Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

Jeremy Scahill is an unembedded, international journalist. He has reported extensively from Iraq through both the Clinton and Bush administrations. He reported from Yugoslavia during the 1999 NATO bombing and spent years covering the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic's government and the rise of a neoliberal regime backed by the United States. He has also reported from Nigeria, where he and colleague Amy Goodman exposed the role of the Chevron oil corporation in the massacre of protesting villagers in the Niger Delta. Traveling around the hurricane zone in the wake of Katrina, Scahill exposed the presence of Blackwater mercenaries in New Orleans and his reporting sparked a Congressional inquiry and an internal Department of Homeland Security investigation. Scahill has won numerous awards, including the prestigious George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting and numerous Project Censored Awards. He was among the only western reporters to gain access to the Abu Ghraib prison when Saddam Hussein was in power and his story on the emptying of that prison won a (US) Golden Reel for "Best National Radio News Story" of 2002. Blackwater is his first book.