In the last two Parts, much have been mentioned about Hong Kong-based news portal, Asia Sentinel. It was playing the covert operation of Dow Jones’s Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) publication towards South East Asian countries, particularly Malaysia but in a small way. .
It so happen that Asia Sentinel’s editor and writer on the alleged Malaysian Scorpene scandal issue is a former FEER writer, John Berthelsen, 74.
He goes way back to the time another of Dow Jones publication, The Asia Wall Street Journal was banned from distribution in Malaysia for three month in September 1986. Two reporters wee asked to leave and he was one of them. [Read in this AP news archives
here.]
It takes someone with an ex-to-grind towards Malaysia to write obsessively only on the death of Altantuya and alleged Scorpene corruption scandal. Another obsessive was Malaysiakini writer, loonie Susan Loone who then was writing from Bangkok in her blog. When the event was unfolding, she had something like 60 postings on Altantuya and Scorpene.
As the leading writer for the propaganda, Berthelsen played the role of feeding news and spin ideas for the local pro-opposition news portal and politicians to work on. The mechanism can be seen in Part IV
here on how they dramatised the
information judiciaire (judicial investigation) process by
juges d’instruction (investigating judges).
Before retreating into guerilla strategy, they were lying and distorting the investigation documents in their hands and later leaked by Asia Sentinel. At first SUARAM claimed that they have not seen the documents. Later SUARAM said it was in the possession of their lawyers, but they could not obtain copies. Who were they kidding when news after news was coming out of Asia Sentinel?
It was SUARAM and their lawyers tipping off Asia Sentinel. From March 2012, Asia Sentinel began to unveil new materials, other than repeating the same boring bit on Altantuya's death, Perimekar Euro 115 million alleged kickback and DCNS's other corruption allegations.
Conveniently, the time was right to drum it up into an issue. The general election is expected to be soon.