Month: July 2015
-
Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Peter Smark praised by Vietnamese war hero
The late Australian journalist Peter Smark is recalled with affection and respect by Vietnam’s most honoured spy, Pham Xuan An, whose double life made a major contribution to the NLF’s 1975 victory. Smark was a war correspondent in Saigon in the early 1960s when An worked for Reuters (later he became a senior reporter with…
-
Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Alan Jones and Rene Rivkin’s Oxford scholarship: for whom?
In May 2002, convicted Sydney stockbroker Rene Rivkin was desperate to obtain bail and avoid serving a weekend detention sentence. His friends rallied and wrote in glowing terms to the judge hoping to persuade him that Rivkin should be spared the shame and humiliation of a weekend at Silverwater Jail. One of those to write…