Jeremy Scahill
BLUF
Jeremy Scahill is the leading investigative journalist covering US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), private military contractors, and the targeted killing program. His work produced the first comprehensive public documentation of Blackwater’s operational role in Iraq and the institutional architecture of JSOC’s global “dirty wars.” He co-founded The Intercept (2014) with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras using the Snowden archive as editorial foundation. His journalism constitutes primary source material for vault investigations into US covert action and targeted killing.
Core Works
Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (2007)
First comprehensive investigation of Blackwater (later renamed Academi) and the broader privatization of US military and intelligence functions. Documents: Blackwater’s role in Iraq contractor killings; the September 16, 2007 Nisour Square massacre (17 Iraqi civilians killed); Erik Prince’s ideological and financial connections to the US right; the systematic outsourcing of CIA and Special Operations functions to private contractors with no accountability architecture.
Analytical significance: Demonstrates that the private military industry is not a peripheral footnote but a structural feature of US covert action — providing deniability, circumventing congressional restrictions, and externalizing accountability for lethal operations.
Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield (2013)
The most detailed public account of JSOC’s global operations under both Bush and Obama administrations. Primary findings:
- JSOC’s operational expansion beyond Afghanistan/Iraq into Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Mali, and dozens of other countries under AUMF 2001 authority
- The Night Raids program in Afghanistan: systematic targeted killing operations that killed numerous civilians and produced systematic civilian grievance
- The targeting and killing of Anwar al-Awlaki (US citizen, Yemen, 2011) — primary reporting on the disposition matrix and kill list process
- JSOC as a “secret army” operating outside normal military chain of command, reporting directly to the Defense Secretary and President
Published simultaneously as a documentary film (2013), nominated for Academy Award.
The Intercept (co-founded 2014)
The Intercept published the “Drone Papers” in 2015 — a cache of classified JSOC documents provided by a government whistleblower documenting: kill chain procedures, casualty assessment methodology (and its systematic failures), the drone assassination targeting process in Afghanistan/Somalia/Yemen. The Drone Papers constitute the primary-source internal documentation of targeted killing operations.
Analytical Significance
Scahill’s reporting is analytically significant because he documents the institutional rather than the individual dimensions of US covert violence — the bureaucratic processes, chain of command, contracting relationships, and accountability vacuums that characterize the program. This institutional frame is essential for vault analysis: the targeted killing program is not a series of individual decisions but a standing organizational capability with its own logic, incentives, and self-perpetuating dynamics.
Key Connections
- CIA — covert action and contractor relationships
- Targeted Killing Doctrine — Dirty Wars is the primary journalistic source
- Proxy Warfare — private military contractor as proxy mechanism
- JSOC-Targeted-Killing-Drone-Papers — direct primary source
Sources
- Scahill, Jeremy. Blackwater (2007, Nation Books)
- Scahill, Jeremy. Dirty Wars (2013, Nation Books)
- The Intercept, “The Drone Papers” (October 2015)