It really does sound like a ‘pen name’. I agree with the spinoff of Obama’s name. It caught my eye too.
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/hijackers/flying-high.htm
Hijackers - They’re Still Flying High
By BARRY BEARAK,
Times Staff Writer
Here is the link to Barry Bearak’s profile at Wikipedia. Some VERY interesting coincidences here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Bearak
Barry Leon Bearak (born August 31, 1949, in Chicago) is a Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist and professor of journalism who has worked as a reporter and correspondent for The Miami Herald, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. He also taught journalism as a visiting professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. As of April 2008, Bearak is co-bureau chief of the New York Times Johannesburg bureau.[1]
On April 3, 2008, Bearak was taken into custody by Zimbabwean police as part of a crackdown on journalists covering the 2008 Zimbabwean election. He was charged with “falsely presenting himself as a journalist” in violation of the strict accreditation requirements that were imposed by the government of Robert Mugabe. Despite worldwide condemnation and court petitions that were filed immediately to release him from detention, Bearak remained in a detention cell in Harare for 5 days.[2] On April 7, 2008 Bearak was released on bail by a Zimbabwean court.[3] On April 16, 2008, a Zimbabwean court dismissed the charges against Bearak, saying that the state had failed to provide evidence of any crime, and ordered that Bearak and Stephen Bevan, a British freelance reporter who had also been accused of violating the country’s stiff journalism laws, be released. immediately following the court ruling, Mr. Bearak left Zimbabwe and returned to his home in Johannesburg.”[4] While in detention in Harare, Bearak was badly injured from a fall onto the concrete floor of the detention cell and needed medical attention.[5]
Bearak won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his penetrating accounts of poverty and war in Afghanistan. The Pulitzer Prize committee cited him “for his deeply affecting and illuminating coverage of daily life in war-torn Afghanistan.”[6]