The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "army base" ...
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Bales: Army suspect in Afghan shooting was liable in financial fraud
On the day that tips arose about a U.S. soldier who may have strafed two Afghan villages, I left the office for a flight to Tacoma. Within 48 hours of the soldier’s being identified as Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, I and two colleagues broke the news that the emerging hagiography of Bales drafted by family and attorneys had more to it than the story of a soldier who enlisted at the ripe of 27 driven by outrage over the 2001 terrorist attacks—and then broken down by an unrelenting cycle of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Our story started with pure spidey senses: Bales’ s family and lawyer said he had left a stockbroker’s career to enlist, as they explained his call to serve. Yet he had not finished college and clearly had financial troubles, I had determined. And he was active in brokerage in the late 1990s in Florida I learned by checking assorted online records—which raised my suspicions about the quick-money penny stock trading that was commonplace then. Based on those instincts, while also doing the running daily story from Bales’ Army base in Washington state, I had checked some online brokerage records and enlisted Julie Tate to look at others and run through civil and criminal filings in Ohio (Bales’s home state and then nationally). Within an hour, I had found one suspicious record and Julie had found others and we were off on a 30-hour run of investigative reporting and boots on the ground interviews that yielded the breaking news of Bales’s more complicated—and less laudatory—past in the period just before he joined the Army. We located and I interviewed an elderly couple who had lost substantial savings in accounts managed by Bales and received copies of detailed financial records that corroborated their claims and showed Bales as the account manager. We also peeled back corporate records for a now-shuttered firm run by Bales and his brother with backing from a longtime friend and reached him to further flesh out the checkered professional history of the Staff Sgt. at the center of an explosive, fast-moving and intensely competitive story. The story demanded intense investigative reporting that netted notable results in far far less than 30 days of a breaking event.
Tags: U.S. soldier; Afghanistan; military draft; terrorist attacks; deployment
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Wounded Warriors
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review began following up on tips worldwide from military personnel inside the Warrior Transition Units, the special military-medical wards constructed in the aftermath of the scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C. After months of gathering leaked documents and compiling numerous interviews at bases nationwide, especially with soldiers, the Tribune leaked reams of secret reports detailing the Pentagon's own inspection of medical wards.
Tags: Military Personnel; Walter Reed Army Medical Center; Washington D.C. Documents
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Fort Hood Shooter's Supervisors Worried
NPR exposes prior knowledge of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan's mental imbalance by revealing his supervisors' and colleagues' concerns that Hasan's mental health could threaten those around him.
Tags: Nidal Hasan; Fort Hood; shooter; tragedy; massacre; army base; Texas; supervisors; colleagues; mental health; security; Army; Walter Reed; psychotic;
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The Fort Hood Shootings
The investigation showcases the unraveling of the Fort Hood massacre. It chronicles the repeated failure of U.S. intelligence to take substantive action against the assailant, Nidal Hasan, and the bureaucratic decisions that ultimately snowballed into a tragedy.
Tags: Anwar Awalki; Fort Hood; Brian Ross; military; massacre; shooting; jihad; Nidal Hasan; terror; Al Qaeda; Yemeni; bureaucracy; Texas; army base; psychiatrist;
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Mentally Unfit, Forced to Fight
The series investigated mental health screening and treatment for service members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Based on Defense Department records data and interviews with more than 100 mental health experts, service members, and the relatives and friends of troops who committed suicide in the war zone, we reported that the military was increasingly sending, keeping and recycling mentally troubles troops into combat, in violation of the military's own regulations, and with tragic consequences."
Tags: psychology; psychotropic; medication; post-traumatic stress; battlefield; Army Surgeon General
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Vietnam: The War Crime Files
"An LA Times investigation- based on thousands of declassified records from the Army chief of staff's office, scores of interviews and a trip to Vietnam- found that U.S. troops reported more than 800 war crimes in Vietnam, yet many were publicly discredited even as the military uncovered evidence that they were telling the truth."
Tags: Vietnam; war crime; army; military; torture; murder; My Lai; Seymour Hersh; national archive
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National Security Threat
The story exposed a major security lapse at a Virginia military base. A civilian employee with an identity fraud conviction had the job of making military identification cards and confessed to making fake ones for sale, including to foreign nationals. The identity cards allowed bearers access to sensitive areas of military bases.
Tags: fraud; fake identification; military; U.S. Army; identity fraud; national security; Fort Myer
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Stolen Innocence
This investigation found that a federal employee at a local military base used his job to lure a minor into an abusive sexual relationship. The employee used taxpayer money to take the victim with him on business trips, where he would molest the boy. The investigation found that army officials knew about the relationship, but did nothing about it.
Tags: army; military; sexual harassment; sexual abuse; fraud
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"Private Stites Should Have Been Saved"
Potter examines how well the Army prepares its soldiers to handle combat, and the psychological results of poor training. Potter finds that Army suicides are growing, and that the Army is at least partly to blame for these tragic deaths. Potter discovers that while young soldiers requested psychological counseling, their pleas were ignored. They instead withstood abuse by fellow soldiers and drill instructors. Potter uncovers a shocking Army policy that asks superiors to implement a series of orders "intended to humiliate and ostracize the soldier until he or she stops 'faking' [his or her psychological trauma] and 'gets on with training.' "
Tags: post-traumatic stress; war; U.S. Army; suicide; Ft. Leonard Wood Army base; psychological abuse; physical abuse
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Trafficked for the Military
Using hidden camera, WJW-TV reveals that U.S. military police and courtesy patrol officers have been protecting South Korean brothels and illegal traffic of women. The trafficked women, mostly employed by massage parlors, have been forced to prostitute serving American soldiers. Virtually all women entered the US through marriages to soldiers.
Tags: human rights; prostitution; international sex slave industry; database; military bases; army; tape; transcript; Tom Renner Award Category