“Hacks at Work and Play”

 (Photographs Taken on the Road During a 42-year Newspaper Career)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 (Last updated Aug. 22, 2010)

Here are some snapshots from a photo album called “Hacks at Work and Play” that I kept during my years on the road, mostly with The Washington Post as foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Asia and Africa and during the years I was a regional bureau chief based in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and, of course, Washington, D.C.. The pictures were starting to fade from age, so after I wrote an (unpublished) memoir about my newspapering life for my daughter, and grandchildren (and also for the fun of it) I scanned the images into digital format to preserve them against further fading. Then it occurred to me to put some of them here as a nostalgic look back on a life of newspapering and the friendships with old mates with whom I shared those memorable years. .

So if you are in the least bit interested in all of this nonsense, check out the pictures and extended captions below. If you aren’t interested, have a nice day.

In this shot I’m in a U.S. Marines watch tower with the L.A. Times’ Mike Kennedy as the Marines retreated from Beirut after the deadly truck bombing of their barracks killed 241 soldiers. It was sad to see the proud Marines go to the safety of offshore ships after being battered so badly in Beirut.  The Marines never stood a chance in this dangerous place. I always thought of U.S. policy in Lebanon a bit like a rich boarding school kid from Greenwich, Connecticut, wandering into the South Bronx  late at night looking for a fight. A lot of the soldiers I got to know in Beirut admitted they never dreamed that anyplace could be as scary as Beirut during the civil war. They said they just wanted to get out of there.	In northern Somalia, celebrating after retrieving an AK-47 that was confiscated from my bodyguard by U.S. troops during the civil war. While traveling around Somalia during the “troubles,” it was wise to have a “technical,” which was a Toyota pickup truck carrying a couple of armed bodyguards. Mogadishu also was a pretty scary place and the U.S. Marines there didn’t seem to like it any better than Beirut.  As with Lebanon,  U.S. policymakers adopted a jingoistic,  “bring-‘em-on”  attitude, not having a clue what was in store for them until, of course, after the Black Hawk down debacle. .	. With NY Times and Los Angeles Times reporters, including my old mate, Rone Tempest, in Bhopal, India, after a long day of covering the gas disaster that killed thousands of Indians who lived near the Union Carbide chemical plant in the middle of the city in 1984.  Rone, colleague Mark Feinman and I were in Karachi, Pakistan, when disaster struck but managed to be among first on the scene in Bhopal because of a fluke in flight openings to that devastated Indian city.  As was often the case in the South Asia subcontinent, communications were a nightmare, so we often had to “pigeon” our stories out  by giving them to Indian Airlines flight crews with instructions to pass them to Reuters in New Delhi.
Filing a story by telex at Beirut’s Commodore Hotel. The hotel catered to journalists covering the Civil War and even provided armed protection when needed.  They also provided a well-stocked bar—a necessity for us.	The Commodore Hotel’s bar in Beirut was a welcome sight at night.  I’m on the left, solving the world’s problems.	Urban renewal, Beirut style
Yours truly with Boston Globe’s Curtis Wilkie on the case in northern Israel in the mid-1980s.	Ihsan Yamout, The Post’s invaluable fixer-driver, and “Coco” the parrot in lobby of the Commodore Hotel in Beirut, circa 1983. Coco, who was owned by the BBC's Chris Drake,  sang “La Marseillaise” and did a perfect imitation of an incoming artillery shell. He was kidnapped during a militia attack on the hotel and was never seen again. R.I.P.	With Baltimore Sun’s Jeff Price in Israel shortly before my departure to the southern Africa bureau in Johannesburg in June, 1986.  Some people say that Curtis Wilkie, Jeff  Price and I occasionally misbehaved together, but you can’t believe everything journalists say, can you?
Being interviewed immediately after being held hostage in a prison takeover by prison inmates in Washington, D.C. in 1972 during an attempt to be a go-between that went awry. If I look a bit disconcerted, that’s because I was scared stiff.  But the jail drama didn’t hurt my career at The Post, so I never regretted the somewhat scary night. I had written an investigative series about appalling conditions in the Civil War-era D.C. Jail and when the prisoners got a gun and took over their cellblock they called for Corrections Commissioner Ken Hardy and me to come to talk with them. When we climbed over the barricades and entered the cellblock we had a pistol put to our heads and were detained separately. Eventually the inmates sent me outside to tell the authorities their demands--$1 million, a jetliner fueled and ready to go, safe passage etc. After a long standoff and much negotiating the prisoners surrendered control of the cellblock.  Here’s a link to the first-person account I wrote for The Post after that night’s adventure: http://www.claiborneswebsite.com/PrisonRiot.pdf C-130 Hercules military transport planes were a frequent mode of travel to stories.  I shot this picture of Chris Wren (New York Times) at work on a Tandy 200 laptop,  an early and very  primitive precursor to PCs.	Being interviewed the day after the jail hostage caper A pensive moment in the newsroom in the 1960s.  I’ve long since been a non-smoker, but in those days nearly every desk had an ashtray and a blue haze of smoke hung over the newsroom. The linoleum floor of the newsroom of  The Washington Post’s “old building” on L Street was dotted with cigarette burns, and typing stories on the old Underwood and Royal typewriters while dangling a fag from your lips was pretty routine stuff then.  Well, time marches on, and the ambience had certainly changed by the time I retired on June 6, 2001. By then I had given up smoking after a life on the fags that goes back so far that I can remember when they banned smoking on elevators.	That’s me in the back seat of an F-101 Voodoo fighter-interceptor in the 1960s ready for a few G-forces and scary loops while doing a magazine story on Westhampton AFB. While I was deskbound as City Editor of the Suffolk Sun from 1966 to 1968 I often felt claustrophobic so I occasionally would assign myself to do stories for the Sunday magazine.  While doing the piece on the Westhampton fighter-interceptor squadron the base commander suggested I take a joy ride in an F-101.  The pilot was just back from Vietnam and for an hour he delighted me with barrel rolls, dogfight maneuvers, mach speeds and runway touch-and-go exercises. Sadly, this young pilot was killed a couple of weeks later when his sports car hit a tree. The “need for speed,” I suppose.   The 1970s look in The Washington Post newsroom: long hair, wide ties, loud shirts. After 15 years out-of-country as foreign correspondent, I returned to Washington and retrieved our personal goods that had been in storage, including 1970s-style bell-bottom trousers, wide ties and red-white-and-blue shirts like this. It was a hoot opening those boxes.
Hamming it up with Dial Torgesen (foreground) in Cairo during Egyptian-Israeli peace talks in 1978.  Dial was a one-off guy, one of the most unflappable foreign correspondent I knew.  Tragically, he was killed doing his job in Central America.	The hacks take a break from the Cairo peace talks to visit the sphinx. Being a foreign correspondent did have some side benefits, not the least of which was good traveling.  I tried to make time during such trips to do at least some touring on the side.	Being big-footed during the early days of my Jerusalem posting: With an Israeli minder in the center of this photo, that’s me on the left next to Foreign Editor Jim Hoagland. On the right are Post publisher Kay Graham and Editorial page chief Meg Greenfield.  Mrs. Graham visited me in South Africa, too, but never made it to New Delhi or Toronto. She was always a delight to host during these visits. This photo was taken at the Masada fortress.
This is how I worked in my little home offices---banging on a telex -- before computers came into the picture. This one was in Jerusalem. I had telex machines in our houses in India and South Africa, also.	My New York Times pal Alan Cowell takes a rest while we cover an extreme right-wing Afrikaner political rally in South Africa during the turbulent years before black rule.	Another South Africa mate, the late Tom Masland, who was then working for the Chicago Tribune.  One of the sweetest blokes I knew in the newspapering business.  Sadly, Tom died after being hit by a car in Manhattan in October, 2005. Everyone remembers his gentle nature, as well as how good a reporter he was.
With some African kids in a rural village in Zaire, now the Congo. There was something magical about the African savannah, which I never tired of visiting. These kids were waiting for a famine relief plane to drop food. One of the great perks about being a Post foreign correspondent was traveling in places like Africa.	Traveling in the bush in a Soviet-built Star truck in Angola with a group of Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA guerrillas in the mid-1980s. We were headed to Cuito Cuanavale. I was the only journalist on the trek and made some good friends among the fighters during the grueling drive.	The UNITA forces’ truck broke down and they drove it under some scrawny trees in an attempt to avoid detection by Cuban MIG fighter planes supporting Frelimo, the communist government that was fighting in this proxy war against the forces of the CIA and South Africa’s apartheid regime.
Taking a rest during a long trek during another excursion into Angola during the civil war. Clowning around at Victoria Falls, Zambia, after covering a South African Army attack in nearby Livingstone with these other South Africa-based journalists and photographers. We shared a charter plane to get there.	Getting a UNITA briefing near the fighting in Angola’s Cuito Cuanavale region. On the Zambezi River in Malawi, southern Africa, while killing time waiting for a chartered bush plane to fly us to a remote Renamo guerrilla base in Mozambique. We pretended to be tourists to avoid police detection by the Malawi police because foreign journalists were prohibited.	Boarding a Twin Otter bush plane in Inuvik to fly to Homan Island in western Canada’s high Arctic. I developed deep respect for Canadian bush pilots, who could fly anywhere in any weather and get you back alive. I also respected the de Havilland Twin Otter, a very tough airplane indeed.  I flew to story locations in Canada in Twin Otters fitted with wheels, skis and pontoons and never felt anxious about my safety.  Most of the stories in the high Arctic were about Eskimos and the environment. In 1992, long before global warming hit the news, I wrote about an ice island weather station that was mysteriously melting away.
Getting ready for a dog sled ride to an ancient stone bear trap near Grise Fiord in the eastern high Arctic. The fisherman who drove the sled laughed at my Michelin tire man attire. He was dressed in seal skins.	Dressed for 50-below zero (F) Arctic temperatures  My Soviet Army hat was well used during this Arctic trip	With a Lebanese Army general in Beirut during the civil war that all but destroyed that beautiful city
Ihsan Yamout, Washington Post driver-fixer and dear friend, at the front desk of the Commodore Hotel, Beirut.  Issam knew Lebanon’s back roads like the back of his hand.	Timur Goksel,  the go-to man at U.N. Forces in Lebanon and a friend to journalists in Beirut and in Dixie across border.  A very savvy man was Timur.	Nora Boustany, Washington Post correspondent in Beirut, with Los Angeles Times’ Mike Kennedy and Becky Trounson, who was then working for CBS radio.
An Iraqi tank turret blown off in the 1991 Gulf War near Kuwait City. This was near the “Highway of Death” that The Post’s Bill Branigin and I visited a few times during the days immediately following the liberation of Kuwait.	The infamous “Highway of Death” between Kuwait City and Basra, Iraq, where fleeing Iraqi troops were bombed by American warplanes and they attempted to retreat  in cars and trucks piled high with stolen loot.	Our 4WD didn’t hold up very well driving over pieces of shrapnel along the Highway of Death in Kuwait. The road was also said to be littered with unexploded bomblets from American cluster bombs, but fortunately Branigin and I didn’t drive over any during our visits to the highway.
Celebrating the liberation of Kuwait with a Kuwaiti family with whom The Post’s Caryle Murphy stayed when she was trapped by the Iraqi Army occupation.	Interviewing Indian President Giani Zail Singh in Government House in New Delhi in 1983.	Filing a story the old way in Leh, Ladakh, at 3,505 meters above sea level in the Himalayas,  circa 1984
Being greeted by Renamo guerrilla leader Alfonso Dhlakama, right, after a bush pilot put me down on a dirt strip near one of Renamo’s  hideouts in remote Mozambique in the late 1980s	Renamo guerrillas guarding our plane while it was refueled before taking off and leaving two South Africa-based colleagues and I to stay with the anti-communist fighters in their jungle hideaway.	With some Afghan mujahadeen fighters near Chaman, along the Pakistan-Afghan border during the U.S.-backed war against the occupying Soviet Army. Notice the Afghan-style gun safety practices of the guy next to me, on my right.
On the road to Chaman to meet up with Afghan fighters assembling on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Lisa and I visit the set of an action thriller. “Death Before Dishonor,” being filmed in the West Bank in 1985. I rubbished the movie in a story in The Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune, but the producer didn’t mind. “The only bad news is no news,” I guess.	With a couple of Afghan camel drivers who were loading AK-47s for their trek to Afghan mountain bases.       With a Pakistani soldier at the Khyber Pass during a visit there by then Vice President George H.W. Bush.  It was a classic White House photo op visit with no real purpose.  While Bush was ooohing and aaahing the scenery we heard a shot ring out in the distance and everyone went crazy, thinking it was an assassination attempt.  I reckoned it was probably an Afghan herder shooting at a rabbit or someone test firing his AK-47, which would be unlikely to hit anything at that distance. But some in the media made a huge thing of it anyway.	Traveling to Zambia with South African Foreign Minister Pik Botha for regional peace talks A UPI photo of yours truly at yet another round of peace talks in Sharm-el-Sheikh between Israelis and Egyptians in the late 1970s. This Israeli cop nabbed me after I slipped around a barrier to get closer to where Anwar Sadat was holding talks with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in a beachfront hotel. Sharm-el-Sheikh, on the Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba, has some of the world’s best diving and snorkeling sites.  Captured by Israel in 1967,  Sharm and the Sinai are now back in the hands of Egypt.
Flipping the bird at South African security police while covering the release from prison of Govan Mbeki, Thabo Mbeki’s father, who served in Robbin Island Prison with Nelson Mandela. This little act of defiance by me was stupid in that it could have landed me in the slammer for a while. But the security police, blacks and whites, were so heavy-handed in those days that it was hard not to get angry when they attempted to prevent journalists from doing their job.  This photo was taken in the Johannesburg black township of Soweto, where South African police and Army “Caspirs,” or armored vehicles regularly patrolled the streets and occasionally fired on protestors. I arrived in South Africa in 1986, when violence was as widespread as any time, and left in January, 1990, just as Nelson Mandela was coming out of prison, poised to assume leadership of the country’s first black majority government.  These were heady days indeed.	During the U.S. Marines’ invasion and occupation of Somalia in 1992, a Marine guard took away the AK-47 of one of my bodyguards during a drive north. I negotiated the return of the weapon and its ammunition clips and then celebrated my success at the gate of the Marine base. The Marines’ amphibious landing in Mogadishu was one of the most bizarre stories I ever covered. Scores of journalists were waiting on the beach when the vanguard assault force landed in darkness, and the Marines, who had been told they could expect to me met with rebel resistance, were startled to see instead a huge media contingent with TV lights and cameras trained on them.  They didn’t take very kindly to our little reception, but the fact is we had been tipped off to their landing schedule by a U.N. base commander and had every right to be there.	In Namibia (formerly South West Afrika) during the elections for a government independent of South Africa
With friend Dave Zucchino, then of the Philadelphia Inquirer, on a South African road trip. A truck had just collided with our rental car and we salvaged these bottles of wine from the wreckage. You can’t say we didn’t have our priorities straight. This photo was taken by Scott Kraft of the L.A. Times, who also survived the wreck.	Covering Shaka Zulu Day in South Africa’s Zululand. The guys in the background are looking at me like I was the last white guy standing at the Battle of  Isandlwana.	Firing a grenade launcher at a South African forward base on the Namibia-Angola border.  In some kind of bizarre rite of passage the soldiers insisted that I fire every weapon they had, including machineguns, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
The hacks line up for a photo opportunity in South Yemen in 1986 while covering a bloody coup d’etat, which was followed by a month-long violent struggle. That’s me on the far left with Bob Fisk of the Independent, Agneta Ramberg, Swedish Radio; Juan Carlos Gumucio, AP; our Yemeni minder, and David Hirst, the Guardian.	In Martyrs Cemetery, Tehran , in 1991 while revisiting Iran, which I had covered extensively during the 1978-1979 Islamic Revolution, and later in the ‘80s.  It was interesting to see how the place had changed over the years.  Martyrs Cemetery was where Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini went first after returning from exile in January, 1979.  That was a huge story.	Interviewing Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in his Ottawa office in 1992. Canada was my last “foreign” post before I took Washington Post bureau chief jobs in Los Angeles and Chicago. Then I retired to Australia.  The Canada posting paled in comparison to some other postings, but it did have some great travel opportunities.
The Washington Post, at 1150 15^th St. NW, Washington, D.C., where I toiled for 32 years (when not on the road). When I joined The Post at the end of 1968 our old building was around the corner on L Street. Post Publisher Katharine Graham, reporters Carl Bernstein, and Bob Woodward,  Managing Editor Howard Simons and  Executive-editor Ben Bradlee discuss Watergate coverage in Bradlee’s office in 1973.               (Photo: Mark Godfrey/Image Works)	Ben Bradlee,  then the executive-editor of The Washington Post. No journalist could ever have asked for a better boss than Ben. He was ably succeeded by Len Downie toward the end of my 32-career at The Post..                (Post photo) The newsroom of The Washington Post, shortly after computers were introduced to the news operation.	Katharine Graham and her son, Don, in 1980s. The Graham family always placed journalistic excellence at or above profit in importance, and as a result The Washington Post was a great newspaper and also a very profitable newspaper because it was so great.  Don is chairman of The Washington Post Co. now and his niece, Katharine Weymouth, is publisher of the newspaper. The family smartly diversified early on in the face of formidable challenges in the age of new digital media, but like all newspapers it is still struggling to reinvent itself and find new markets and new streams of revenue.  As one of the dinosaurs of the Golden Age of newspapering from the early 1960s to the new millennium, it is, of course, painful to watch what has befallen some papers recently. (Post photo)
A mile underground in a South African gold mine.	AP’s Don Mell and Juan Carlos Gumucio in the Commodore Hotel’s bar. Mell was with the APs Beirut Bureau chief, Terry Anderson, when Hezbollah kidnapped Terry not long after this photo. They let Mell go but kept Terry in captivity for almost seven years. I was in Beirut when he was kidnapped and in Damascus when he was finally released as the longest-held captive of Hezbollah.	The most important employes of Beirut's Commodore Hotel. Nothing bothered these guys, even the night gunmen burst into the hotel and shot up the lobby before putting a bullet into another militiaman’s buttocks.  I was ata telex machine in the lobby and watched in amazement as the victim calmly walked into the bar and asked for a drink. Meanwhile a CBS correspondent’s Dalmatian dog was licking up blood on the lobby floor. Just another night at the Commodore, I thought to myself.
It may seem this album has a lot of bar photos taken in Beirut, but that's just coincidence.	Herb Denton, The Washington Post's bureau chief in Beirut in the early '80s, with Juan Carlos Gumucio in, yeah, I know, the Commodore bar. Herb died in 1989 while serving as The Post's Canada bureau chief in Toronto, a job I took over the following year when my tour in South Africa ended.  He was a good newsman and a good bloke.	My 50^th birthday lamb roast in Jericho, West Bank. Alma organized the party and all of the hacks came to celebrate. We often went to Jericho to escape the cold, rainy winters in Jerusalem and have wonderful lunches at Jericho’s Arab cafes.
Juan Carlos Gumucio and me having breakfast in Aden, South Yemen, while covering a bloody coup attempt that went awry.	The day the Los Angeles Times' Michael Parks won his Pulitzer Prize for reporting from South Africa , I tried to take the Mickey out of him a bit with this gag shot. We were in Pretoria covering something I've long since forgotten.	The pool at the Commodore Hotel in Beirut. No one is swimming because the water was rancid.
Scott Kraft of the L.A. Times and I admire the press bus provided to us by the Zambian government while we covered a southern Africa peace summit.	All the hacks coming off the press plane on the Zambia junket, taking pictures of each other.	That's Ned Temko, then of the Christian Science Monitor, looking as if he's dissatisfied with the transportation amenities during a press driveabout in Angola.
Urban renewal, Beirut style           Landscape gardening, Beirut style	Circled in the back cover of a vinyl LP album to commemorate the historic 1969 Woodstock concert is Bill Farrell, the incomparable Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times when I first rocked up there in May, 1978 as The new Washington Post bureau chief, replacing David Greenway. Jerusalem was my first foreign assignment, and I was a bit of a rookie in foreign reporting. Bill Farrell mentored me, so to speak, in my first months of the new job. Unfortunately, I can't find any snapshots of Bill for this photo album. But I think he'd be proud to have the record album cover here. Bill's son, Ned, brought it to my attention a few months ago. I don't need to tell you that that is Jimmie Hendrix on stage.	Contrary to public perception, hacks are quite athletic, as you can see in this photo. Even with the fag hanging out of my mouth (to steady the nerves in a tense softball game between hacks in Jerusalem) I pitched close to a perfect game. That's Ned Temko at shortstop and the leftfielder is too far away for me to recognize. He obviously was expecting a long ball to result from my pitch. Photo generously contributed by G. Jefferson Price III. P.S. Before all the fitness Nazis get their knickers in a knot, I quit smoking 10 years ago, at age 64. (Better late than never).
Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle staffers gather at the reporters’ hangout, the White Tavern, to celebrate the retirement of venerable Night City Editor Arch Merrill, circa 1961. That’s Alma and me arm-in-arm at the right side of the picture. Most morning newspaper reporters worked night shifts in those days and winding down in a bar after work was routine. The White Tavern,  a workingmen’s saloon owned by Greek immigrant Billy Mitchell, was our favorite watering hole during the years at my first newspaper.  It had 10-cent glasses of beer and 35-cent shots of whiskey, colorful barflies,  grizzled old “newsboys” who hawked the bulldog edition of the newspaper on the street and plenty of laughs every night.  Sad to say, that era of newspapering is long since gone, but not forgotten.	Democrat and Chronicle photographer Jim Laragy and I getting ready to cover a forest fire in upstate New York.  Yes, I know,  we’re not dressed for it. But in the early 1960s reporters and photographers were expected to always work in a tie and jacket to present a good image for the paper. No jeans and T-shirts in those days. This was one of my first out-of-town assignments, and I quickly developed a taste for traveling far and wide for stories. It certainly beat sitting in an office and writing about boring local affairs. Of my 32 years with The Washington Post, 25 were in foreign and domestic bureau postings far away from the home office in Washington. Being a “far-flung,” as we were called,  was like a cottage industry,  and I reveled in the independence and freedom of it right up to the day I retired from The Washington Post on Sept. 6, 2001, and moved with my wife, Alma,  from Chicago, where I was Midwest bureau chief, to Melbourne, Australia.	A very young City Editor of the Suffolk Sun, 1967, pictured here with one of my reporters pitching a story.  It was exciting to be involved with a startup newspaper (published by Look Magazine owner Cowles Communications Inc.). I worked there from 1966-1968 but The Sun, sadly, couldn’t compete with Newsday and it folded shortly after I left it to join The Washington Post. By then, people were starting to call it the “Suffering Sun” and to me the handwriting already was on the wall.
Becky Trounson, Chuck and Cheryl Powers and yours truly in Beirut. Becky was with CBS Radio then, and Chuck was with the L.A. Times	Faithful dog "Scoop" impersonating me at my desk in the Johannesburg bureau of The Washington Post.	Hacks covering a southern Africa summit. That's Spencer Reiss, then of Newsweek; yours truly; John Battersby, then of the New York Times, and Scott Kraft of the L.A. Times.
That's Andy Torchia, of the AP, staring out the window of a DC-3 on the way to Angola during the civil war there.	Covering more African diplomacy	Dave Zuchinno, then of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Tom Masland, then of the Chicago Tribune, somewhere in Namibia.
Hard at work in my home office in Joburg	In Tehran. That's Charlie Glass, ABC-TV	With Toronto Globe's Miro Cernetig and his wife Bea during a drive 750 miles up the unpaved Demster Highway from Dawson City in the Yukon Territory to Inuvik in the high Arctic during summer.

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