WhirledView welcomes a new contributor!
Bill Stewart writes a weekly column for the Santa Fe New Mexican, which he will share with WhirledView.
Bill has been both a Foreign Service officer and a journalist.
As a Foreign Service officer, he served in India and volunteered to go to Vietnam in 1966, where he was a civilian District Advisor, assistant to the Mayor of Saigon during the recovery from the Tet offensive, and Liason Officer between the Prime Minister of South Vietnam and the American ambassador.
He joined Time Magazine in 1971 and was Bureau Chief for Tokyo during the collapse of South Vietnam, and Middle East Bureau Chief during the Iran-Iraq war. He has interviewed many heads of state and other powerful people, including India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Pakistan’s Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Bangladesh’s Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Afghanistan’s President Mohammad Daoud, Yasser Arafat, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito (one of three interviews he ever gave), Jordan’s late King Hussein; Israel’s Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Yitzhak Shamir; Archbishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa, and Zambia’s President Kenneth Kaunda.
We’re hoping to talk Bill into writing more often than once a week. Commenters, be nice to him!