The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "suspicion" ...
-
Policing For Profit
NewsChannel 5's award-winning investigative team wrapped up a two-year investigation into practices that some call "policing for profit" with a primetime documentary that aired Friday, Dec. 21. The one-hour special included actual police "dashcam" videos of officers seizing cash from out-of-state drivers and extended interviews that have never been aired. The documentary examines civil forfeiture laws that allow Tennessee police to legally take cash from individuals based on suspicion that the money might be linked to drug trafficking. If an individual does not take legal action to recover the money, the police agency gets to keep it all – sometimes to pay the salaries of the officers seizing the cash. As our investigation showed, such "profit motives" create the potential for corruption.
Tags: Police officers; corruption; drug trafficking; civil forfeiture laws
-
Bales: Army suspect in Afghan shooting was liable in financial fraud
On the day that tips arose about a U.S. soldier who may have strafed two Afghan villages, I left the office for a flight to Tacoma. Within 48 hours of the soldier’s being identified as Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, I and two colleagues broke the news that the emerging hagiography of Bales drafted by family and attorneys had more to it than the story of a soldier who enlisted at the ripe of 27 driven by outrage over the 2001 terrorist attacks—and then broken down by an unrelenting cycle of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Our story started with pure spidey senses: Bales’ s family and lawyer said he had left a stockbroker’s career to enlist, as they explained his call to serve. Yet he had not finished college and clearly had financial troubles, I had determined. And he was active in brokerage in the late 1990s in Florida I learned by checking assorted online records—which raised my suspicions about the quick-money penny stock trading that was commonplace then. Based on those instincts, while also doing the running daily story from Bales’ Army base in Washington state, I had checked some online brokerage records and enlisted Julie Tate to look at others and run through civil and criminal filings in Ohio (Bales’s home state and then nationally). Within an hour, I had found one suspicious record and Julie had found others and we were off on a 30-hour run of investigative reporting and boots on the ground interviews that yielded the breaking news of Bales’s more complicated—and less laudatory—past in the period just before he joined the Army. We located and I interviewed an elderly couple who had lost substantial savings in accounts managed by Bales and received copies of detailed financial records that corroborated their claims and showed Bales as the account manager. We also peeled back corporate records for a now-shuttered firm run by Bales and his brother with backing from a longtime friend and reached him to further flesh out the checkered professional history of the Staff Sgt. at the center of an explosive, fast-moving and intensely competitive story. The story demanded intense investigative reporting that netted notable results in far far less than 30 days of a breaking event.
Tags: U.S. soldier; Afghanistan; military draft; terrorist attacks; deployment
-
Making Mistakes: Absentee Ballot Investigation
The story reveals problems with the counting of absentee ballots for the 2008 US Senate election recount. Apparently, absentee ballots were being accepted and counted, even though they didn’t follow the strict rules of the state. The final margin of victory was “312 votes”. Not a large number and leads to suspicion, which has made way for changes in the way future votes will be counted.
Tags: Al Franken; Norm Coleman; Senator; state government; general elections; senate seat; election judge
-
Abuse of Power
This series is an investigation into former CSUPD Chief Dexter Yarbrough. Before the investigation began, he had been placed on paid administrative leave and this raised suspicion from J. David McSwane. After much research and interviewing, David revealed a number of cases of misconduct by Yarbrough. These cases of misconduct included sexual harassment and other illegal behaviors. After everything was revealed, Yarbrough resigned and now hiring of university officials and police personnel is highly assessed.
Tags: Colorado State University (CSU); law enforcement; education; college; universities; police officer; Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity(OEOD)
-
Fugitive in the Philippines
The story investigates an “unsolved disappearance and murder of a little boy and two mothers”. It is believed the serial killer is hiding in Southeast Asia, which is where the investigation led and even brought them to the suspect. He was the last known person to see the victims alive and detectives believe the” interview has helped them gather additional information”.
Tags: murderer; cold case; homicide; mystery; evidence; hiding; criminal; suspicion; vanish; depart
-
Twilight of The Assassins
"The first act of airline terrorism in the Americas was not 9/11 but thrity years ago, when seventy-three people died in the mid air bombing of a Cuban passengers plane. Now, one of the alleged masterminds lives freely in Miami, while another awaits trialon other charges in Texas. For decades, Fidel Castro (and later jaoined by Hugo Chavez) insisted that the CIA was ehind the bombing. However, the Bush administration has been loathe to release its 30 years of CIA and FBI files to finally resolve enduring suspicions.
Tags: bombing; airlines; airplanes; Fidel Castro; Cuba; CIA; FBI
-
Suspicions and Spies in Silicon Valley
This investigation details the Hewlett-Packard spying scandal. It discusses how the obsession of HP chairman Patricia Dunn to root out the source of press leaks from the boardroom led to covert tracking of directors' phone records. That surveillance eventually led to Dunn's resignation and indictment by the state of California.
Tags: technology; computers; corporate intelligence; business; corporate ethics; SEC; FCC; FTC; Justice Department
-
The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11
Suskind identifies the doctrine, formulated by Vice President Cheney,as one that "separates analysis from action and embraces suspicion as a threshold for the use of American power." Suskind says Cheney was "the primary architect of U.S. foreign policy" during the period the book profiles, from immediately following 9/11/2001 until 2004. Suskind says in his IRE contest questionnaire that he was able to reassure several sources that he was willing to go to jail for an indefinite period of time to avoid nasming sources; and gave an example of his unwillingness "to reveal sources within ther government to quash the disinformation from ther FBI. Suskind says "The incident is, tereby, instructive in regard to new rules of engagement: the government will release information to cloud an independent report if they are convinced the reporter will be unable, or unwilling to reveal his sources."
Tags: FBI; CIA; NSA; NSC; Iraq; Pentagon; bin Laden; Zawahiri; White House; war on terror; al Qaeda; disinformation; Weapons of Mass Destruction; WMD; Chemical weapons; human sources; humint; sigint; George Tenet; Condoleeza Rice; Zubaydah; DCI
-
UMC abuse suspicions were ignored
The story explored how a hospital that has received national honors for nursing excellence allowed a sexual predator to work there for two years, often with patients who were sedated or had limited mobility.
Tags: sexual abuse; nursing care; hospital care; patient abuse; sexual predator; FOIA
-
A Hoax Most Cruel
The author investigated the case of a young woman who worked at a McDonalds 25 miles out of Louisville. She was called into the office by a supervisor who had a man on the telephone claiming to be a police officer who said she was under suspicion for theft and drugs. Her female supervisor, on the word of this "officer" told the girl to strip and detained her for four hours, humiliating and abusing her. This had not been the first hoax of this nature directed to a McDonalds franchise and yet no one had warned the managers of the restaurants.
Tags: sexual abuse; hoax calls; McDonalds; FOIA; unlawful imprisonment