Sorry performance.

IF AWARDS were given to newspapers for cowardice under fire, a major contender for 1994 would be the International Herald Tribune. Twice in recent months, the Herald Tribune, which is jointly owned by the New York Times and the Washington Post, has capitulated to complaints from the leaders of this city-state. The reasons for official Singaporean anger were not editorial denunciations or embarrassing investigative reports but a couple of perfectly accurate adjectives in articles by freelancers.Insulting adjective number one was ``dynastic.'' Philip Bowring, former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review, used it last August about midway through a rambling commentary attacking the view among some commentators, notably the taste-makers of Singapore, that Asian values are superior to ``those of the decadent West.'' Bowring, who has frequently criticized Singapore's former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, stepped over a thin, unmarked boundary when he wrote, ``Dynastic politics is evident in 'Communist' China already, as in Singapore, despite official commitments to bureaucratic meritocracy.''There was no doubt which dynasty Bowring was talking about. Lee Kuan Yew, though retired, is frequently seen on TV in his role as ``senior minister,'' while son Lee Hsien Loong serves an apprenticeship as deputy prime minister. The younger Lee appears nightly on the government-controlled networks. The stories always identify him as ``BG,'' for ``brigadier general,'' a rank he attained at the age of 32 for no apparent military accomplishment. The networks never note that the two men are related in any way.Bowring's violation of this taboo elicited complaints from Lee Kuan Yew and other officials. Four weeks after the column ran, the paper published an unqualified ``apology'':We recognize that this passage meant to readers that Mr. Lee Hsien Loong [currently Deputy Prime Minister and a Cabinet member for 10 years] had been appointed to his present post of Deputy Prime Minister by Mr. Goh Chok Tong [the Prime Minister], and earlier posts of Minister of State and subsequently Minister for Trade and Industry by Mr. Lee Kuan Yew [currently Senior Minister and until November 1990 Prime Minister], not on his own merits but purely because he was Mr. Lee Kuan Yew's son; and that there was a battle between the . . . needs of the state of Singapore and the interests of the Lee family (father and son) who operated it. We admit that these allegations are completely without foundation. We apologize for them without reservation to Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew and Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. We undertake not to make further allegations to the same or similar effect.Beneath the apology were the signatures of Richard McClean, publisher; John Vinocur, executive editor; and Philip Bowring, the writer. Bowring tells anyone who asks him about the case that he had no choice but to sign the apology. He makes a living as a freelancer and saw no other way to remain in the good graces of the Herald Tribune, which runs his column at least once a week.The success of Singapore authorities in pressuring the Herald Tribune rests on one crucial point: the paper is not only sold in Singapore but is printed there by Times Publishing, which owns almost all of the city-state's papers under a quasi-official monopoly. But if Herald Tribune executives were congratulating themselves for fending off the assault by Lee Kuan Yew, they were premature. For one thing, Lee has filed a libel suit. And two months after the paper ran the apology another freelancer, Christopher Lingle, a teaching fellow at the National University of Singapore, slipped another offensive adjective into a Herald Tribune commentary.``Intolerant regimes in the region reveal considerable ingenuity in their methods of suppressing dissent,'' Lingle wrote. ``Some techniques lack finesse: crushing unarmed students with tanks or imprisoning dissidents. Others are more subtle: relying upon a compliant judiciary to bankrupt opposition politicians, or buying out enough of the opposition to take control 'democratically.'''RESPONDING to government complaints, Lingle argued in vain that he had not named Singapore specifically, that he could have been referring to any country in the region when he described the judiciary as ``compliant.'' Could it have been because he was on target that Singapore authorities decided he was referring to them? Twice investigators visited Lingle's office, interrogating him first for ninety minutes and again for two hours. ``They also visited my home,'' Lingle says. ``They asked me what sort of research material I used. I cooperated to avoid an escalation.'' The investigators took notes on a computer, printed them out on a portable printer, and asked Lingle to sign them.Later Lingle was quoted as saying that the investigators ``treated me with dignity.'' But he says he was troubled by ``the subtext of their inquiry, where things are calm on the surface and there is turbulence, a dread and foreboding.'' His real fear was that he might be held without trial while prosecutors went on with their investigations. Under the circumstances, he considered himself lucky to be able to leave Singapore to visit his ailing father in Atlanta. Rather than play a martyr's role at the subsequent trial, he faxed his resignation to National University from Atlanta.``I would have liked to have faced them down in a trial in hopes of making them look silly,'' he explains, ``but they've just made themselves look silly.'' Silliest of all, however, was the Herald Tribune, whose response was nearly as weak as in the Bowring case. This time, in the weekend issue dated December 10 - 11, the paper ran what it described as a ``clarification'':It has been brought to our attention [that the article] could by reason of facts later drawn to our attention be understood as suggesting that Mr. Lee Kuan Yew had sought to suppress political activity in Singapore by bankrupting opposition politicians through court actions in which Mr. Lee relied on a compliant judiciary to find in his favor without regards to the merits of the case. This was not our intention, and we do not associate ourselves with any such view which we accept would be unfounded. We apologize unreservedly to Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew and the Singapore judiciary.The government nevertheless decided to try Lingle, the newspaper, its Asian editor, its printer, and its distributor for ``criminal defamation and contempt of court.'' In January, the High Court of Singapore issued a decision that amounted to a slap on the wrist and a warning. The Herald Tribune was fined the equivalent of $6,000, and the printer, distributor, and Asian editor were fined the equivalent of $7,140, all to be paid by the Herald Tribune. After the ruling, the publisher, Richard McClean, refused to talk to reporters but said his paper had not meant to attack the Singapore judiciary and ``recognizes that it has to have regard to the laws of the countries in which it circulates.''Lee, not happy with the apology, the clarification, or even the vindication by a compliant court, filed another lawsuit. ``He wanted them to admit things that were untrue, that this was part of a concerted effort to undermine him,'' Lingle says. ``He wanted a real confession, that we had planned this to embarrass him.''As a measure of the Herald Tribune's ``regard to the laws of the countries in which it circulates,'' the paper chose not to print a New York Times editorial urging the U.S. to ``make it clear'' that ``Singapore is, in fact, jeopardizing its relationship with America when it intimidates U.S. citizens.'' The Herald Tribune and its owners, including the Times, must count themselves among the most intimidated.