Jane Mayer

Jane Mayer
Born	1955 New York City
Occupation	journalist and author
Notable credit(s)	The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal
Spouse	William B. Hamilton
Children	daughter
Relatives	grandfather: Allan Nevins

Jane Mayer (born 1955 in New York City ) is an American investigative journalist who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine since 1995. In recent years, she has written extensive articles for that publication on Dick Cheney, the bin Laden family, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, the Koch family, the television series 24 and the US government's controversial policy of extraordinary rendition.

Education

Mayer is a 1973 graduate of Fieldston and a 1977 graduate of Yale University, where she was a campus stringer for Time magazine. She continued her studies at Oxford University.

Career

Mayer began her journalistic career in Vermont, writing for two small weekly papers, The Weathersfield Weekly and The Black River Tribune, then moving on to a daily paper, The Rutland Herald. She was a metropolitan reporter for the now-defunct Washington Star, then joined The Wall Street Journal in 1982, where she worked for 12 years, during which time she was named the newspaper's first female White House correspondent, and subsequently senior writer and front page editor. She also served as a war correspondent and foreign correspondent for the Journal, where she reported on bombing of the American barracks in Beirut, the Persian Gulf War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the last days of Communism in the former Soviet Union. She was nominated twice by the Journal for the Pulitzer Prize for feature-writing.

Mayer has also contributed to the New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and the liberal American Prospect and co-authored two previous books—Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas (1994) (written with Jill Abramson), a study of the nomination and appointment of Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court, and Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984–1988 (1989) (written with Doyle McManus), an account of Ronald Reagan's second term in the White House. Strange Justice served as the basis for the Showtime television movie of the same name, starring Delroy Lindo, Mandy Patinkin and Regina Taylor.

Of the portrait painted by co-authors Abramson and Mayer of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in Strange Justice, Time said: "Its portrait of Thomas as an id suffering in the role of a Republican superego is more detailed and convincing than anything that has appeared so far." Of Landslide, New York Times Washington correspondent Steven V. Roberts, reviewing the book in The Times, said "this is clearly a reporter's book, full of rich anecdote and telling detail.... I am impressed with the amount of inside information collected here."

Although Mayer is one of the foremost progressive journalists in Washington, routinely taking on conservatives and capitalism, she is, ironically, the great-great-granddaughter of Emanuel Lehman, a founder of Lehman Brothers, and a granddaughter of Allan Nevins, who in several books about the Rockefeller family (including the authorized biography of John D. Rockefeller) held Rockefeller and other robber barons up as heroes of American capitalism.

Mayer is married to William B. Hamilton, a former editor at The Washington Post and now an editor at the Politico website. Hamilton's father was a foreign correspondent and U.N. bureau chief for The Times and his grandfather was the editor and publisher of The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle and a member of the Democratic National Committee. They have one daughter, Kate.

The Dark Side

Mayer's third and latest nonfiction book, The Dark Side (2008), addresses the origins, legal justifications, and possible war crimes liability, of the use of interrogation techniques to break down detainees' resistance and the subsequent deaths of detainees under such interrogation as applied by the CIA. The book was a finalist for the National Book Awards. Her previous book Strange Justice was also a finalist for the National Book Award for nonfiction in 1994. Both books were also finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

In its review of The Dark Side, the New York Times noted that the book is "the most vivid and comprehensive account we have so far of how a government founded on checks and balances and respect for individual rights could have been turned against those ideals." The Times subsequently named The Dark Side one of its notable books of the year.

"Her achievement," wrote reviewer Andrew J. Bacevich in The Washington Post of Mayer's book, "lies less in bringing new revelations to light than in weaving into a comprehensive narrative a story revealed elsewhere in bits and pieces." The volume, wrote Bacevich, a Boston University professor, "is a very fine book."

In a story the previous day, Post reporter Joby Warrick reported that Mayer's book revealed that a Central Intelligence Agency analyst warned the Bush administration that "up to a third of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have been imprisoned by mistake," but that the administration ignored the warning and insisted that all were enemy combatants.

In a story appearing the same day in The New York Times, reporter Scott Shane revealed that Mayer's book disclosed that Red Cross officials had concluded in a secret report the previous year that "the Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes."

Said Mayer of her work on the book: "I see myself more as a reporter than as an advocate."

Appearances

Author Mayer has appeared as a guest on the Charlie Rose Show, as well as on the David Letterman show on CBS. She was also a guest on the Bill Moyers Journal show on PBS in 2008, and appeared as a guest on PBS Tavis Smiley show on August 7, 2008, to discuss her book The Dark Side, which had just made the New York Times bestseller list. She appeared as a guest on the Comedy Central's Colbert Report on August 12, 2008.

On January 26, 2009, author Mayer was interviewed at Yale Law School's Law and Media lecture series by Distinguished Journalist in Residence Linda Greenhouse and Truman Capote Fellow in Creative Writing Emily Bazelon. In October 2008, Mayer participated in a panel discussion of journalists at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University devoted to the media's coverage of the Iraq War. That same month Mayer participated as a panelist in a discussion of the same subject at the Newseum in Washington, D.C..

Mayer was also interviewed on the C-SPAN Book-TV show by Washington Post reporter Dana Priest on the subject of The Dark Side. The show aired on July 19, 2008.

Mayer has appeared on the Democracy Now! show.

Mayer was a featured speaker, along with Dan Rather, Marcy Wheeler, and Victor Navasky, for a September 2009 fundraiser for The Nation magazine.

Awards and honors

Mayer was awarded the 2008 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism for her investigative reporter leading to her book The Dark Side. The Award, presented annually by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, is given to reporters for "distinguished cumulative accomplishments." In presenting the award, Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Journalism school and one of the nine members of the award committee, noted that Mayer and her fellow winner, Andrew C. Revkin, science reporter for The New York Times, "set the gold standard for journalists, and we have benefitted tremendously from their dedication and hard work." She has also won the Ridenhour Book Prize and the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.

Mayer was a finalist in the National Magazine Awards for 2007 for her nonfiction piece in The New Yorker entitled The Black Sites, which was subsequently collected in The Best American Magazine Writing 2008, published by Columbia University Press and edited by Jacob Weisberg, then editor-in-chief of Slate.

In 2008, Mayer was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in connection with her ongoing work on her third book, The Dark Side. In 2009 Mayer was awarded the Hillman Prize and the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for The Dark Side.

Political positions

Mayer is an unabashed progressive who has been praised for her staunch advocacy journalism but assailed by right-wing critics. For example, John Hinderaker wrote in 2011, “Jane Mayer is an agenda journalist....Her entire career has been spent carrying water for the Left.” She excels both at relatively light “Talk of the Town” pieces for the New Yorker, in which has provided intimate personal portraits of people like Nancy Pelosi, Walter Mondale, and environmental activist Bill McKibben, and at lengthy, searing critiques of powerful and dangerous figures on the right.

A number of respected figures in both the traditional and electronic media have given Mayer's work publicity and praise. After the publication of Strange Justice, Howard Kurtz noted in the Washington Post that in the preceding few days Mayer and her co-author had “been featured on three ABC programs – 'Turning Point,' 'Nightline' and 'Good Morning America' – as well as on 'Larry King Live,' 'CNN & Co.' and National Public Radio. The Journal and Newsweek have published excerpts; People has a two-page spread.” Mayer's admirers in the media have also been quick to defend her from brutal criticisms from the right.

In September 2009 Mayer was a featured speaker at a fundraiser for the progressive magazine The Nation. She has been a frequent guest on the progressive program “Democracy Now!”

And she has participated in a number of events under the auspices of the Open Society Foundation, and was involved with an important documentary that was produced with the aid of George Soros.

“Covert Operations: The Billionaire Brothers Who Are Waging a War Against Obama,” Mayer's lengthy critique of Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries, appeared in The New Yorker on August 30, 2010, and created a sensation. Mayer was widely praised for having exposed a nefarious source of funding for right-wing causes. Some on the right, however, insisted that the article was unfair. Joseph Lawler, for example, wrote in the American Spectator that “Mayer's article paints a grim portrait of the Koch brothers without actually reporting anything objectionable that they might have done.” And at the National Review, Reihan Salam called Mayer's essay “disappointing.”

Smear campaign against Mayer

After the publication of Mayer's article on the Koch brothers, she became the target of smears from the right. At the Gawker website, Hamilton Nolan wrote that Mayer had “apparently become the victim of a disturbing, organized smear campaign.” At the New York Post, Keith J. Kelly asked: “Who is behind the apparently concerted campaign to smear The New Yorker's Jane Mayer?”

Herman Cain

In a powerful October 2011 piece at the New Yorker blog, Mayer explored the financial ties between the Koch brothers and presidential candidate Herman Cain. The Kochs responded: “Advocacy journalism is once again on display at the New Yorker in Jane Mayer’s latest distortions regarding Koch.”

Art Pope

On October 10, 2011, The New Yorker published a long and searching piece by Mayer about North Carolina Republic figure Art Pope entitled “State for Sale: A conservative multimillionaire has taken control in North Carolina, one of 2012's top battlegrounds.” It created a sensation.

Mayer supplemented her article on Pope with a blog entry pointing out that Pope, who preaches self-reliance, had in fact received money from his parents.

The article drew predictable criticism from the right, however. At the conservative-leaning Chronicle of Higher Education website, Mark Bauerlein called it “a tendentious, poorly-researched, and weakly argued bit of journalism....Mayer’s ideology places every word and deed of Pope in cynical or dastardly light” At the right-wing Daily Caller, J. Peder Zane wrote that Mayer's article on Pope was “being taken as gospel in liberal circles, already receiving glowing coverage in The Huffington Post and on 'The Rachel Maddow Show.'” And George Leef at the reactionary National Review wrote that “Mayer is clearly playing to leftist readers who lap up the notion that whenever a person with wealth uses some of it in an effort at slowing or reversing the growth of governmental power, that is something dangerous and intellectually disreputable.”

John Hinderaker of the right-wing Power Line blog described Mayer's essay on Pope as “Mayer’s latest effort on behalf of the Democratic Party” and said “Mayer is of the shamelessly hypocritical liberal money=good, conservative money=bad school.”

Art Pope also replied in National Review, and an employee of the Pope Center, George Leef, replied on that organization's website.

The CIA and Torture

On March 29, 2010, the New Yorker published a review by Mayer of “Courting Disaster: How the C.I.A. Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack” (Regnery; $29.95), by the right-wing author Marc A. Thiessen, who defended CIA intelligence acquired using “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Mayer's verdict was that “Thiessen is better at conveying fear than at relaying the facts.”

Thiessen replied at the American Enterprise Institute website, claiming that the review was “replete with factual errors, contradictions, and straw men.” There ensued an intense exchange over the review between liberal blogger Conor Friedersdorf, and Thiessen.

After the murder of Osama bin Laden, Mayer posted a blog entry in which she criticized the conservative group Keep America Safe for its “victory statement...that entirely failed to mention President Obama, but lavishly credited 'the men and women of America’s intelligence services who, through their interrogation of high-value detainees, developed the information that apparently led us to bin Laden.'” As Mayer put it, “You would think that if the C.I.A.’s interrogation of high-value detainees was all it took, the U.S. government would have succeeded in locating bin Laden before 2006.”

Occupy Wall Street

On November 23, 2011, in an interview with Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC, Mayer criticized Occupy Wall Street for its lack of organization, but expressed sympathy with the movement's progressive philosophy and aims.

In 1998, the right-wing commentator Reed Irvine wrote in the Washington Times that President Clinton had “had considerable success over his long political career in planting negative stories about his foes with cooperative journalists.” Irvine said that Mayer was one such journalist.

In 2000, Irvine and Cliff Kincaid wrote at the so-called Accuracy in Media site that Mayer's presence at a Clinton White House dinner “demonstrates what is wrong with the political and media cultures in Washington, D.C.,” and feebly attempted to link the invitation to information Mayer had received about Paula Tripp from sources at the Pentagon.

Smearing Mayer about neighborhood problems

In 2006, right-wing media in the Washington, D.C., area sought to use a conflict with a neighboring family to paint Mayer and Hamilton in a bad light. After complaints by them an d other neighbors, a judge ruled that a house next to Mayer and Hamilton would have to be torn down because it was “seven feet too close to the street and two feet too close” to Mayer and Hamilton's house. Later, a second judge overruled the earlier ruling and said that the home would not need to be torn down.

Bibliography

• The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals (2008) ISBN 0385526393
• With Doyle McManus, Landslide: The Unmaking of the President 1984–1988 (1989) ISBN 0-395-45185-X
• With Jill Abramson, Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas (1994) ISBN 0-395-63318-4

External links

• "Clarence Thomas's Revenge" (American Prospect, July 30, 2001)
• "Contract Sport: What did the Vice-President do for Halliburton?" The New Yorker, February 16/23, 2004)
• "Outsourcing Torture: The secret history of America’s 'extraordinary rendition'" program (The New Yorker, February 14, 2005)
• Interview about Outsourcing Torture on Democracy Now, February 17, 2005 (video, audio, and print transcript)
• Hour-long interview about The Dark Side on Democracy Now, July 18, 2008 (video, audio, and print transcript)
• Interview on Authors@Google YouTube, August 8, 2008
• Hour-long interview on Conversations with History with Harry Kreisler
• Jane Mayer archive from The New York Review of Books
• The Hard Cases, Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, February 23, 2009
• Thiessen, Marc (April 14, 2010). "Jane Mayer’s Disaster". National Review. http://article.nationalreview.com/431280/jane-mayers-disaster/marc-a-thiessen?page=1. Retrieved 14 April 2010.