Why is this interesting? - The Jane Mayer Edition

On drones, black sites, and "The Manipulator"

It’s the week of July 4th, which means lots of people are on vacation (including me). To lighten the load a bit, we’re going to be going with a format change for this week. Each day we will briefly highlight one of our favorite New Yorker writers and 3-4 pieces you should read. We’re also going to skip July 4th, as we assume many of you will be too busy with hot dogs and beer to read the day’s edition. We’ll be back the week of July 8th with our regular programming. - Noah (NRB)

Colin here. Another reporter at the New Yorker who is incredible and has a distinguished body of work at the magazine is Jane Mayer. She covers politics, culture, and national security. Some of her biggest pieces have been about the morality of drones (before drones were as big of a thing as they are now), torture, and dark money and its role in campaign finance. Not the most cheerful topics but vitally important, and she always goes very deep in whatever she’s covering. 

• The Predator War. October 2, 2009. The New Yorker. One of the earliest pieces of reporting on drones, morality, and their implications for geopolitics. She was early to home in on the idea that commanders are more likely to deploy a drone when there’s no risk of losing a pilot and how that alters the calculus of battlefield decisions. 

• The Black Sites. August 7, 2007. The New Yorker. It seems so odd to gaze back into the Obama administration in terms of foreign policy. But this piece is one of the best deep dives into the controversial world of renditions, black sites, and a world beneath the surface that many would soon forget. 

• The Manipulator. June 7, 2004. The New Yorker. A profile of one of the most enigmatic figures involved with the Iraq war. The man himself was a hall of mirrors, but Mayer manages to at least show some of the motivations and background where few other reporters could. 

Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN)