looking pretty untidy."

“With the crowd set to riot, the two Australians were assisted when a group of engineers arrived.

“A bruised Gutaale was handcuffed and Major Kelly personally wrestled him along the muddy roadway to his place of execution. The murderer was handed over to the police.

“Within minutes he was dead.”

(source: Somalia to Eden-Monaro: How Mike Kelly fought a murderous warlord all the way to a firing squad by MICK TOAL 20/10/2007 )

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/somalia-to-edenmonaro-how-mike-kelly-fought-a-murderous-warlord-all-the-way-to-a-firing-squad/238656.aspx

Corporal Kevin "Bambi" Campbell (standing): East Timor hero living

in Colonel Iron Mike Kelly's electorate and being ignored.

Photo by Sasha Uzunov copyright 2001

In contrast to Colonel Kelly’s heroics, ex-Australian Army Corporal Kevin “Bambi” Campbell lives in seclusion in Eden, NSW. On 14 June 2001 his 8-man patrol was attacked by militia in East Timor.

Source: The Eden Magnet newspaper (Fairfax / Rural press), Eden, New South Wales http://eden.yourguide.com.au/news/local/news/general/unsung-hero/808795.aspx

He was nominated for a Distinguished Service Medal (DSM) for brave leadership under fire but for reasons unknown the award was never made. Independently of the Australian honors and awards system, Corporal Campbell received a United Nations Commanders Commendation Certificate.

Corporal Campbell had also served in the elite SASR before going to East Timor.

Colonel Kelly, who in his role as Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support, oversees Defence honors and awards, has in the past ruled out re-opening the file on Corporal Campbell’s DSM nomination.

(end)