Stephen Farrell and the lethal pursuit of truth

“We’re entitled to the protection of the First Amendment – no more.”

So read my angry overnight text from an old New York Times friend with whom I survived reporting the civil war in El Salvador in the early nineteen eighties.

We can be scandalised that the journalistic activities of Stephen Farrell, working in Afghanistan for the same newspaper, cost the lives of his translator and a British soldier who went in to rescue him, and others. But it’s not so simple.

None of us who have covered, or continue to cover conflict, EXPECT the army to rescue us when things go wrong. Indeed in my case it never crossed my mind that they would.

Indeed, on occasion, in Central America we saw the teams of US “military advisors” as on the “other side”. Salvador’s civil war was complex.

The ruling oligarchs were hanging on to power with the backing of death squads funded and armed by the families who still controlled the country’s coffee and fruit production.

The uprising of the poor, with the backing of the indigenous Catholic church was seen by US President Ronald Reagan as a manifestation of the “march of Communism”.

It didn’t feel like that on the ground. We small band journalists were determined to bring the story of this obscure struggle to the outside world at all cost.

Just as Stephen Farrell wanted to get to the bottom of the German initiated attack on a Taliban hijack of two petrol tankers in Afghanistan – at all cost.

Significant numbers of civilians had died in the NATO led attack, Farrell wanted to know how many and why. I understand what he was doing and why.

In March 1982, four Dutch TV journalists were murdered by a right-wing death squad in a remote spot fifty miles from the capital city, San Salvador.

Within three hours, the country’s president, Napoleon Duarte, had visited the scene to condemn what had happened. The incident shook international confidence in his control of the country.

Within hours of Duarte’s trip, we ourselves set out to try to find out who was behind the killing – it was the worst media loss of life in the entire conflict. It was a big story.

Along the way we were hassled at military and guerrilla road blocks alike but got through. Nearing the spot where our Dutch colleague had died, we suddenly became aware of pickup truck behind us closing in. The country lane was narrow and dusty. The long grassy banks either side were steep. Eventually we were cornered on the road. Some twenty men leapt from the truck and surrounded us levelling guns at our throats.

Did I think then of the 82nd Airborne clattering to our rescue? No, I thought of log fires at home, of my girlfriend, and whether the office would miss me. I knew it was all up.

But my invaluable, wondrous translator, Marcello Zanini, talked. Boy, could he talk! Fast, gently, persuasively. After what seemed like a week but cannot have been more than half an hour, he fished into his upper shirt pocket for a packet of Marlboros… he handed them round… the guns dropped… and eventually we were free.

We were lucky. But we were also saved by our own resource. Some are saying today that negotiations were already well on for Farrell’s release, who knows.

But the pursuit of truth and information is the bedrock of freedom. We must go on, the cost has always been high – and for no one higher than for the families who lost loved ones in the pursuit of truth in Afghanistan yesterday – God only knows, we need it.