Special Collections
Investigative Reporters and Editors Award
Description: The annual IRE Awards recognize outstanding investigative work and help identify the techniques and resources used to complete each story. This collection includes award winners and finalists. #award
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Blind Man's Bluff
by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew and Annette Lawrence DrewOver the course of five years, investigative reporters Sherry Sontag and Chris Drew interviewed hundreds of men who had never spoken about their underwater lives-not even to their wives and children. They uncovered a wealth of classified information: the tapping of undersea Soviet telephone cables, the stealing of Soviet weapons, the tragic collisions of enemy submarines. They tell of medals awarded in secret and deaths disguised with disinformation. Blind Man's Bluff is a critical work of history that reads with all the excitement of a Tom Clancy novel and all the tragedy of Das Boot.
A Promise of Justice
by David Portess and Rob WardenAnother instance of shameful injustice in the American Justice system.
No Matter How Loud I Shout
by Edward HumesNow updated with a new introduction and afterword, this award-winning examination of the nation's largest juvenile criminal justice system in Los Angeles by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist is "an important book with a message of great urgency, especially to all concerned with the future of America's children" (Booklist).In an age when violence and crime by young people is again on the rise, No Matter How Loud I Shout offers a rare look inside the juvenile court system that deals with these children and the impact decisions made in the courts had on the rest of their lives. Granted unprecedented access to the Los Angeles Juvenile Court, including the judges, the probation officers, and the children themselves, Edward Humes creates an unforgettable portrait of a chaotic system that is neither saving our children in danger nor protecting us from adolescent violence. Yet he shows us there is also hope in the handful of courageous individuals working tirelessly to triumph over seemingly insurmountable odds. Weaving together a poignant, compelling narrative with razor-sharp investigative reporting, No Matter How Loud I Shout is a convincingly reported, profoundly disturbing discussion of the Los Angeles juvenile court's failings, providing terrifying evidence of the system's inability to slow juvenile crime or to make even a reasonable stab at rehabilitating troubled young offenders. Humes draws an alarming portrait of a judicial system in disarray.
Gone in the Night
by Rob Warden and David PortessA true story of prosecutorial and judicial misconduct
A Law Unto Itself
by David BurnhamThis is a fully documented inside examination of the Internal Revenue Service, in many ways the largest and most powerful of all federal agencies, and also the agency whose competent function is most essential to our democracy. The book's appearance in 1989 sparked a public furor and major legislation attempting to redress the IRS' many abuses of power, both political and bureaucratic. The book will be a relevant handbook as long as the agency remains a towering presence in American life.
Inside Job
by Paul Muolo and Stephen Pizzo and Mary FrickerA fast-paced and gripping account of one of history's most infamous financial disasters For most of the 20th century, savings and loans were an invaluable thread of the American economy. But in the 1970s, Congress passed sweeping financial deregulation at the insistence of industry insiders that allowed these once quaint and useful institutions to spread their taxpayer-insured assets into new and risky investments. The looser regulations and reduced federal oversight also opened the industry to an army of shady characters, white-collar criminals, and organized crime groups. Less than 10 years later, half the nation's savings and loans were insolvent, leaving the American taxpayer on the hook for a large hunk of the nearly half a trillion dollars that had gone missing. The authors of Inside Job saw signs of danger long before the scandal hit nationwide. Decades after the savings and loan collapse, Inside Job remains a thrilling read and a sobering reminder that our financial institutions are more fragile than they appear.
A Bright Shining Lie
by Neil SheehanOutspoken, professional and fearless, Lt. Col. John Paul Vann went to Vietnam in 1962, full of confidence in America's might and right to prevail. He was soon appalled by the South Vietnamese troops' unwillingness to fight, by their random slaughter of civilians and by the arrogance and corruption of the US military. He flouted his supervisors and leaked his sharply pessimistic - and, as it turned out, accurate - assessments to the US press corps in Saigon. Among them was Sheehan, who became fascinated by the angry Vann, befriended him and followed his tragic and reckless career.Sixteen years in the making, A Bright Shining Lie is an eloquent and disturbing portrait of a man who in many ways personified the US war effort in Vietnam, of a solider cast in the heroic mould, an American Lawrence of Arabia. Blunt, idealistic, patronising to the Vietnamese, Vann was haunted by a shameful secret - the fact that he was the illegitimate son of a 'white trash' prostitute. Gambling away his career, Vann left the army that he loved and returned to Vietnam as a civilian in the pacification programme. He rose to become the first American civilian to wield a general's command in war. When he was killed in 1972, he was mourned at Arlington cemetery by leading political figures of the day. Sheehan recounts his astonishing story in this intimate and intense meditation on a conflict that scarred the conscience of a nation.
Blowback
by Christopher SimpsonA searing account of a dark &“chapter in U.S. Cold War history . . . to help the anti-Soviet aims of American intelligence and national security agencies&” (Library Journal). Even before the final shots of World War II were fired, another war began—a cold war that pitted the United States against its former ally, the Soviet Union. As the Soviets consolidated power in Eastern Europe, the CIA scrambled to gain the upper hand against new enemies worldwide. To this end, senior officials at the CIA, National Security Council, and other elements of the emerging US national security state turned to thousands of former Nazis, Waffen Secret Service, and Nazi collaborators for propaganda, psychological warfare, and military operations. Many new recruits were clearly responsible for the deaths of countless innocents as part of Adolph Hitler&’s &“Final Solution,&” yet were whitewashed and claimed to be valuable intelligence assets. Unrepentant mass murderers were secretly accepted into the American fold, their crimes forgotten and forgiven with the willing complicity of the US government.Blowback is the first thorough, scholarly study of the US government&’s extensive recruitment of Nazis and fascist collaborators right after the war. Although others have approached the topic since, Simpson&’s book remains the essential starting point. The author demonstrates how this secret policy of collaboration only served to intensify the Cold War and has had lasting detrimental effects on the American government and society that endure to this day.
Yakuza
by Alec Dubro and David E. KaplanKnown for their striking full-body tattoos and severed fingertips, Japan's gangsters comprise a criminal class eighty thousand strong--more than four times the size of the American mafia. Despite their criminal nature, the yakuza are accepted by fellow Japanese to a degree guaranteed to shock most Westerners. Yakuza is the first book to reveal the extraordinary reach of Japan's Mafia. Originally published in 1986, it was so controversial in Japan that it could not be published there for five years. But in the west it has long served as the standard reference on Japanese organized crime and has inspired novels, screenplays, and criminal investigations. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition tells the full story or Japan's remarkable crime syndicates, from their feudal start as bands of medieval outlaws to their emergence as billion-dollar investors in real estate, big business, art, and more.
The Price of Power
by Seymour M. HershFrom the introduction: "This book is an account of the foreign policy of the United States, presided over by Henry Kissinger, during Richard Nixon's first term in the White House. It is also an account of the relationship between two men who collaborated on what seemed to be a remarkable series of diplomatic triumphs. These were the years when China was reclaimed by American diplomacy; when a much-praised agreement on strategic arms limitation (SALT) was negotiated with the soviet Union; when a complex dispute in West Berlin was settled; and when American participation in the war in Vietnam, the most crucial issue facing the American presidency, was brought to a dramatic end with the signing of the Paris peace accords in January 1973, three days after Nixon was inaugurated for a second term."
The Puzzle Palace
by James BamfordThe first book ever written on the National Security Agency from the New York Times bestselling author of Body of Secrets and The Shadow Factory. In this groundbreaking, award-winning book, James Bamford traces the NSA&’s origins, details its inner workings, and explores its far-flung operations. He describes the city of fifty thousand people and nearly twenty buildings that is the Fort Meade headquarters of the NSA—where there are close to a dozen underground acres of computers, where a significant part of the world&’s communications are monitored, and where reports from a number of super-sophisticated satellite eavesdropping systems are analyzed. He also gives a detailed account of NSA&’s complex network of listening posts—both in the United States and throughout much of the rest of the world. When a Soviet general picks up his car telephone to call headquarters, when a New York businessman wires his branch in London, when a Chinese trade official makes an overseas call, when the British Admiralty urgently wants to know the plans and movements of Argentina&’s fleet in the South Atlantic—all of these messages become NSA targets. James Bamford&’s illuminating book reveals how NSA&’s mission of Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) has made the human espionage agent almost a romantic figure of the past. Winner Best Investigative Book of the Year Award from Investigative Reporters & Editors &“The Puzzle Palace has the feel of an artifact, the darkly revealing kind. Though published during the Reagan years, the book is coolly subversive and powerfully prescient.&”—The New Yorker &“Mr. Bamford has emerged with everything except the combination to the director&’s safe.&”—The New York Times Book Review
The Brethren
by Bob Woodward and Scott ArmstrongThe Brethren is the first detailed behind-the-scenes account of the Supreme Court in action.Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong have pierced its secrecy to give us an unprecedented view of the Chief and Associate Justices--maneuvering, arguing, politicking, compromising and making decisions that affect every major area of American life.