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 "flight records" ...
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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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Blackwater 61
The story investigates the plane crash that killed six people in Afghanistan, including three American servicemen. The flight should have been routine, even insignificant. A cockpit voice recorded revealed incompetence among the pilots involved.
Tags: plane crash; soldier; Afghanistan; Blackwater; Blackwater 61
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"South Carolina Governor"
After news broke of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's affair with a woman living in Argentina, the AP immediately started investigating his travel habits. They found the governor often neglected to record flights to visit his mistress as "taxable benefits" and also ignored state rules and regulations by traveling extravagantly.
Tags: Mark Sanford; affair; Argentina; Jenny Sanford; Maria Belen Chapur; soul mate
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The high price of Rutgers sports
For a decade, Rutgers Univeristy pushed hard to become a college football powerhouse. But a six-month investigation of Rutgers athletics -- including a new review of public records the university fought to keep confidential -- found big-time college football came at a greater price than the school disclosed and still refuses to fully document. The investigation found that Rutgers has hiked tuition, canceled classes and eliminated six other varsity sports while doubling its football spending budget; hid millions of sports expenses, including salaries and charter flights, from public view; rushed into a $102 million expansion of Rutgers Stadium to retain coach Greg Schiano and refused to reveal several other financial and fundraising efforts.
Tags: Rutgers University; college football; financial records; private universities; expense reports; stadiums
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Air safety issues
Air Safety Issues is a six-part series that covers everything from a tragic crash caused by air controller error to outsourcing issues regarding maintenance of commercial aircraft.
Tags: Air safety; air traffic controller; controller error; flight records; flight path; Lindberg field; Controller shortages; maintenance; FOIA; Southern California airspace
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"U.S. accused of torture flights," "American Gulag"
This investigation by Grey, a free-lance writer, reveals how U.S. intelligence agencies are flying terrorist suspects to countries with poor human rights records to interrogate them. Though the American government denies allegations of using such "torture by proxy" tactics, confidential travel logs detail trips to Egypt, Syria and Uzbekistan where witnesses say the prisoners are tortured.
Tags: terrorism; terror; torture; interrogation; CIA; Central Intelligence Agency
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"Bill would subject UT Foundation to state audit"; "Debate is heating up over UT Foundation"
This ongoing series began with an investigation into how the University of Tennessee and its nonprofit fund-raising foundation did business, particularly as the foundation sought to exempt itself from state public records law. The focus later widened to numerous allegations of wrongdoing by the university president, including the use of a university plane for personal business and an attempt to conceal that fact and other information from investigators. The president ultimately resigned and remains the subject of a crimal probe.
Tags: university; president; open records; flight manifests; CAR; computer-assisted reporting
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Aging Airtankers
"An Associated Press investigation of the nation's aerial firefighting program found that many of the aging planes should never have been flying in the first place. It found a spotty safety record by a contractor who had the wings snap off two airtankers in mid-flight last summer, and that no single registry or agency keeps track of accidents involving so-called public service aircraft. The series traced the use of the airtankers to an apparently illegal transfer of military aircraft, showing that the investigation of one of last summer's crashes was hampered because the plane once was used to fly spy missions for the CIA. It found that there is poor financing and supervision of the crucial program, findings echoed in a report by a special government commission."
Tags: airtanker; airplanes; safety; record; transportation; CIA; spy; accidents; government oversight; crash
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FAA Whistleblower, American Gun, and Atta and the Mechanic
The three stories deal with aviation security up to 9/11. The first story, FAA Whistleblower, is about the first FAA official to go on the record blaming senior officials in the agency for contributing to the situation that allowed the hijackings of 9/11. The second story, American Gun, is about an FAA memo which describes one of the hijackers aboard American Airlines flight 11 shooting another passengers. The third story, Atta and the Mechanic, is about Mohammed Atta and an American Airlines mechanic encounter several months before 9/11.
Tags: FAA; security; 9/11; Atta; mechanic; American Airlines; hijackings; tape; transcript
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Feed 5: Best of Show and Tell
1) Jennifer Kraus (WTVF-Nashville) This story exposes problems at the Nashville office of international charity "Feed the Children." In a four-month investigation, WTVF-TV's undercover cameras caught the charity's staff loading up their personal cars with donated items and taking the items home. 2) Deborah Sherman (WFXT - Boston) Costa Rican trips for child sex. Actually spoke with girls who used to get paid by American tourists for sex. Focuses on one area man charged with this crime. 3) Anna Werner, David Raziq (KHOU-Houston) KHOU-TV reports that "You're in physical pain. You need help. So you go to your doctor expecting needed relief and comfort. But what if in the process of treating you, you realize this healer's touch has become 'sexual?' That's what dozens of Houston women claimed happened to them when they were referred to a local health professional, a professional they claimed used their trust to molest and even rape them. His name is Shin Higashiura and he claimed to be a Master of Shiatsu, also known as acupressure, a Japanese massage therapy that promises health benefits...." 4) Jilda Unruh (WCCO-Minneapolis) An investigation reveals that automatic door sensors can't detect certain colors. The doors often close on elderly people, causing them harm. 5) Tom Merriman/Jeff Harris (WEWS-Cleveland) The story investigates how state-trained lifeguards perform on state beaches as compared to privately trained lifeguards on private beaches. Follows both teams though a simulation. The state team fails horribly and never recovers the dummy planted for them to rescue. 6) Jim Schaefer; Shellee Smith (WXYZ-Detroit) WXYZ-TV discovered that the leaders of Highland Park, a poor city surrounded by Detroit, had virtually ignored a major problem in the 911 emergency response system while continuing to enjoy the relatively expensive perks of their jobs. While claiming there was no money in the budget to fix the problem, the mayor leased a brand-new Lincoln with city cash. Undercover video found citizens at risk, fire fighters in danger and no one helping. 7) Drew Griffin (KCBS-Los Angeles) "The Real ConAir" Investigation reveals department of corrections transporting convicts on commercial flights. Passengers are not told who's sitting beside them. Planes are forced to land because of disturbances during the flight. A girl is sexually assaulted by one of these convicts. 8) Robb Leer; Maria Tomasch (KSTP-Minneapolis) Inmates can change their names on the taxpayer's dime. 9) Jeremy Rogalski; Bill Dutton; Gerry Lanosga; Kathleen Johnston (WTHR-Indianapolis) WTHR-TV reports that "a source mentioned to us that numerous DUI cases were being dismissed because police witnesses fail to appear in court... After we crunched a slice of our county's criminal justice data ... We found thousands of DUI cases - nearly one in ten - thrown out because cops didn't show..." 10) Wes Williams; C.J. Ward (KPNX-Phoenix) Security guards with criminal records have a "License to Steal." 11) Tony Kovaleski; Matt Goldberg (KPRC-Houston) Ninety-eight guns were discovered in schools in 10 of Houston's largest school districts -- that works out to 5,864 students per gun. 12) Phil Williams; Chris Clark (WTVF-Nashville) WTVF-TV's investigation into the backgrounds of school teachers found more than three dozen convicted felons working in Metro Nashville-Davidson County schools. 13) Chris Halsne; Kim Albro; Dave Weed (KWTV-Oklahoma City) Voters handed Oklahoma City Schools a 93 million dollar bond in 1993 to improve schools. The money is now gone, but many projects remain unfinished. KWTV-TV's investigation found millions of dollars in waste, fraud and mismanagement. 14) Laure Quinlivan; Jeff Keene; Ken Fulk; Mark Shafer; Scott Diener; Stuart Zanger (WCPO-Cincinnati) WCPO-TV's investigation "... to monitor County officials as they began spending nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money... earmarked to build two, new sports stadiums for our city's professional sports teams, the Bengals and Red. As (the) investigation enters its third year, work on the first stadium is two-thirds complete and ground will soon break on the second. Already, our investigation has revealed broken promises, manipulation of numbers in official reports, political cronyism in contract awards, creation of 'pass-through' companies and other questionable and possibly illegal activities...." 15) Jim Barry; John Campbell; Sam Zeff; Jennifer Snell; Denise Haley; Brad Naw (WTXF-Philadelphia) After transit union strike crippled Philadelphia's bus and subway service for forty days, WTXF-TV investigated the region's transportation agency - Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. SEPTA is one of the largest and most expensive transit systems in the county. This investigation exposed a widespread culture of laziness and dishonest work habits that was allowing hundreds of buses with potentially dangerous problems out onto the street each day. 16)Darcy Spears; Kim Kruger (KVBC-Las Vegas) "Taken for a Ride". Taxi drivers getting kickbacks for taking clients to certain bars/stripclubs.
Tags: TAPE; Investigative reporting; computer-assisted reporting; IRE; FOI; CAR; no transcripts