To Our Readers

By ELIZABETH VALK LONG President

Covering the volatile situation in Haiti is a difficult and dangerous game for any correspondent. But for Bernard Diederich, it's a sadly familiar experience. Diederich, who joined TIME in 1956, has spent more than four decades on the Haiti watch. He ran the newspaper Haiti Sun for 14 years, until the Tontons Macoutes, "Papa Doc" Duvalier's ruthless police force, jailed and expelled him in 1963. After his deportation, Bernie continued to follow the country's plight from the Dominican Republic, Mexico and later Florida, where he is now based. The co-author of Papa Doc, the definitive history of the Duvalier regime, Diederich sees the current unrest as even more harrowing. "The key to the present terror is that no one is safe," he says. "Papa Doc usually picked his targets, but now repression is blind. It could happen anywhere, anytime."

Diederich's expertise and inside knowledge have been an invaluable resource for two other TIME correspondents who, along with photographer James Nachtwey, are covering the Haiti story. "He has an unsurpassed sense of Haitian history," says Edward Barnes, who wrote a recent story on Haitian refugees after months of difficult duty in Bosnia. "He is, simply, the best in the Caribbean." Says Cathy Booth, our Miami bureau chief, who was also in Haiti last week: "Bernie is indispensable for knowing good sources long before they become famous." Supplementing Diederich's contacts were sources tapped by chief political correspondent Michael Kramer, who reported on the Miami connection for this week's story.

Reporting from Haiti has been trying for all concerned. There is virtually no phone service; electrical blackouts last up to seven hours a day; gasoline is virtually nonexistent. The heat and humidity are so bad that visitors to the homes of both rich and poor are routinely given a towel to drip on.

Worst of all is the fear. Barnes makes frequent visits to a poor neighborhood just outside Port-au-Prince to gauge the mood of the country. He has his interpreter drive in front of one source's home and slow down, so he can jump out quickly to attract as little attention as possible. Last week Barnes arranged a meeting with a group of attaches, the gun-toting police auxiliaries, but his interpreter was so scared that he purposely drove to the wrong spot, knowing that nobody would show up. "There is no one on either side," says Barnes, "who doesn't wonder whether he or she will survive the next week."