Open Secrets: Wikileaks , War and America

1. Global Investigative Journalism Conference Kiev 2011 Andrew W. Lehren Open Secrets: Wikileaks, War and America

3. The Afghanistan War Logs First brought in for what was, at first blush, a one-day story focusing on war dead and possibly other issues related to the war Obtained the raw data and began, over the Fourth of July weekend, writing a series of story memos The one story we could not do with this data was count war dead Another important problem: informants are named But these documents tell us important aspects of the war: drones gone wrong, the ISI in Afghanistan, shadowy Task Force 373 and capture/kill operations

4. The New York Times secretly forms a team of reporters from its bureaus around the world to examine the documents Collaborating with the Guardian and Der Spiegel Comparing with other databases about the war, experience in the field and other ways of cross-checking and verifying information Always aware these were daily field reports rarely revised later Key approach: Pulling material from various reports to tell a larger story

6. The Iraq War Logs: Combining other data sets

7. The diplomatic cables Often similar to well-written excellent single-source stories Incomplete Crossing international borders

10. Often the most common passages were useless

11. Sometimes a single cable told the whole story

12. Sometimes the best came from cables spanning the globe North Korean arms deals Gitmo detainee efforts DEA intelligence gathering efforts Diplomats helping Boeing vs. Airbus

15. Guantanamo and beyond