Jeremy Scahill (born October 18, 1974) is a founding editor of the online news publication The Intercept and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, which won the George Polk Book Award. His book Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield was published by Nation Books on April 23, 2013. On June 8, 2013, the documentary film of the same name, produced, narrated and co-written by Scahill, was released. It premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Scahill is a Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill learned the journalism trade and got his start as a journalist on the independently syndicated daily news show Democracy Now!. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Scahill's first book, New York Times bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army,[49] thoroughly revised and updated to include the Nisour Square massacre, was released in paperback edition in 2008.[50][51] Blackwater depicts the rise of the controversial military contracting firm Blackwater, now called Academi.[52] Scahill exposed the presence of Blackwater contractors in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and his reporting sparked a Congressional inquiry and an internal Department of Homeland Security investigation.[53] Scahill's book published by Nation Books,[54] Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield, released on April 23, 2013.[55] The main premise of the book is Obama's continuation of Bush's doctrine that "the world is a battlefield" and relying on missiles and drone strikes, JSOC to carry the bulk of the covert operations and targeted killings of suspected terrorists. Scahill expands on this theme by covering topics such as the assassination of U.S. citizens, namely Anwar Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, and the lack of accountability of U.S. special forces, such as the Gardez massacre,[56] where U.S. special forces killed two males, including the pro-U.S. local police commander, as well as three females, two of whom were pregnant. An Afghan investigation found signs of evidence tampering, such as bullets being removed from the wall where the women were shot.[57] Several family members of the victims alleged that the special forces subsequently used their knives to dig the bullets out of the bodies and cleaned the resultant wounds to purge any evidence of the U.S. raid.[58] The book was later made into a 2013 American documentary directed by Richard Rowley based on a screenplay written by Scahill and David Riker. Scahill both produces and narrates the film. Dirty Wars premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 2013. It was released in four theaters on June 7, 2013. The film was nominated for the 2014 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, ultimately losing to 20 Feet from Stardom.[59] Scahill has been an advocate for imprisoned Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye. Scahill's March 13, 2012 article in The Nation states that President Obama leaned on Yemen to keep Shaye in jail because of his reporting on the 2009 Al Ma`jalah bombings—Shaye described remnants of U.S. Tomahawk missiles, although the United States initially denied involvement. Subsequent English-language reports on the issue have relied on Scahill's journalism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Scahill Image By Chatham House [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

• published: 20 Apr 2015
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