Peter Arnett, Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent, dies at 91

Los Angeles —Peter Arnett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning newsman who spent decades dodging bullets and bombs to bring the satellite eyewitness accounts of warfare from the atom paddies of Vietnam to the deserts of Iraq, has died. He was 91.

Arnett, who won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for planetary reporting for his Vietnam War sum for The Associated Press, died Wednesday successful Newport Beach and was surrounded by friends and family, said his lad Andrew Arnett. He had been suffering from prostate cancer.

"Peter Arnett was 1 of the top warfare correspondents of his procreation - intrepid, fearless, and a beauteous writer and storyteller. His reporting successful people and connected camera volition stay a bequest for aspiring journalists and historians for generations to come," said Edith Lederer, who was a chap AP warfare analogous successful Vietnam successful 1972-73 and is present AP's main analogous astatine the United Nations.

Former CNN warfare analogous Peter Arnett successful Hong Kong successful November, 2011. Thomas Yau / South China Morning Post via Getty Images

As a wire-service correspondent, Arnett was known mostly to chap journalists erstwhile helium reported successful Vietnam from 1962 until the war's extremity successful 1975. He became thing of a household sanction successful 1991, however, aft helium broadcast unrecorded updates for CNN from Iraq during the archetypal Gulf War.

While astir each Western reporters had fled Baghdad successful the days earlier the U.S.-led attack, Arnett stayed. As missiles began raining connected the city, helium broadcast a unrecorded relationship by cellphone from his edifice room.

"There was an detonation close adjacent me, you whitethorn person heard," helium said successful a calm, New Zealand-accented dependable moments aft the large roar of a rocket onslaught rattled crossed the airwaves. As helium continued to talk air-raid sirens blared successful the background.

"I deliberation that took retired the telecommunications center," helium said of different explosion. "They are hitting the halfway of the city."

It was not the archetypal clip Arnett had gotten dangerously adjacent to the action.

In January 1966, helium joined a battalion of U.S. soldiers seeking to rout North Vietnamese snipers and was lasting adjacent to the battalion commandant erstwhile an serviceman paused to work a map.

Associated Press Saigon correspondents Richard Pyle, near and Peter Arnett connected an airfield successful Vietnam, day unknown. Associated Press

"As the colonel peered astatine it, I heard 4 large shots arsenic bullets tore done the representation and into his chest, a fewer inches from my face," Arnett recalled during a speech to the American Library Association successful 2013. "He sank to the crushed astatine my feet."

He would statesman the fallen soldier's obituary similar this: "He was the lad of a general, a West Pointer and a battalion commander. But Lt. Colonel George Eyster was to dice similar a rifleman. It whitethorn person been the colonel's leaves of fertile connected his collar, oregon the representation helium held successful his hand, oregon conscionable a wayward accidental that the Viet Cong sniper chose Eyster from the 5 of america lasting successful that dusty jungle path."

Arnett had arrived successful Vietnam conscionable a twelvemonth aft joining AP arsenic its Indonesia correspondent. That occupation would beryllium short-lived aft helium reported Indonesia's system was successful shambles and the country's enraged enactment threw him out. His expulsion marked lone the archetypal of respective controversies successful which helium would find himself embroiled, portion besides forging an historical career.

At the AP's Saigon bureau successful 1962, Arnett recovered himself surrounded by a formidable roster of journalists, including bureau main Malcolm Browne and photograph exertion Horst Faas, who betwixt them would triumph 3 Pulitzer Prizes.

He credited Browne successful peculiar with teaching him galore of the endurance tricks that would support him live successful warfare zones implicit the adjacent 40 years. Among them: Never basal adjacent a medic oregon vigor relation due to the fact that they're among the archetypal the force volition sprout at. And if you perceive a gunshot coming from the different side, don't look astir to spot who fired it due to the fact that the adjacent 1 volition apt deed you.

Arnett would enactment successful Vietnam until the capital, Saigon, fell to the Communist-backed North Vietnamese rebels successful 1975. In the clip starring up to those last days, helium was ordered by AP's New York office to statesman destroying the bureau's papers arsenic sum of the warfare coiled down.

Instead, helium shipped them to his flat successful New York, believing they'd person historical worth someday. They're present successful the AP's archives.

Arnett remained with the AP until 1981, erstwhile helium joined the newly-formed CNN.

Ten years aboriginal helium was successful Baghdad covering different war. He not lone reported connected the front-line warring but won exclusive, and controversial, interviews with then-President Saddam Hussein and aboriginal 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

In 1995 helium published the memoir, "Live From the Battlefield: From Vietnam to Baghdad, 35 Years successful the World's War Zones."

Arnett resigned from CNN successful 1999, months aft the web retracted an investigative study helium did not hole but narrated alleging that deadly Sarin nervus state had been utilized connected deserting American soldiers successful Laos successful 1970.

He was covering the 2nd Gulf War for NBC and National Geographic successful 2003 erstwhile helium was fired for granting an interrogation to Iraqi authorities TV during which helium criticized the U.S. military's warfare strategy. His remarks were denounced backmost location arsenic anti-American.

After his dismissal, TV critics for the AP and different quality organizations speculated that Arnett would ne'er enactment successful tv quality again. Within a week, however, helium had been hired to study connected the warfare for stations successful Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates and Belgium.

In 2007, helium took a occupation teaching journalism astatine China's Shantou University. Following his status successful 2014, helium and his wife, Nina Nguyen, moved to the Southern California suburb of Fountain Valley.

Born Nov. 13, 1934, successful Riverton, New Zealand, Peter Arnett got his archetypal vulnerability to journalism erstwhile helium landed a occupation astatine his section newspaper, the Southland Times, soon aft precocious school.

"I didn't truly person a wide thought of wherever my beingness would instrumentality me, but I bash retrieve that archetypal time erstwhile I walked into the paper bureau arsenic an worker and recovered my small desk, and I did person a - you cognize - enormously delicious feeling that I'd recovered my place," helium recalled successful a 2006 AP oral history.

After a fewer years astatine the Times, helium made plans to determination to a larger paper successful London. En way to England by ship, however, helium made a halt successful Thailand and fell successful emotion with the country.

Soon helium was moving for the English-language Bangkok World, and aboriginal for its sister paper successful Laos. There helium would marque the connections that led him to the AP and a beingness of covering war.

Arnett is survived by his woman and their children, Elsa and Andrew.

"He was similar a brother," said retired AP lensman Nick Ut, who covered combat successful Vietnam with Arnett and remained his person for a fractional century. "His decease volition permission a large spread successful my life."