The Guantánamo “Suicides”: Winner of the National Magazine Award for Reporting

[Jefferson23]

* To honor Scott Horton, kudos to him for such excellent work!

Our congratulations to Scott Horton, whose piece “The Guantánamo ‘Suicides’,” from the March 2010 issue of Harper’s Magazine, won the National Magazine Award for Reporting last night.

Interview with Scott: Six Questions for Scott Horton, author of "The Guantanamo 'Suicides'"
Posted By Steve LeVine Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Last night, Harper's Magazine writer Scott Horton (pictured above left) won a National Magazine Award in the reporting category, beating out the favorite, Michael Hastings's Rolling Stone profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who lost his job as commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan. Horton's winning entry was "The Guantanamo 'Suicides': A Camp Delta Sergeant Blows the Whistle." The piece is an investigation of the suspicious deaths of three inmates at Guantánamo. I have known Horton since the mid-1990s, when we met in Central Asia. He was an unusual hybrid of corporate lawyer and human rights defender. His writing career began a bit later -- in the early years of the Bush administration with an email blast called "No Comment," a compilation of links and short commentary on national politics that he distributed to friends and interested colleagues. Its searing approach attracted much attention, led to the blog being absorbed by Harper's, and now recognition for this breakthrough article. Horton conducts his own email interviews in a "Six Questions" format, so I asked him to submit to the same. His replies follow.

in full: http://oilandglory.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/05/10/six_questions_for_scott_horton_author_of_the_guantanamo_suicides

The work he won for is here:


The Guantanamo “suicides”:
A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle
By Scott Horton


1. “Asymmetrical Warfare”
When President Barack Obama took office last year, he promised to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great.” Toward that end, the president issued an executive order declaring that the extra-constitutional prison camp at Guantánamo Naval Base “shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.” Obama has failed to fulfill his promise. Some prisoners there are being charged with crimes, others released, but the date for closing the camp seems to recede steadily into the future. Furthermore, new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the George W. Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously—and may even have continued—a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006.

remainder: http://harpers.org/archive/2010/03/0082865