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 "national defense" ...
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Command Mistake
As a result of this WISH-TV (Indianapolis, IN) report, the United States Marine Corps is now issuing helmets with ballistic padding to all marines. Previously, only the Army was issuing padded helmets; and some marines were buying their own padding. The story showed that college football players' helmets were more protective than the marine helmet."The cost to care for a head-injured soldier with permanent brain damage is $2.5 to $3 million. The cost of the helmet pads is as little as $30." Story contains on-ground elements filmed in Germany and Iraq.
Tags: Traumatic brain injury research; TBI; concussion; ballistic pad testing; football helmet testing; Kevlar helmet; roadside bomb blasts; Commanding General George Casey; Baghdad; Fallujah; Landstuhl Medical Center, Germany; Riddell; Brigadier General John Kelley; Congressman Steve Buyer; Indiana National Guard; Roudebush VA Medical Center; craniectomy; aphasia; Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; Joint Theater Trauma Registry; Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center; DVBIC; Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital; Traumatic Brain Injury in the War Zone; Susan Okie, MD; New England Journal of Medicine; American Football Coaches Association; University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Sports Medicine Concussion Program
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The High Price of Homeland Security
In the rush to protect the nation, the federal government has handed out billions of dollars worth of contracts for security systems to prevent another terrorist attack. This ongoing examination of federal contracts found that the Department of Homeland Security failed to properly supervise those projects, the costs are climbing far above the original estimates, and some of the systems are not performing as promised.
Tags: terrorism; government contracts; lobbyists; government expenditure; Department of Defense
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The Man Who Sold the War
The author investigated the company, Rendon Group, and its involvement in selling the Iraq war to Americans. The story focuses on a secretive Washington defense contractor and executive of the Rendon Group, John Rendon.
Tags: war; Iraq; defense; Rendon Group; John Rendon; defense contractor; weapons of mass destruction; Washington; Pentagon; Iraqi National Congress; Judith Miller
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Secrets and Lies: bin Laden, Damra and the Birth of Terror in America
This investigation uncovered the strong ties between Fawaz Damra, a seemingly peaceful spiritual leader of Ohio's largest mosque, and Osama bin Laden. The investigators found that before moving to Ohio, Damra headed a radical mosque in Brooklyn, to which the people behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing belonged. Furthermore, he was directly involved in fund-raising for terrorist "charities." Damra's charity was the predecessor of Al Qaeda, and gave bin Laden a foothold in America.
Tags: homeland security; Palestinian Islamic Jihad; Al Qaeda; WTC; national defense; FBI
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Hidden Wounds: Mark Benjamin's reporting on psychological wounds among soldiers from the Iraq war
Benjamin's stories were some of the first to report on an incoming wave of soldiers suffering severe mental problems after returning from Iraq. He found that 1 in 5 visits to the VA by returning soldiers were for mental problems, that soldiers in Iraq had disturbingly high suicide rates and that there was a pattern of soldiers coming home and beating their spouses.
Tags: suicides; national defense; veterans affairs; suicides; soldiers
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Tough Justice
"The stories examined the origins and consequences of the Bush administration's policies for the military detention and prosecution of terrorist suspects since 9/11. In part, they sought to investigate the abuse of prisoners by their American jailers, both in the United states and abroad. What was unique about coverage of The Times, however, was that it manages to penetrate the government's extraordinary secrecy about the subject to both reconstruct the creation of this new military justice system and assess the intelligence effort that was its bedrock rationale."
Tags: prison; abuse; Abu Graib; Defense Department; National Security Council; Guantanamo Bay; Al Queda
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Bad Sourcing; Chalabi: A Questionable Use of U.S. Funding; A Double Game; Our Con Man in Iraq; Chalabi: and the Questions Keep Coming...; The Hunt for the Iranians' Informer; Forget the 'Poisons and Deadly Gases'; Rewriting History
This series about prewar intelligence in Iraq was the first to uncover doubts that the Bush administration and the CIA may have had about all of the Iraqi defectors, as mentioned in Secretary of State Colin Powell's Feb. 2003 speech. The series questions a number of different intelligence sources, including Ahmad Chalabi, and investigates their credibility and unauthorized use of U.S. funding.
Tags: Iraqi National Congress. Defense Department; Iraq; Ahmad Chalabi; prewar intelligence
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Navy Proposes Shipbuilding Cuts, Plans to Appeal to Bush for Reforms (Inside the Navy); Collins Warns Navy Not to 'Squander' Shipbuilding Budget Progress (Inside the Navy); Warner Concerned About Possible Carrier Delay (InsideDefense.com); Pentagon Further Curtails Navy Shipbuilding Budget (InsideDefense.com)
Castelli's investigative series feature in Inside the Navy and InsideDefense.com exposes proposed shipbuilding cuts in the Navy's fiscal year 2006 budget. The series sheds light on how the cuts will affect the Navy, as well as major U.S. shipyards. "With so much at stake, this series of articles gave decision-makers on Capitol Hill the maximum time available to consider policy questions about shipbuilding that could affect national security, the industrial base, politics and state and local economies."
Tags: Pentagon; Navy Department; Gordon England; Donald Rumsfeld; President Bush; General Dynamics; Northop Grumman
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"For your eyes only"
The story analyzes the cooperation between CIA and American academia to solve intelligence problems. Some scholars, like Bruce Cummings (University of Chicago) and David Gibbs (University of Arizona) criticize this cooperation. The cooperation grants scholars access to classified information. The intelligence-academia relationship is sometimes a source of conflict; some universities have explicit rules that forbid faculty members to conduct classified research, and one of the most controversial CIA policies is "its insistence that scholars sign a lifetime secrecy agreement before receiving a security clearance", Mooney says. Contrary to Cummings and Gibbs' opinion, Joseph Nye (Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School) says his intelligence ties with CIA, State Dept., Defense Dept. and National Security Council have not prejudiced his scholarship.
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Military Quacks
Carollo and Nesmith tell the stories of victims of medical accidents and misjudgments involving doctors employed by the U.S. military. "That means the patients were treated in an environment not governed by some of the most significant safeguards that help protect civilians from bad medicine." Under Defense Department rules, such incidents involving military doctors, are not even reported to the National Practitioners Data Bank.
Tags: malpractice claims; doctors; military hospitals; lobbying; public health; legislature