Stephen Grey

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| quote = "When the truth comes out, positive things happen [...] This is our motivation and that’s why people take risks to bring out the truth. It’s the great adventure."{{cite web|last=|first=|date=September 2019|title=Internal Audit 2019 highlights: interview with Stephen Grey, investigative journalist{{!}} Features|url=https://www.iia.org.uk/audit-risk-magazine/features/internal-audit-2019-highlights-interview-with-stephen-grey-investigative-journalist/|access-date=2020-10-30|website=Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors}}| author = Stephen Grey| width = 25%}} In the summer of 2003, Grey began investigating reports of the CIA's secret system of extraordinary renditions (transfer of terror suspects to foreign jails, where many faced torture). The results of his research were first published in the New Statesman in an article headlined 'America's Gulag' in May 2004.{{cite news|url=http://www.newstatesman.com/200405170016|title=America's Gulag|accessdate=21 September 2008|first=Stephen|last=Grey|date=17 May 2004|work=New Statesman|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130327081638/http://www.newstatesman.com/node/147955|archive-date=27 March 2013}} After finding how to track the movements of alleged CIA planes used for rendition, he published the first flight logs of these jets in The Sunday Times in November 2004.{{cite news|url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article390989.ece|title=US accused of 'torture flights'|last=Grey|first=Stephen|date=14 November 2004|archive-date=4 June 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604103137/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article390989.ece|work=The Sunday Times}} He went on to contribute to several front-page news articles to The New York Times about rendition and security issues, as well as to Newsweek, CBS 60 Minutes, Le Monde Diplomatique, and BBC Radio 4's File on Four. He presented television documentaries on the CIA rendition program for Channel 4's Dispatches ProgramChannel 4 Dispatches [http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/kidnapped+to+order/552067 Kidnapped to Order] and PBS Frontline World.PBS Frontline World [https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/rendition701/ Extraordinary rendition]

In 2005, he received the Amnesty International UK Media Award for best article in a periodical,{{cite web

|url=https://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=10061#2005

|title=Amnesty International UK Media Awards, Previous Winners

|accessdate= 21 September 2008

|date= 30 July 2007

|publisher=Amnesty International, UK

}} for his New Statesman article.

In 2006, he received the Joe and Laurie Dine award for Best International Reporting in any medium dealing with human rights from the Overseas Press Club of America. The citationOverseas Press Club of America:[http://www.opcofamerica.org/20070501139/past-awards/2006-opc-award-winners.html 2007 award winner citations] described his book, Ghost Plane, as

the consummation of years of investigation, not only by the author, but, as he acknowledges, the informal global network of journalists with whom he collaborated to reveal the murky world of rendition, extraordinary rendition and proxy torture. By tracing the landings and takeoffs of clumsily concealed CIA flights, his work not only demonstrates concerned investigative journalism in action, it lifts the lid on a global gulag of prisons and torture chambers, assembled by US officials in defiance of domestic and international human rights law.

In a broadcast on the BBC World Service on 30 December 2009, reviewing the last ten years of journalism, author and campaigner Heather Brooke described Grey's investigation of the CIA rendition flights as the "journalistic scoop of the decade."{{Cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2009/12/091230_scoop_of_the_decade.shtml|title=BBC World Service - News - What was the journalistic scoop of the decade?|website=www.bbc.co.uk}}

In 2009, he also published his second book, Operation Snakebite,{{cite web |url=http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780141038308,00.html?/Operation_Snakebite_Stephen_Grey |title=Operation Snakebite - Stephen Grey - Penguin Books |website=www.penguin.co.uk |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120930084213/http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780141038308,00.html?/Operation_Snakebite_Stephen_Grey |archive-date=2012-09-30}} an account of the war in Helmand, Afghanistan, centring on the December 2007 operation by British, American and Afghan troops to recapture the town of Musa Qala, a battle which Grey reported as an embedded reporter for the Sunday Times of London. A Channel 4 Dispatches film reported by Grey titled "Afghanistan: Mission Impossible"{{cite web|url=http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-6/episode-4|title=Dispatches|publisher=Channel 4}} was short-listed for a Royal Television Society Award for independent film-maker of 2009.{{cite web |url=http://www.rts.org.uk/Info_page_two_pic_2_det.asp?art_id=8113&sec_id=3888 |title=Royal Television Society - Television Journalism - Winners - 200 |access-date=2010-02-27 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100302205223/http://www.rts.org.uk/Info_page_two_pic_2_det.asp?sec_id=3888&art_id=8113 |archive-date=2 March 2010 |df=dmy-all }}

In 2009 and 2010, he returned to Afghanistan, reporting for, among other publications, The Sunday Times,{{cite news|url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7078894.ece|title=Lets go its hunting season|location=London|first=Stephen|last=Grey|date=28 March 2010|work=The Sunday Times}}{{dead link|date=September 2024|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}} Le Monde Diplomatique,{{cite web|url=http://mondediplo.com/2010/07/04afghanistan|title=Hearts, minds and the same old warlords|date=July 2010|work=Le Monde Diplomatique}} and Channel 4 News, the latter of which reported on criticism that the United States was arming 'militias' to take on the Taliban.{{cite web|url=https://www.channel4.com/news/articles/world/asia_pacific/nato%2Bturns%2Bto%2Bmilitias%2Bin%2Bafghanistan%2Bbattle/3651297.html|title=Nato turns to militias in Afghanistan battle|publisher=Channel 4 News}}

He criticised the Ministry of Defence's attempts to keep journalists away from the Afghanistan front lines, saying it was "making truth a casualty of war".{{Cite news|last=Grey|first=Stephen|date=2009-06-14|title=Stephen Grey on how the MoD is restricting access to conflict zones such as Afghanistan|language=en-GB|work=The Guardian|url=https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/jun/15/afghanistan-embedded-journalists-mod|access-date=2020-10-30|issn=0261-3077}}

• Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006.
• Operation Snakebite: The Explosive True Story of an Afghan Desert Siege. London: Viking Penguin, 2009.
• The New Spymasters: Inside the Modern World of Espionage from the Cold War to Global Terror. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2015.

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Category:English male journalists

Category:1968 births

Category:Living people

Category:Redkollegia award winners

Category:Gerald Loeb Award winners for Audio and Video