Christopher Drew | |
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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]
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. [3]
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. 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. [4] In this investigation, Drew spent two years in Afghanistan with two co-authors investigating the role of the U.S. Navy SEALS. [5] [6]
Drew reported from Washington D.C. for ten years, twice winning White House Correspondents' Association awards for national reportage. [7] He covered presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008. [8]
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. [9] 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. [7]
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 [10]
For the Chicago Tribune , he wrote a series of articles in 1988 on the topic of "Cutting Corners in the Slaughterhouse". [11]
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). [3]
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. [12] [3]
External media | |
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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 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 college, Drew majored in English, graduating from Tulane University. [12]
Drew is married to political scientist Annette Lawrence Drew who served as a researcher for the book "Blind Man's Bluff". [7] [13]
USS Richard B. Russell (SSN-687), a Sturgeon-class attack submarine, has been the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for Richard B. Russell, Jr. (1897–1971), United States Senator from Georgia (1933–1971).
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 Scorpion (SSN-589) was a Skipjack-class nuclear-powered submarine that served in the United States Navy, and the sixth vessel, and second submarine, of the U.S. Navy to carry that name.
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.
Mystic class is a class of Deep-Submergence Rescue Vehicles (DSRVs), designed for rescue operations on submerged, disabled submarines of the United States Navy or foreign navies. The two submarines of the class were never used for this purpose, and were replaced by the Submarine Rescue Diving Recompression System.
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.
John Daniel Barron was an American journalist and investigative writer. He wrote several books about Soviet espionage via the KGB and other agencies.
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.
John Piña Craven was an American scientist who was known for his involvement with Bayesian search theory and the recovery of lost objects at sea. He was Chief Scientist of the Special Projects Office of the United States Navy.
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.
Dean P. Baquet is an American journalist. He served as the editor-in-chief of The New York Times from May 2014 to June 2022. Between 2011 and 2014 Baquet was managing editor under the previous executive editor Jill Abramson. He is the first Black person to have been executive editor.
Jeremy Scahill is an American investigative journalist, writer, 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.
The Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Prize in Naval History was an annual prize given between 1986 and 2011 by The New York Council of the Navy League of the United States, the Roosevelt Institute, and the Theodore Roosevelt Association. It was given for the best book on American naval history published in the previous calendar year. The prize commemorated Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who both served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and who both supported the United States Navy as presidents of the United States.
Christopher John Chivers is an American journalist and author best known for his work with The New York Times and Esquire magazine. He is currently assigned to The New York Times Magazine and the newspaper's Investigations Desk as a long-form writer and investigative reporter. In the summer of 2007, he was named the newspaper's Moscow bureau chief, replacing Steven Lee Myers.
Stephen Grey is a British investigative journalist and special correspondent for Reuters. He received the 2006 Joe and Laurie Dine Award from the Overseas Press Club for his book Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program.
Robert Lyman John Long was a four-star admiral in the United States Navy who served as Vice Chief of Naval Operations from 1977 to 1979 and Commander in Chief Pacific from 1979 to 1983.
The submarine incident off Kildin Island was a collision between the US Navy nuclear submarine USS Baton Rouge and the Russian Navy nuclear submarine B-276 Kostroma near the Russian naval base of Severomorsk on 11 February 1992. The incident occurred while the US unit was engaged in a covert mission, apparently aimed at intercepting Russian military communications. Although most sources claim that the American submarine was trailing her Russian counterpart, some authors believe that neither Kostroma nor Baton Rouge had been able to locate each other before the collision.
John Anthony Walker Jr. was a United States Navy chief warrant officer and communications specialist convicted of spying for the Soviet Union from 1967 to 1985 and sentenced to life in prison.
David Nathaniel Philipps is an American journalist, a national correspondent for The New York Times and author of three non-fiction books. His work has largely focused on the human impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the people who make up the United States military. He has been awarded The Pulitzer Prize twice, most recently in 2022.