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What was the genesis of this piece? |
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Many, many good stories had been written about the arrest and subsequent release of Chaplain James Yee, but none had answered the most basic question: How had he become a suspect in the first place? By then Yee was back at Fort Lewis, south of Seattle, and though he was not talking to the media, we had a good body of biographical information from an extensive interview I had conducted with him in September 2001, shortly after the 9/11 attacks. It seemed to my editors and me a natural question for our newspaper to pursue. |
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Please describe your reporting process. How much is reconstruction and how much were you present for? What sort of research did you do? |
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About 90 percent of the story was based on interviews and about 10 percent on documents. It's important to note that it was documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that helped open the door for many of the interviews (see next question, below). The story was almost entirely reconstructed, which forced me to be spare on details. The story was also reported as an investigative piece, not a narrative, so though I recorded small details here and there, it wasn't a priority, a fact I later regretted.
When I showed an initial draft to my managing editor, David Boardman, he believed the story had the makings of a serial narrative. I was excited by the prospect, but also knew it would force me to go back to often-reluctant sources to fill in the small details. The process added several weeks to the reporting. At one point, Yee's parents became exasperated when I asked what color the shutters were on Yee's childhood home. That detail had no bearing on the investigation, but I was trying to show that Yee had grown up in a typical middle-class American home.
Many, many times throughout this I had to plead with my sources for patience in answering seemingly insignificant questions. There were also aspects of the story that didn't neatly fit into a narrative package. The most troublesome were attributions. Because many of the allegations in the case were in dispute, I felt it was important to include more attributions than you might normally see in a narrative story. This slowed the narrative, but was a necessary sacrifice. |
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What challenges did you encounter during the reporting process? |
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Reporting this story proved difficult and time-consuming because neither Yee nor the government was talking. And because it involved counter-intelligence and national security, much of it was secret. Yee's lawyer gave me a basic reconstruction of his involvement in the case, but would share no documents or insights into the case that had not already been reported. FBI and other government sources helped me piece some of the story together, though few were directly involved in the case.
An important breakthrough came in September 2004 when the first of dozens of FOIA requests came back from the Army. It was not a Rosetta Stone by any stretch, and turned out to be the only request that wasn't outright rejected. But it provided some key documents that helped me track down Capt. Theo Polet, the lead Army counter-intelligence agent in the case. He agreed to talk to me about documents I already had, and over several weeks of conversations began sharing more information.
As I pieced more of the case together, other people involved began sharing information. Meanwhile, the espionage case against Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad Al Halabi was nearing trial. The investigations into Yee and Al Halabi were separate but involved many of the same people. Through that case, I was able to track down the lead intelligence officer at Camp Delta, Capt. Jason Orlich, who was the first to become suspicious of Yee and several others at the prison. Between them, Orlich and Polet had been the two men most responsible for the Guantanamo spy ring investigation. Neither had spoken to the media, but both agreed to talk to me, they told me, because they believed I was sincere in my effort to get at the truth, and because they felt they had acted properly on their suspicions of Yee. Gaining their trust, while maintaining a skeptical eye, proved invaluable in reconstructing the story. |
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Please describe your process of structuring and writing the piece. |
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The two big issues I dealt with in developing a structure were: 1., Where to fold in Yee's biographical information, and 2., how do I handle the Al Halabi case, which ended long after Yee's case had dissolved.
If I stayed within a linear structure, the story would end with Al Halabi's court-martial, which I did not want. I decided on a hybrid, sticking mostly to the chronology but jumping out of time in one chapter to dispose of the entire Al Halabi case. I also decided on a very spare style that would remain accurate but still have enough tension and suspense in each chapter to carry readers through a lot of information without putting them to sleep. Our investigative editor, James Neff, also introduced me to the notion of action-reaction. In investigative stories, we typically tell what happened, and then how it happened. In other words, reaction-action. Reversing that structure proved invaluable in creating scenes and building suspense. |
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What sort of reaction did you get to the story? Emails? Phone calls? Response from other media? Etc. |
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The response has been tremendous. The most gratifying came from readers while the series was running who said they couldn't wait for the next installment. I also got responses from the investigators, including Polet, who called it a fair and balanced series. Many involved also said they had learned aspects of the case from reading the story that they hadn't previously known. |
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Please include any other comments you think would be interesting to fellow reporters, editors and students of narrative. |
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Reporting this story instilled in me the importance of persistence and of having the support of your editors. For months I felt I was walking blindly into walls. Thankfully my editor, Mark Higgins, believed in the story and didn't press me for progress reports. I also continued writing other stories on my military beat until I had gathered enough information to break away and concentrate solely on this project. |