James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts. The New York Times, 16 December 2005. “Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.” James Risen and Eric Lichtblau won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for their stories on warrantless domestic eavesdropping.
December 16, 2005
Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Warrants
November 2, 2005
CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons
Dana Priest, CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons. The Washington Post, 2 November 2005. “Debate Is Growing Within [the CIA] About Legality and Morality of Overseas System Set Up After 9/11.” Dana Priest won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting for her stories on the CIA and the “War on Terror.”
July 11, 2005
The Experiment: The military trains people to withstand interrogation. Are those methods being misused at Guantánamo?
Jane Mayer, The Experiment: The military trains people to withstand interrogation. Are those methods being misused at Guantánamo? The New Yorker, 11 July 2005. “From the beginning…the Guantánamo Bay prison camp was conceived by the Bush Administration as a place that could operate outside the system of national and international laws that normally govern the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody. Soon after September 11th, the Administration argued that the Guantánamo site, which America had been leasing from the Cuban government since 1903, was not bound by the Geneva Conventions. Moreover, the Administration claimed that terrorist suspects detained at the site were not ordinary criminals or prisoners of war; rather, they would be classified under a new rubric, “unlawful combatants.” This new class of suspects would be tried not in U.S. courts but in military tribunals, the Administration announced. ”
February 14, 2005
Outsourcing Torture: The secret history of America’s “extraordinary rendition” program
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.”
June 18, 1972
The Watergate Story
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, The Watergate Story. The Washington Post, 18 June 1972 – 9 August 1974.
“”Five Held in Plot to Bug Democratic Offices Here,” said the headline at the bottom of page one in the Washington Post on Sunday, June 18, 1972. The story reported that a team of burglars had been arrested inside the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office complex in Washington. So began the chain of events that would convulse Washington for two years, lead to the first resignation of a U.S. president and change American politics forever.”
March 29, 1969
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.”
August 24, 1964
What Few Know About the Tonkin Bay Incidents
I.F. Stone, What Few Know About the Tonkin Bay Incidents. I. F. Stone’s Weekly, 24 August 1964. “The American government and the American press have kept the full truth about the Tonkin Bay incidents from the American public.”