Open Secrets: Wikileaks, War and

America

Global Investigative Journalism Conference

Kiev 2011

• Andrew W. Lehren

The Afghanistan War Logs

• First brought in for what was, at first blush, a one-day story focusing on war dead and possibly other issues related to the war

• Obtained the raw data and began, over the Fourth of July weekend, writing a series of story memos

• The one story we could not do with this data was count war dead

• Another important problem: informants are named

• But these documents tell us important aspects of the war: drones gone wrong, the ISI in Afghanistan, shadowy Task Force 373 and capture/kill operations

The New York Times secretly forms a team of reporters from its bureaus around the world to examine the documents

• Collaborating with the Guardian and Der Spiegel

• Comparing with other databases about the war, experience in the field and other ways of cross-checking and verifying information

• Always aware these were daily field reports rarely revised later

• Key approach: Pulling material from various reports to tell a larger story

The Iraq War Logs: Combining other data sets

The diplomatic cables

• Often similar to well-written excellent single-source stories

• Incomplete

• Crossing international borders

Often the most common passages were useless

Sometimes a single cable told the whole story

Sometimes the best came from cables spanning the globe

• North Korean arms deals

• Gitmo detainee efforts

• DEA intelligence gathering efforts

• Diplomats helping Boeing vs. Airbus

Guantanamo and beyond