Aram Roston | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Columbia University (1988) [1] |
Occupation | Investigative journalist |
Aram Roston is an American investigative journalist, and author of The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi [2] [3] He is a correspondent for Reuters. [4]
Roston has written for Newsweek , The New York Times , GQ , Mother Jones , The Nation , "Playboy Magazine," The Guardian , The Observer , New Statesman and other publications. [5]
In 2020 Roston’s reporting on U.S. evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr., a key supporter of Donald Trump, preceded Falwell’s resignation from Liberty University. In 2020, Roston published an exclusive interview with Giancarlo Granda, a former business partner of evangelical leader and university president Jerry Falwell Jr, Granda alleged a multiyear sexual relationship with Falwell and his wife, even as the couple led the nation’s largest Christian university, Liberty University. [6] Falwell stepped down the day after the report. [7]
In 2019, Roston reported that Donald Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen had helped Falwell fix a problem related to “racy photos” in 2015 months before encouraging Falwell to endorse Donald Trump from President. [8] Falwell's 2016 endorsement of Trump during the Iowa caucus helped Trump lock up Evangelical support.
In 2010, Roston was awarded the Daniel Pearl Award by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, for a story called "How the US Funds the Taliban." The expose, which ran in November 2009 in The Nation Magazine, sparked a congressional investigation, and disclosed how a web of Pentagon contractors in Afghanistan routinely pay millions of dollars in protection money to the Taliban. The Daniel Pearl Award is named after the Wall Street Journal correspondent murdered in 2002 in Pakistan and recognizes outstanding international investigative journalism. [9]
In 2016 Roston and his colleague Jeremy Singer-Vine were awarded the Scripps Howard investigative journalism Farfel Award for a BuzzFeed News story called "Fostering Profits," exposing abuses and deaths at the largest for-profit foster care company in the United States, The Mentor Network. [10] The series sparked a U.S. Senate investigation. [11]
Other journalism awards include a 2011 Investigative Reporters and Editors prize, two Emmy awards for investigative business reporting, and a merit award from the Society of Silurians.
He has been a correspondent for BuzzFeed News from 2014 to 2018, was a correspondent for CNN from 1998 through 2001, a producer for the investigative unit at NBC Nightly News from 2003 through 2008, Newsweek in 2011 and 2012, and a police reporter for NY1 News in New York City, and has reported from around the world, including assignments in Iraq, Colombia, Liberia and Afghanistan.
Jerry Laymon Falwell Sr. was an American Baptist pastor, televangelist, and conservative activist. He was the founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, a megachurch in Lynchburg, Virginia. He founded Lynchburg Christian Academy in 1967, founded Liberty University in 1971, and co-founded the Moral Majority in 1979.
The Iraqi National Congress is an Iraqi political party that was led by Ahmed Chalabi who died in 2015. It was formed as an umbrella opposition group with the aid and direction of the United States' government following the Persian Gulf War, for the purpose of fomenting the overthrow of longtime Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Ahmed Abdel Hadi Chalabi was an Iraqi politician, dissident, a founder of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) who served as the President of the Governing Council of Iraq and a Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq under Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
Liberty University (LU), known simply as Liberty, is a private evangelical Christian university in Lynchburg, Virginia. It is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia. Founded in 1971 by Jerry Falwell Sr. and Elmer L. Towns as Lynchburg Baptist College, Liberty is among the world's largest Christian universities and one of the largest private non-profit universities in the United States by total student enrollment.
Danielle "Dani" Pletka is an American conservative commentator. She is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank, and the former vice president for foreign and defense policy at AEI. She is also an Adjunct Instructor at Georgetown University's Center for Jewish Civilization. From 1992 to 2002, Pletka was a senior professional staff member at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, working for Republican Jesse Helms.
Jason Arthur Leopold is an American senior investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News. He was previously an investigative reporter for Al Jazeera America and Vice News. He worked at Truthout as a senior editor and reporter, a position he left after three years on February 19, 2008, to co-found the web-based political magazine The Public Record, Leopold's profile page on The Public Record now says he is Editor-at-Large. Leopold returned to Truthout as Deputy Managing Editor in October 2009 and was made lead investigative reporter in 2012 before leaving Truthout in May 2013. He makes extensive use of the Freedom of Information Act to research stories.
David Wurmser is an American foreign policy specialist. He served as Middle East Adviser to former US Vice President Dick Cheney, as special assistant to John R. Bolton at the State Department and as a research fellow on the Middle East at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He served in the U.S. Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer at the rank of Lieutenant Commander.
Jerry Lamon Falwell Jr. is an American attorney, former academic administrator, and evangelical. Starting with his 2007 appointment upon the death of his father, televangelist and conservative activist Jerry Falwell Sr., Falwell served as the president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, until resigning in August 2020 amidst a sex scandal.
Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been embroiled in tense relations with the U.S. and its allies. Following the hostage crisis, both countries severed relations. Since then, both countries have been involved in numerous direct confrontations, diplomatic incidents, and proxy wars throughout the Middle East, which has caused the tense nature of the relationship between the two to be called an 'international crisis'. Both countries have often accused each other of breaking international law on several occasions. The U.S. has often accused Iran of sponsoring terrorism and of illegally maintaining a nuclear program, as well as using strong rhetoric against Israel, of which Iran has questioned its legitimacy and its right to exist while supporting Hamas, an antizionist terrorist group in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, Iran has often accused the U.S. of human rights violations and of meddling in their affairs, especially within the Iranian Democracy Movement.
Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey, also known as BKSH & Associates was a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm with principals Charles R. Black Jr., Peter G. Kelly, John F. Scruggs, and James Healey which was merged with Timmons & Company in 2010 to form Prime Policy Group.
Watan Group is a company based in Afghanistan that provides telecommunications, logistics and security services. It is owned by the Popal brothers who are believed to be cousins of former Afghan President, Hamid Karzai. They are from the Popalzai sub-tribe, to which Ahmad Shah Durrani, often regarded as the founder of modern Afghanistan, and several of Afghanistan's former leaders belong.
Barbara Starr is an American television news journalist who most recently worked for CNN. She was the network's Pentagon correspondent, based in Washington, D.C., from 2001 to 2022.
Dennis Lee Montgomery is an American software designer and former medical technician who sold computer programs to federal officials that he claimed would decode secret Al-Qaeda messages hidden in Al Jazeera broadcasts and identify terrorists based on Predator drone videos. A 2010 Playboy investigation called Montgomery "The man who conned the Pentagon", saying he won millions in federal contracts for his supposed terrorist-exposing intelligence software. The software was later reported to have been an elaborate hoax and Montgomery's former lawyer called him a "con artist" and "habitual liar engaged in fraud".
Mohammed Said Nabulsi was a Jordanian banker, economist and politician. He served as Governor of the Central Bank of Jordan two times, first from 1973–1985, and secondly from 1989–1995.
BuzzFeed News was an American news website published by BuzzFeed beginning in 2011. It ceased posting new hard news content in May 2023. It published a number of high-profile scoops, including the Steele dossier, for which it was strongly criticized, and the FinCEN Files. It won the George Polk Award, The Sidney Award, the National Magazine Award, the National Press Foundation award, and the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
Frontier Services Group (FSG) is a Chinese partially state-owned Africa-focused security, aviation, and logistics company founded and led until April 2021 by Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater Worldwide. Prince has described FSG's main corporate mission as helping Chinese businesses to work safely in Africa. The company operates logistical projects for shipping routes in Africa, and also conducts high-risk evacuations from conflict zones. FSG's area of service has since expanded to the Belt and Road areas of Africa, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia.
Michael Barry was the Senior Director for Intelligence Programs for the United States National Security Council (NSC) in 2017 and 2018. He succeeded Ezra Cohen-Watnick who left in August 2017. Barry's appointment was well received within the NSC due to having years of experience in government and respect for established protocol, and due to his predecessor Cohen-Watnick's repeated clashes with the CIA, fellow NSC staffers, and Cabinet officials. Barry has been a CIA official and served in the Air Force from 1982 and 1992, including as a special agent in its Air Force Office of Special Investigations and was deployed to Europe. According to his LinkedIn profile, he graduated from Northeastern University in 1982 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice. Barry was working in Afghanistan with Medecins du Monde in 1992.
Petra Bank was a Jordanian bank. It began in 1977 when Prince Hassan bin Talal, the Crown Prince of Jordan approached Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi economist while the latter was teaching at the American University of Beirut to launch a new Jordanian bank, and wanted Chalabi to help him form and run the venture. By 1978, Petra Bank was incorporated and running for business in Amman and throughout Jordan. The Crown Prince's support also enabled Petra to open a string of branches for the first time in the West Bank. Members of Chalabi's family also ran an investment company, Socofi, in Geneva, another bank, MEBCO, in Geneva and Beirut, as well as a Washington arm of Petra Bank known as Petra International.
In the late hours of April 26, 2017, United States and Afghan special operations forces conducted an operation targeting an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - Khorasan Province (ISIL-KP) compound in Achin District, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan. The operation lasted into the early morning hours of the 27th and resulted in the deaths of two US Army Rangers from C and D Companies of the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, and the death of Abdul Haseeb Logari, the leader of ISIL-KP, alongside several leaders, and up to 35 other militants according to The Pentagon.
Anthony Cormier is an American journalist with BuzzFeed News, and formerly with the Tampa Bay Times and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Cormier was a co-recipient of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.