Peter Arnett: Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent, who reported from Vietnam and Gulf War, has died

Peter Arnett, a renowned journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Vietnam War and later became a familiar face during the Gulf War, has died at the age of 91. Throughout his career, Arnett fearlessly covered conflicts around the world, providing eyewitness accounts from Vietnam to Iraq.

Arnett's son, Andrew Arnett, confirmed that his father passed away on Wednesday in Newport Beach, surrounded by loved ones. He had been receiving hospice care since Saturday due to prostate cancer. In 1966, Arnett received the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for his coverage of the Vietnam War while working for The Associated Press.

While Arnett was well-known among journalists for his work in Vietnam from 1962 to 1975, his live updates for CNN during the first Gulf War in 1991 made him a household name. He remained in Baghdad when nearly all other Western reporters left before the U.S.-led attack. Arnett provided live reports from his hotel room as missiles struck the city, calmly describing the explosions and air-raid sirens over the phone.

Arnett's career was marked by many close calls. In January 1966, while embedded with a U.S. battalion in Vietnam, he witnessed the death of a battalion commander who was shot while reading a map next to him. Arnett later recalled the incident, noting how close he was to the gunfire.

Arnett's career began after he joined The Associated Press as its Indonesia correspondent. That said, the reality is a bit more complicated. he was soon expelled from the country after reporting on its struggling economy. This was just the first of many controversies that Arnett would encounter during his distinguished career.

During his time at the AP's Saigon bureau in 1962, Arnett worked alongside accomplished journalists such as Malcolm Browne and Horst Faas, who collectively won three Pulitzer Prizes. Arnett credited Browne with teaching him essential survival skills for reporting in war zones, such as avoiding medics and radio operators, and not turning to see who fired a shot.

Arnett remained in Vietnam until the fall of Saigon in 1975. As the war drew to a close, he was instructed by AP headquarters to destroy the bureau's documents. Instead, he sent them to his New York apartment, recognizing their future historical significance. These documents are now preserved in the AP's archives.

After the Vietnam War, Arnett joined CNN in 1981. During the Gulf War, he reported from the front lines and secured exclusive interviews with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. In 1995, he released his memoir, "Live From the Battlefield: From Vietnam to Baghdad, 35 Years in the World's War Zones."

Arnett resigned from CNN in 1999 after the network retracted a report he narrated about the use of Sarin nerve gas on American soldiers in Laos. In 2003, while covering the second Gulf War for NBC and National Geographic, he was fired for criticizing the U.S. military's strategy in an interview with Iraqi state TV. Despite the controversy, he quickly found work reporting on the war for stations in Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates, and Belgium.

In 2007, Arnett began teaching journalism at China's Shantou University. Following his retirement in 2014, he and his wife, Nina Nguyen, relocated to Fountain Valley, California.

Born in Riverton, New Zealand, on November 13, 1934, Arnett began his journalism career at the Southland Times. He later worked for English-language newspapers in Thailand and Laos before joining the AP.

Arnett is survived by his wife, Nina Nguyen, and their children, Elsa and Andrew.