Wednesday 11 July 1985.
I’ve been told that luck has nothing to do with it and that it’s the timing that matters. Let’s just say it was luck and intuition that led me through that day 40 years ago when the bedside phone rang just before four in the morning.
The voice on the other end was wide awake when the asked if the call had woken me up. When I answered yes it replied “Good … because we want you wide awake for this.” His name escapes me after all of these years, but I knew that he was in the engine room of the news studio at NBC in New York City. Despite the studio having clocks showing the time in every time zone around the world he asked “By the way, what time is there?” – probably just to test if I was really awake.
He went on to tell me that they’d received reports that the Greenpeace vessel ‘Rainbow Warrior’ had been bombed in Auckland Harbour and had sunk. “We need the details and the story.”
What he didn’t know and I wasn’t about to tell him is that my bedside phone was in the home I shared with my wife on Waiheke Island’s Onetangi Beach and that Auckland was at least an hour away by ferry. On previous occasions I’d been able to fly over in far less time in a ‘Seabee Air’ Grumman Goose or Widgeon but their office wouldn’t open in time. While I left Anne to go back to sleep I wrapped myself in my robe and shuffled off to the kitchen to boil the kettle and make of cup of what I call my caffeine kickstart. I turned on the trusty little transistor radio I’d use to listen to the news in the mornings. What little information the local Auckland stations had was very sketchy, but one report said the Rainbow Warrior was docked across the street from the Seafarer’s Mission on Quay Street.
Before moving to the island we’d lived in Inner City Auckland and worked in the CBD close to the waterfront. I knew the waterfront even better since commuting daily to the ferry wharf just up from the wharf where the Rainbow Warrior had been docked. My brain was racing through my memory map of the area when it suddenly stopped on the old building that housed the Seafarer’s Hostel across from the Marsden Wharf where the Rainbow Warrior was laying.
With a second mug of coffee in my hand I leafed through the phonebook, found the number for the hostel in the book and dialed. Whether it was luck or timing the man who answered it was a merchant marine staying at the hostel and been awakened by the bomb. And had a view of the ship. He provided me with the timing and told me that contrary to the original reports how the vessel had been sunk it was was now laying partially out of the water next to the wharf. Actually, the timing was extremely lucky because when I called back a few minutes later to ask another question I was informed that the police had just ordered a media blackout.
After that I called the police headquarters, asked to speak to their media liaison officer and introduced myself. She suggested I call back later because they had no information to release at that point. However she’d taken my name down for a media conference later that morning.
Next I called Seabee Air to see if I could arrange for a helicopter to take me to Mechanics Bay in Auckland (very close to the scene) but nobody answered. So I quickly dressed, kissed Anne goodbye, and took the early ferry over to Auckland, watching the sun rise as we approached the Auckland CBD waterfront.
My ride to town that morning was the Iris Moana, a former NZ Navy Fairmile B motor launch that had been converted for use as a ferry. It was known to locals as the “worker’s ferry” because it left early enough for passengers to get into town and connect with other transportation at 7am. Once we got into the inner harbour our skipper decided to ignore orders to avoid the area and steered the ferry to pass Marsden Wharf at a respectful speed so we passengers could see it. Only the stern and part of the cabin were above water while it sat tilted towards the wharf on its starboard side. It was a sad and sobering sight, like seeing the carcass of once proud whale beached and abandoned.
Shortly after we arrived at the Waiheke Ferry terminal the part of harbour we’d just passed was also declared a no-go zone by police. I was aware that I was just a tiny step ahead of the police lock-downs and that I needed to speed up my act.
After stopping for a quick breakfast I made my way over to Albert Street and up to my office. When I was asked to become New Zealand’s correspondent for NBC News I was working at a local radio station as the senior copywriter. My first love has always been radio and I spent my senior year at Santa Monica High School completing a two semester broadcasting course in conjunction with KCRW-FM at Santa Monica City College. The course covered every aspect of radio broadcasting from announcing, voice acting, writing, news reporting, producing and working the control “board.” Our teacher was a former news reporter for CBS radio so the news reporting segment was particularly intense with a major emphasis on ethics. Combined with a typing course in Junior High these skills have served me throughout my life and at “Radio i” in Auckland I was writing, producing and sometimes voicing radio commercials and station promos.
The initial invitation came in the form of a telephone call at work from an old friend who had been an award winning talk radio host in San Francisco and Los Angeles when I first met him and whose career had led him to senior positions in Washington DC and New York City. I was concerned that I had so little training and practical experience, but he told me I was a natural and reminded me that he’d offered me a job as a news reporter when he was station manager of a major NBC affiliate in California. When I asked if there was anything I should know he explained that NBC had never had a correspondent in NZ before but because of the newly elected Labour government’s anti-nuclear policies and the threat it posed to the ANZUS agreement it was felt that there could be some newsworthy events in the making.
I agreed to accept the invitation and he told me I’d be contacted by the head of radio news in due course.
While my conversation with Peter had been a ranged between business and old friends catching up my next call was all business and a week or so later l received my letter of confirmation and my first ID card. Peter also faxed me a list of notes on the various forms of news reports they’d want and hints on how to make them more interesting. My phone at work had already been set up to play tapes for advertiser approval but I had to rewire my home phone so my tape recorder could play prerecorded reports or interviews. I bought a new portable Sony T-Bar cassette recorder and some new Steno pads for what I called my Junior Reporter’s Kit.
Next step was to apply for accreditation to the NZ parliamentary press gallery from the speaker’s office. One step at a time. However it surprised me that unlike the Los Angeles where press passes issued by the police, in NZ I had to join the journalist’s union. Then union membership was compulsory back then.
My office was on the floor occupied by James-Kirk Advertising on Albert Street, next door to the Auckland Regional Council building on the corner. I’d been hired as creative director upon resigning from “Radio i”after we’d moved from inner city Auckland to Waiheke Island. Again, my timing was fortunate because the station was about to go through a major management shake up and I’d probably have lost my job anyway when someone I found repugnant and didn’t like me either became the new station manager.
The Press Conference
When I arrived at police HQ the room chosen for the conference was nearly packed. While I recognized a few faces from television and the radio station’s old news team I didn’t know anyone else and chose to stand at the very rear of the room.
For a brief time I’d been a stringer for TIME Magazine in Los Angeles and my one and only story had involved having to deal with the police in a very confrontational situation. Even so I wasn’t prepared for how formal and, in a way, old fashioned the NZ police conducted themselves in a media conference.
It was like they were lecturing to a roomful of students who had to be tolerated. Answers to legitimate questions were treated with condescension, guarded vagueness and a feeling that bordered on distrust.
In answer to a question at one point the police spokesman answered that they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) call this an isolated event and that there could be other bombs. I got up and announced in my best radio voice, “Bob Feigel, NBC News.” The three officers at the front looked surprised and so did everyone else as the entire room turned around to look at me. I think I had their attention.
My question was simple. If there could be additional bombs, what were the police doing to check out all of the other wharves and marinas around Auckland. The room was silent and so were the police. All of a sudden they went into a huddle off to the side and looked in my direction. Finally, the lead spokesman answered that they couldn’t divulge what the police were doing at this time and that the conference was now over.
There were a lot of murmurings, shaking of heads and puzzled looks in my direction as the conference broke up and as I was leaving one of the policemen asked me to stay behind. He introduced himself as Inspector Sergeant Graham Bell (later Detective Inspector and host of New Zealand’s long running Ten-7 weekly crime watch show). He asked to see my credentials. Once that formality was taken care of and I explained that I was based in NZ (people kept assuming that I’d somehow been able to get there from the USA in a few hours on a magic carpet) we had a friendly chat during which he told me that the question I’d asked was awkward because (off the record) they hadn’t yet considered checking for other bombs. He thanked me and assured me that it was now a priority and they’d been caught off-guard by the question. Graham and I shook hands and he said he was sure we’d been seeing each other again. And he was right.
The Invisible Man
(To be continued)
The Bombing of The Rainbow Warrior© Robert R. Feigel 2022 – All Rights Reserved
Pieces from a Puzzling Life 