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 "operation" ...
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Bad to the Bone
When four executives of a medical-device company called Synthes went to jail for illegally marketing a bone cement—five patients had died after it was injected into their spines—Mina Kimes knew there had to be a compelling saga behind a case that had generated little coverage beyond local news articles. So she began digging, first with FOIA requests for never-before-published government documents, and then assembling hundreds of pages of court transcripts and internal company e-mails and reports. She used that foundation to begin the harder challenge: persuading Synthes employees, many of them terrified by the criminal case and the company’s intimidating chairman, to talk to her. With six months of grueling, old-fashioned reporting, Kimes succeeded, and “Bad to the Bone” is the masterful result. Not only did she persuade more than 20 current and former company employees to speak, but she also revealed a story whose disturbing breadth far exceeded the case presented in court. Her tour de force reporting raises profound new questions about the culpability of a key figure who wasn’t charged: Hansjörg Wyss, the reclusive and controlling Swiss founder and chairman—one of the richest people in the world—who made crucial decisions about how to sell the bone cement. This is a classic tale of corporate malfeasance: Warned by the government not to sell its bone cement for use in the spine, Synthes ignored the admonition despite clear evidence of lethal danger—a pig had died within seconds when the cement was tested on it—and encouraged surgeons to use the cement on people, five of whom died soon afterward. But “Bad to the Bone” isn’t just an exposé. It opens a window into a broader issue: how the medical system actually runs. Readers see how salespeople with no medical training advise surgeons—inside the OR during operations—on how to use their devices. They experience the tale of one surgeon who continues using the cement even after two of his patients died. Oh, and what sort of justice does Synthes itself receive? Wyss sells it, for $20 billion, to health care giant Johnson & Johnson, which praises Synthes’s “culture” and “values.” Corporate crime. Death on the operating room table. Secret e-mails. Surgeons on the edge. An imperious multibillionaire CEO. It’s a mesmerizing article, and Kimes’s reporting takes readers on a deeply unsettling journey that ensures they’ll never look at the medical system the same way again.
Tags: Medical devices; bone cement; Synthes
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Questionable Coverage
“Questionable Coverage” was a hidden camera investigative report about systematic health insurance scams affecting victims in nearly every state. As a direct result of our reporting, two companies ceased operations, a third has been sanctioned, and insurance regulators in Georgia and New York have launched their own investigations into the fraud.
Tags: health insurance; scams; fraud; hidden cameras
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Platts: Oil and Gas Drillers Want ‘Confidential’ Wells
It’s no secret that oil and natural gas production is booming in North Dakota. But there are indeed countless secrets — technical, strategic and otherwise — associated with many of the wells that are being drilled in the Roughrider State. North Dakota maintains something called a “Confidential Well List.” Under state law, certain information about the 1,800-plus wells on this list -- such as production levels, geographical data and engineering specifications – is kept from the public for six months. North Dakota regulators argue that there are legitimate reasons for keeping this data from the public, such as encouraging so-called “wildcat” drilling operations in remote or undeveloped areas where little or nothing is known about the subsurface geology. But other oil and gas-producing states are sharply curtaining their use of such policies, saying they are outdated and conflict with the principles of open government. Wyoming, for example, recently revised its policy on the grounds that granting confidential status without good reason was inhibiting “the timely dissemination of well information to the public.”
Tags: Oil; gas; natural resources; fraud; oil wells
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Identity Evil
"Identity Evil" is an in-depth look at a violent fake document cartel operating in states across the country. The cartel is the largest and most sophisticated fake id ring federal investigators have ever encountered. They were funneling millions of dollars from U.S. cities south of the border into Mexico. The cartel became synonymous with murder and torture as they sought to protect their turf from rival gangs and enforce discipline within their own organization. Using eyewitness accounts, federal wiretaps, and interviews with victim’s families, investigative reporter A.J. Lagoe and photojournalist Ben Arnold take viewers inside the cartel and document the violence that would prove to be their undoing.
Tags: Fake ID; federal wiretaps; violence; fake document cartel
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HBO Real Sports: Hockey's Darkest Day
In 2011 a plane carrying a Russian hockey team crashed shortly after takeoff--the deadliest accident in the history of professional sports. A five-month Real Sports investigation uncovered massive safety problems in the Russian hockey league. The league spent millions on player salaries but "a few bucks" on everything else--including travel. The plane that crashed was operated by a cheap, third-rate company that had been banned from flying to Europe because they had been cited so many times for major safety violations. The crew of the plane hadn't even completed their training. Our investigation showed that the lack of safety in the world’s second best hockey league—called the KHL—often extends to the ice where KHL team doctors use IV’s and drugs to get their players to perform better on the ice. One young star died after receiving an injection of banned drugs from team doctors. When it came to travel, the lack of safe conditions was nearly universal. Practically every team flew on a Soviet-era jet—jets that make up 3% of the world’s fleet but account for 42% of the world’s accidents. These jets are in such poor condition that most Russian airlines wont use them. Yet even after the crash the KHL continued to use these planes, a fact they initially denied. Shortly after we interviewed the KHL Vice President, the league changed its rules. Now teams fly strictly on modern equipment.
Tags: Russia; Russian hockey team; plane crash; the KHL;
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In God’s Name: Abuse at religious group homes in Florida
The Tampa Bay Times shines a light on unlicensed children's homes, operating for years in rural areas out of plain sight and run by zealous operators who believe they answer only to God.
Tags: Religion; religious group; children
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Meningitis Outbreak
When an unprecedented outbreak of fungal meningitis began last fall in Tennessee, The Tennessean reacted with aggressive and highly interactive coverage that has led the nation. Before other media realized the significance of the outbreak, which has sickened more than 650 people in 19 states, The Tennessean was already analyzing the regulation of specialty pharmacies and digging into the contracts and connections of the New England Compounding Center, the Massachusetts firm suspected of shipping contaminated steroids responsible for the illnesses. As of today, the outbreak has killed 40 people nationwide, 14 of them in Tennessee. More than a hundred more are still sick. We quickly reported problems associated with New England Compounding Center, lag times on informing victims and regulation slip-ups in the drug compounding industry that allowed companies to operate outside of the law.
Tags: Health; meningitis; New England Compounding Center; steroids
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Spa shooter sidestepped police
Following a mass shooting inside a suburban Milwaukee spa, reporters John Diedrich and Gina Barton dug into the history of shooter Radcliffe Haughton with police in his community of Brown Deer. They uncovered a series of failures by police that left a dangerous man on the street, emboldening him to become more violent. Let down by police, Zina Haughton sought protection with a restraining order. She was dead days after it was issued. Diedrich and Barton found Brown Deer did not follow the state’s mandatory arrest law in such cases and failed to uphold its most basic duty: protecting the public. The most remarkable finding was that Brown Deer police actually retreated from a standoff with Haughton even though officers had saw him point what appeared to be a rifle at his wife. The police chief was defiant. Elected officials in Brown Deer deferred to the chief, who operates with little oversight in the village, the reporters found. The case revealed a loophole in state’s domestic violence laws: No one could hold local police accountable for failing to follow the law as designed by legislators. Data reporter Ben Poston joined the effort to examine how many domestic violence cases referred to prosecutors result in charges, thus holding other parts of the criminal justice system accountable.
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Port Authority: Battle at the Waterfront
This investigation was about lies and obfuscation, and the stakes were enormous: A mayor’s election, a growing media empire and potentially billions of dollars in development. Our reporting revealed how within months of purchasing the largest media operation in San Diego County, the new owners of U-T San Diego were using their power and status to influence -- and even threaten -- government officials into helping them realize lucrative plans for developing the downtown waterfront. It also illuminated an insidious practice suspected nationwide: use of private electronic accounts to conduct the public’s business. Our reporting defined much of the discussion around the mayor’s race in the weeks before the election. In the end, the candidate at the heart of the probed was defeated.
Tags: Mayoral election; fraud; government officials; San Diego
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The Cash Machine
An investigation reveals that the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office seizes millions every year in small amounts of cash seized from individuals stopped by police— but not necessarily arrested, and often never convicted of a crime. Through the use of "civil asset forfeiture," the Philadelphia D.A. has created a kind of forfeiture assembly line, pursuing cases for small amounts of cash by the thousands via a system which proceeds without regard to guilt or innocence and which places a tremendous burden of proof on the property owner. This investigation is one of the first quantitative looks into a big-city forfeiture operation and includes statistics compiled from reviews of thousands of court records as well as data compiled by hand.