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 "communist" ...
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WSJ China's Troubled Transition
During his years in China, British businessman Neil Heywood cut a rather eccentric figure, cruising around Beijing in a silver Jaguar with “007” license plates and boasting implausibly about his connections to senior Communist Party officials. When he was found dead in a second-rate provincial hotel room in November 2011—of “excessive alcohol consumption,” according to local authorities—he was immediately cremated and seemingly just as quickly forgotten. Forgotten, that is, until Wall Street Journal reporter Jeremy Page began digging into the case. Using his wide network of local and foreign contacts, the Beijing correspondent discovered that this was much more than a sad case of expat overindulgence. It turned out that Mr. Heywood was in fact very close to the wife of Bo Xilai, a Communist Party rising star—and that he had told friends he feared she might do him harm. The investigation lifted the lid on the extravagant, and often lawless, private lives of the country's elite—a forbidden topic for Chinese media, and one rarely touched on by the foreign press. Mr. Page’s reports, devoured by China’s vast population of Internet users, sparked massive public debate and may even have altered the course of China’s once-a-decade leadership transition.
Tags: Bo Xilai; China; Communist Party; death
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Revolution to Riches
In a tense year of political transition in China, the Bloomberg News series "Revolution to Riches" was the first to expose the huge wealth amassed by the top families of senior leaders. Bloomberg also revealed the origin of the system of hereditary privilege that has become a lightning rod for popular discontent and threatens to undermine the ruling Communist Party.
Tags: Chinese politicians; China's senior leaders; business dealings; Communist Party
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"The Spy Who Loved Us"
Thomas A. Bass tells the story of famous reporter turned spy, Pham Xuan An. While working as a journalist for Time and acting as bureau chief in Saigon, An was also North Vietnam's top spy for 20 years. While he kept his cover, An received 16 military medals, most being awarded "for direct involvement in military campaigns." In his book, Bass focuses on the "elusive relationship between" journalists and "spies at war."
Tags: Vietnam War; Communist; North Vietnam; Time; Ho Chi Minh; spy; Ap Bac; Tet Offensive; Orange Coast College
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Investigating the Economic Structure Behind the Moldovan Regime
Oleg Voronin is the richest man in the Republic of Moldova. Scoop reporting uncovered a massive mafia-like network which Oleg used to seize businesses and operate them for profit. Opposition was silenced through swift and quiet violence, media manipulation and threats.
Tags: Oleg; Voronin; Republic of Moldova; appropriations; seizure; body guard; media; opposition; communist; business; wealth
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The Forgotten
This story is an inside look at the systematic warehousing of more than 17,000 adults and children in Serbia's mental institutions. Dateline NBC gained unprecedented access to remote, government-run facilities and found alarming and sometimes life-threatening conditions. The institutions are remnants of Serbia's communist past and symbols of a deeply ingrained prejudice against the mentally disabled and their families. Serbia's medical establishment continues to advise parents to put their mentally disabled newborns into institutions, and the government provides virtually no support for those who choose not to. In mental institutions throughout Serbia, Dateline found adults and children crammed into fetid rooms and metal cribs, their bodies emaciated, atrophied and disfigured. Some residents appeared to be children but they were actually young adults whose growth had been stunted by years of institutionalization. One of our most disturbing discoveries came while staying overnight in a dangerously overcrowded institution. There we learned that children are routinely tied to their bed railings for long periods of time - a practice that one disability rights organization says meets the legal definition of torture under international law.
Tags: mental health; Serbia; child abuse; patient abuse; patient rights; mental institutions
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"The Middle Kingdom's Dilemma" and "China's Pollution Revolution"
In this series, the author investigates "the emergence of a grassroots environmental movement in Communist China." In "The Middle Kingdom's Dilemma," the author reveals a plan by the State Council to divert an amount of water that is greater than the total volume of water from the Yangtze River. In "China's Pollution Revolution," Larson writes about a poluuting factory and its negative impact on nearby residents.
Tags: Communist China; grassroots environmental movement; water shortages; pollution; environmental laws; international
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Finding Manana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus
Ojito relates her story of growing up in Cuba in the 1960's-70's, under Fidel Castro's government, and leaving Cuba in the 1980 Mariel boatlift when she was 16. She tells how the role of ordinary people in the boatlift managed to change the history of Cuba, South Florida and the U.S., as, she claims, President Carter partly lost the reelection because of the boatlift. She tells how although the White House attempted to deter the boatlift, Cubans came together to flee Cuba and arrive in Key West.
Tags: Fidel Castro; Cuba; Carter; Mariel; White House; Communist; Cold War; memoir
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The Best-Laid Plans To Bury the Czar Go Slightly Awry
The Journal reports on the burial of the Russian Czar Nicholas II, executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. The burial has been on the "Kremlin's agenda for seven years.... For nearly 70 years, the Communists were practically mum on the czar's death."
Tags: history; communism; Soviet Union; czar; international reporting
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FBI Files
CBS News reports on a little known decade-long surveillance operation designed to spy on American citizens. FBI started the operation in the late 1970s under the Reagan's administration. It was conceived as an anti-Soviet initiative to limit the communist propaganda in the United States but eventually turned into a widespread domestic spying, CBS reports. Surprisingly, central to the program was then-undercover Soviet spy Robert Hanssen.
Tags: TAPE; TRANSCRIPT; FOI requests; intelligence; unclassified records; Soviet Union; cold war
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The Last Days of the Mountain Kingdom
The Outside Magazine looks at the new development of the "people's war" declared by a hard-line faction of communists in Nepal. The story describes how, after the royal family has been murdered, "Maoist guerrillas prowl the countryside, killing police with handmade grenades, extorting protection money from trekkers, and fomenting agrarian revolution." The author analyses the risk of a new "Asian apocalypse."
Tags: communists; revolution; international politics; Himalayas; Kathmandu; militia; Hindu kingdom; violence