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Jason Vest

Jason Vest is a Senior Correspondent for The American Prospect and a
contributor to the Boston Phoenix and The Nation, specializing in intelligence
and
national security affairs. He also holds an Ochberg Fellowship with the
University of Washington's Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. Recognized by
American Journalism Review in 2002 as an "Unsung Hero of Washington
Journalism,"
Vest has previously done staff stints at the Washington Post, US News & World
Report and Village Voice. He covered the Eritrea-Ethiopia border war
(1999-2000), as a correspondent for The Scotsman, and was awarded a 1999 Fund
For
Investigative Journalism grant to examine both the war and media coverage.

Originally a reporter for alternative weeklies in Indiana, Vest has also
written for The Atlantic Monthly, Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones,
AlterNet and the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, among others. His
work for
the Prospect in 2004 has been supported by grant awards from the Foundation
for Constitutional Goverment and the Ettinger Foundation. His book on national
security during the current Bush Administration will be published by Wiley &
Sons in 2005.

Recent Articles

Pray and Tell

Jason VestJun 19, 2005

On May 13, 2004, as the world media were in full scrum over Abu Ghraib, an FBI agent who had spent time interviewing terrorism suspects at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, fired off a gloomy e-mail to a colleague. Venting about what had happened in Iraq and expressing his fears that, despite the scandal's coverage, nothing would change, much of the agent's angst had to do with post–September 11 notions that treating terrorism suspects as human beings was neither necessary nor useful.

Checkpoints and Balances

Jason VestMar 09, 2005

As soon as news broke on March 4 about U.S. troops firing on reporter Giuliana Sgrena's Baghdad airport-bound car and killing Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari in the process, the clash of accounts began almost immediately. The Americans put the blame squarely on the Italians for driving too fast and not heeding supposed warnings; Sgrena and the surviving Italian intelligence officials, however, said the car was going at a reasonable speed, and that no warnings were given. The Americans claim it was an honest mistake stemming from checkpoint rules of engagement; the Italian Communist Party cast it as part of a dark plot to stop a reporter who knew too much. And so on and so forth.

Mole Hunt

Jason VestSep 03, 2004

In May, Stephen Green was hard at work campaigning for a seat in Vermont's House of Representatives when he got a phone call. The last person the 64-year-old former United Nations official, then preoccupied with health-care policy issues, expected to hear from was an FBI agent, who asked if he could come to Washington to chat with him about the history of Israeli espionage efforts against the United States.

The Wrong Target

Jason VestJul 13, 2004

On February 5, 2003, as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to convince the United Nations Security Council of the need for war against Iraq, in a quiet Baghdad neighborhood half a world away, Mahdi Obeidi watched Al-Jazeera intently as Powell's presentation unfolded.

Spy Versus Spy

Jason VestJun 04, 2004

On Thursday morning, feelings of anticipatory glee that had been rising all week at the CIA's Langley, Virginia, headquarters briefly ebbed. This was not out of sorrow at George Tenet's resignation announcement. Rather, it was about what Tenet's departure might mean in terms of another long-awaited staffing change.

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