Christopher Drew | |
|---|---|
| Born | New Orleans, Louisiana |
| Nationality | United States |
| Alma mater | Tulane University |
| Occupation(s) | Investigative journalist Book author University professor |
| Employer(s) | The New York Times Louisiana State University |
| Spouse | Annette Lawrence Drew |
| Awards | George Polk Award White House Correspondents Award |
Christopher Drew is an American investigative reporter who worked for The New York Times for 22 years, serving as assistant editor for the newspaper's investigative unit. Drew has also served on the faculties at university schools of journalism, teaching investigative journalism. He has written on the U.S. Navy SEALS' role in Afghanistan, on submarine espionage, on presidential campaigning, and other topics, receiving an award for the reporting. Drew's book "Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage" about Cold War submarine warfare was a best selling non-fiction book for approximately a year. [1] [2]
Drew was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, to which he later returned to report on the Hurricane Katrina aftermath. He graduated from Jesuit High School in 1974. [3] In college, Drew majored in English, graduating from Tulane University. [3]
Early in his career, Drew worked as an investigative reporter for the New Orleans States-Item and then later for the New Orleans Times-Picayune after the merger of the two newspapers. He then served as investigative journalist for the Chicago Tribune, before moving to The New York Times in 1995. His tenure with The New York Times was then for 22 years. For various projects, Drew worked closely with journalist Dean Baquet who was also from New Orleans. [4]
Drew was a recipient of a George Polk Award in 2016 for reporting on the activities of SEAL Team 6 as they relate to the killing of an Afghan citizen in 2012. [5] According to journalist James Barron, Drew and his collaborators "wrote that SEAL teams had carried out thousands of dangerous raids but 'also spurred recurring concerns about excessive killing and civilian deaths.'" He shared the award with journalists Nicholas Kulish, Mark Mazzetti, Matthew Rosenberg, Serge F. Kovaleski, Sean D. Naylor and John Ismay. [6] In this investigation, Drew spent two years in Afghanistan with two co-authors investigating the role of the U.S. Navy SEALS. [7] [8]
Drew reported from Washington D.C. for ten years, twice winning White House Correspondents' Association awards for national reportage. [9] He covered presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008. [10]
His book Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage , published by PublicAffairs, and co-authored with Sherry Sontag and with Annette Lawrence Drew, won an Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) certificate award in 1998. The Chicago Tribune team used Freedom of Information Act requests and examined formerly secret and dangerous submarine military actions. [11] The book also won the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Prize in Naval History prize for the best book on American naval history published in 1998. The Blind Man's Bluff was a best seller for almost a year. The History Channel based a two-hour documentary on it. Drew has given opinion and information on national security issues on many of the major television news shows and in documentaries for PBS and the Discovery Channel. [9]
In 1996, he covered the Odwalla E. coli outbreak, finding that the Odwalla firm had relaxed its quality standards for incoming fruit and curbed the authority of its own safety program [12]
For the Chicago Tribune , he wrote a series of articles in 1988 on the topic of "Cutting Corners in the Slaughterhouse". [13]
While working as an investigative reporter in New York, Drew also served as an adjunct professor of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, a position he held for ten years. In 2017, Drew left The New York Times to become a professor at the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University (LSU). [4]
At LSU, Drew is a professional-in-residence and holds the Fred Jones Greer Jr. Endowed Chair professorship in the School of Journalism. In that role, Drew continues his work in investigative journalism by leading the school's efforts on reporting on the activities of the Louisiana state legislature and also working on cold cases related to unsolved Civil Rights-era crimes. [3] [4]
| External media | |
|---|---|
| Media links about Christopher Drew | |
| Images | |
 Photograph of Drew, from Louisiana State University | |
| Audio | |
 Interview with Drew about the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, on NPR's Fresh Air . | |
| Video | |
 Drew in the History Channel documentary based on the book "Blind Man's Bluff" |
Drew is married to political scientist Annette Lawrence Drew who served as a researcher for the book "Blind Man's Bluff". [9] [14]
USS Halibut (SSGN-587), a unique nuclear-powered guided missile submarine-turned-special operations platform, later redesignated as an attack submarine SSN-587, was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named after the halibut.
USS Parche (SSN-683), a Sturgeon-class submarine, was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for the parche, a small, coral reef butterfly fish. Parche was launched on 13 January 1973, sponsored by Natalie Beshany, the wife of Vice Admiral Philip A. Beshany, and commissioned on 17 August 1974.
USS Grayling (SSN-646), a Sturgeon-class attack submarine, was the fifth ship of the United States Navy to be named for the grayling. Her keel was laid down in 1964, and she was launched just over three years later, and commissioned in 1969. She was involved in the submarine incident off Kola Peninsula on 20 March 1993, when she collided with the Russian Navy submarine Novomoskovsk. She was decommissioned in 1997, and disposed of a year later.
Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage (ISBN 0-06-103004-X) by Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew, and Annette Lawrence Drew, published in 1998 by PublicAffairs, is a non-fiction book about U.S. Navy submarine operations during the Cold War. Several operations are described in the book, such as the use of USS Parche to tap Soviet undersea communications cables and USS Halibut to do the same in Operation Ivy Bells.
Operation Ivy Bells was a joint United States Navy, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and National Security Agency (NSA) mission whose objective was to place wire taps on Soviet underwater communication lines during the Cold War.
The George Polk Awards in Journalism are a series of American journalism awards presented annually by Long Island University in New York in the United States. A writer for Idea Lab, a group blog hosted on the website of PBS, described the award as "one of only a couple of journalism prizes that means anything". The award is described as follows:
For 75 years, LIU has been the proud home of the George Polk Awards in Journalism, the first major award of its kind to recognize reporting across all media. This prestigious honor focuses on the intrepid, bold, and influential work of the reporters themselves, placing a premium on investigative work that is original, resourceful, and thought-provoking.
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Rear Admiral Rafael Celestino Benítez was a highly decorated American submarine commander who led the rescue effort of the crew members of the USS Cochino during the Cold War. After retiring from the navy, he was Pan American World Airways' vice president for Latin America. He taught international law for 16 years at the University of Miami School of Law, and served as associate dean, interim dean and director and founder of the foreign graduate law program. While there, he founded the comparative law LL.M. program, the inter-American law LL.M. program, and the Inter-American Law Review. After his death, the university established a scholarship in his memory to benefit a foreign attorney who is enrolled in one of the Law School's LL.M. programs.
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The National Underwater Reconnaissance Office (NURO) is the "hidden younger brother" of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). NRO was initiated in 1960 and developed as a common office for United States Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to manage satellite reconnaissance. The first revelation about NRO came in 1973, but its very existence was not declassified until 1992. According to Jeffrey T. Richelson, "[m]ost often the Under Secretary of the Air Force served as a Director of the NRO". NURO was initiated in 1969 and developed as a common office or liaison office for the United States Navy and the CIA to manage underwater reconnaissance. NURO used "special project submarines" like USS Seawolf (SSN-575), USS Halibut (SSN-587), and USS Parche (SSN-683) deep inside the waters of the Soviet Union to put out listening devices, tap communication cables, monitor Soviet Navy bases and record sound signatures of Soviet submarines. NURO is a little-known agency; even its name has been secret and its very existence was first revealed in 1998. The United States Secretary of the Navy has served as its director.
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