Jane Mayer, Outsourcing Torture: The secret history of America’s “extraordinary rendition” program. The New Yorker, 14 February 2005. “On January 27th, President Bush, in an interview with the Times, assured the world that “torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture.” Maher Arar, a Canadian engineer who was born in Syria, was surprised to learn of Bush’s statement. Two and a half years ago, American officials, suspecting Arar of being a terrorist, apprehended him in New York and sent him back to Syria, where he endured months of brutal interrogation, including torture. When Arar described his experience in a phone interview recently, he invoked an Arabic expression. The pain was so unbearable, he said, that “you forget the milk that you have been fed from the breast of your mother.”
Outsourcing Torture: The secret history of America’s “extraordinary rendition” program
Bush fell short on duty at [Air National] Guard
Walter V. Robinson, Bush Fell short on duty at Guard. The Boston Globe, 8 September 2004. “Records show pledges unmet…. In February [2004], when the White House made public hundreds of pages of President Bush’s military records, White House officials repeatedly insisted that the records prove that Bush fulfilled his military commitment in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. But Bush fell well short of meeting his military obligation, a Globe reexamination of the records shows: Twice during his Guard service — first when he joined in May 1968, and again before he transferred out of his unit in mid-1973 to attend Harvard Business School — Bush signed documents pledging to meet training commitments or face a punitive call-up to active duty.”
The Logic of Torture: Abu Ghraib
Mark Danner, The Logic of Torture. The New York Review of Books, 24 June 2004. The second of two articles. (The first of the two articles is here.) “Behind the exotic brutality so painstakingly recorded in Abu Ghraib, and the multiple tangled plotlines that will be teased out in the coming weeks and months about responsibility, knowledge, and culpability, lies a simple truth, well known but not yet publicly admitted in Washington: that since the attacks of September 11, 2001, officials of the United States, at various locations around the world, from Bagram in Afghanistan to Guantanamo in Cuba to Abu Ghraib in Iraq, have been torturing prisoners. They did this, in the felicitous phrasing of General Taguba’s report, in order to “exploit [them] for actionable intelligence” and they did it, insofar as this is possible, with the institutional approval of the United States government, complete with memoranda from the President’s counsel and officially promulgated decisions, in the case of Afghanistan and Guantanamo, about the nonapplicability of the Geneva Conventions and, in the case of Iraq, about at least three different sets of interrogation policies, two of them modeled on earlier practice in Afghanistan and Cuba.”
Torture and Truth: The Taguba Report and the Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
Mark Danner, Torture and Truth. The New York Review of Books, 10 June 2004. The first of two articles. (The second of the two articles is here.) “Abu Ghraib contained within its walls last fall [2003]—as the war heated up and American soldiers, desperate for “actionable intelligence,” spent many an autumn evening swooping down on Iraqi homes, kicking in doors, and carrying away hooded prisoners into the night—well over eight thousand Iraqis. Could it be that “between 70 percent and 90 percent” of them were “arrested by mistake”? And if so, which of the naked, twisted bodies that television viewers and news paper readers around the world have been gazing at these last weeks were among them? Perhaps the seven bodies piled up in that great coil, buttocks and genitals exposed to the camera? Or the bodies bound one against another on the cellblock floor? Or the body up against the bars, clenched before the teeth of barking police dogs?”
The Boston Globe Spotlight Investigation: Sexual Abuse by Priests in the Catholic Church, 2002
Members of the Spotlight Team: Walter V. Robinson, Editor. Michael Rezendes, Sacha Pfeiffer, and Matt Carroll. Other investigative reporters: Stephen Kurkjian, Kevin Cullen, and Thomas Farragher. Religion reporter: Michael Paulson. The Boston Globe Spotlight Investigation: Abuse in the Catholic Church. The Boston Globe, 6 January 2002-14 December 2002. The Boston Globe won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service “for its courageous, comprehensive coverage of sexual abuse by priests, an effort that pierced secrecy, stirred local, national and international reaction and produced changes in the Roman Catholic Church.” Between January 2002 and March 2003, The Boston Globe published more than 900 news stories about the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.
Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service.
Winner of the 2002 George Polk Award for National Reporting
for exposing the “widespread sexual abuse by priests as well as the questionable way in which Church officials handled the matter.”
Winner of the 2002 Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism.
Winner of the 2003 Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting.
Update: The film ‘Spotlight’ won the Oscar for best picture on 28 February 2016. A. O. Scott’s review in The New York Times was published on 5 November 2015: Review: In ‘Spotlight,’ The Boston Globe Digs Up the Catholic Church’s Dirt.
Republican Senator Bob Packwood Accused of Sexual Advances: Alleged Behavior Pattern Counters Image
Florence Graves and Charles E. Shepard, Packwood Accused of Sexual Advances: Alleged Behavior Pattern Counters Image. The Washington Post, 22 November 1992. “Ask those who have worked for Sen. Bob Packwood about his treatment of women, and two portraits emerge. One is the Oregon Republican’s record as a leading advocate of women’s rights during his 24 years in the Senate and his much-admired history of hiring women, promoting them and supporting their careers even after they leave his office. Women currently hold the most powerful posts on his staff. The other is a side of Packwood, 60, that few who have experienced it or heard about it want to talk about. Since Packwood’s earliest days on Capitol Hill, he has made uninvited sexual advances to women who have worked for him or with him, according to former staff members and lobbyists, including 10 women who, independently of each other, have given specific accounts of Packwood’s behavior toward them.”
The new free-trade heel: Nike’s profits jump on the backs of Asian workers
Jeffrey Ballinger, The new free-trade heel: Nike’s profits jump on the backs of Asian workers. Harper’s Magazine, August 1992. “Her only name is Sadisah, and it’s safe to say that she’s never heard of Michael Jordan. Nor is she spending her evenings watching him and his Olympic teammates gliding and dunking in prime time from Barcelona [1992]. But she has heard of the shoe company he endorses–Nike, whose logo can be seen on the shoes and uniforms of many American Olympic athletes this summer. Like Jordan, Sadisah works on behalf of Nike. You won’t see her, however, in the flashy TV images of freedom and individuality that smugly command us to JUST DO IT!–just spend upward of $130 for a pair of basketball shoes. Yet Sadisah is, in fact, one of the people who is doing it–making the actual shoes…
Update: Max Nisen, How Nike Solved Its Sweatshop Problem. Business Insider, 9 May 2013. “It wasn’t that long ago that Nike was being shamed in public for its labor practices to the point where it badly tarnished the company’s image and hurt sales. The recent factory collapse in Bangladesh was a reminder that even though Nike managed to turn around its image, large parts of the industry still haven’t changed much at all. Nike was an early target for the very reason it’s been so successful. Its business model was based on outsourcing its manufacturing, using the money it saved on aggressive marketing campaigns. Nike has managed to turn its image around. Nike hasn’t been completely successful in bringing factories into line, but there’s no denying that the company has executed one of the greatest image turnarounds in recent decades.”
The Justice [Abe Fortas]…and the Stock Manipulator [Louis Wolfson]
William Lambert, The Justice…and the Stock Manipulator. Life, 9 May 1969. “In an investigation over a period of several months, LIFE found evidence of a personal association between [US Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas] and [stock manipulator Louis] Wolfson that took place after Fortas was seated as a member of the nation’s highest tribunal.”
Ron Ridenhour’s letter (29 March 1969) that began My Lai investigation
Ron Ridenhour, Ron Ridenhour’s letter to Congress and the Pentagon about the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. 29 March 1969. “In 1969, Vietnam veteran Ron Ridenhour wrote a letter to Congress and the Pentagon describing the horrific events at My Lai–the infamous massacre of the Vietnam War–bringing the scandal to the attention of the American public and the world.”