Spencer Ackerman is an American journalist and writer. Focusing primarily on national security, he began his career at The New Republic in 2002 before writing for Wired, The Guardian and The Daily Beast.
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Spencer Ackerman | |
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![]() Ackerman at Netroots Nation in 2008[1] | |
Born | (1980-06-01) June 1, 1980 (age 42) New York, New York |
Nationality | American |
Education | Rutgers University (BA) |
Occupation | Journalist |
Years active | 2002-present |
Known for | National security journalism |
Notable work | Reign of Terror |
Awards | 2012 National Magazine Award for Digital Media 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service |
Website | foreverwars |
He won a 2012 National Magazine Award for reporting on biased FBI training materials and shared in a 2014 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the 2013 global surveillance disclosures. His book Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump was named a best nonfiction book of 2021 by The New York Times, The Washington Post and Foreign Policy.
Born to a Jewish family on June 1, 1980, Ackerman grew up in a politically active household and started attending protests at age ten.[2][3][4] He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1998 and Rutgers University in 2002 with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy.[5][6]
While writing for Rutgers' student newspaper, The Daily Targum, he earned a Certificate of Merit from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association in news writing for his coverage of the recount in Florida following the 2000 U.S. presidential election.[7] Ackerman also worked for the New York Press, a free alternative weekly.[8]
Following his graduation from Rutgers, Ackerman moved to Washington, D.C. to join The New Republic where he covered national security.[9] In an interview with Columbia Journalism Review, Ackerman said witnessing the September 11 attacks influenced his decision to cover national security, which he viewed as the most important issue facing the nation at the time.[10] With colleague John Judis, he cowrote an article that led to the Plame affair.[11][12][13]
Initially a supporter of the invasion of Iraq, Ackerman became disillusioned and, beginning in January 2004, expressed opposition to the conflict in Iraq'd, a blog dedicated to covering post invasion developments in the country.[14][15] He worked at The New Republic (TNR) until 2006, when he started a blog titled Too Hot for TNR and was fired over what he described as irreconcilable ideological differences.[16][17] Editor Franklin Foer said he fired Ackerman for insubordination and disparaging the magazine on his blog.[18][19]
Ackerman next began writing for The American Prospect[20] as well as Talking Points Memo.[21] In a column for The Wall Street Journal, Marie Beaudette named Ackerman as part of a "blogging elite" in Washington, D.C..[22] Ackerman also contributed to the Washington Monthly on national security.[23]
In December 2007, Ackerman joined The Washington Independent as a senior fellow covering national security and foreign policy.[24][25] After ending publication of Too Hot for TNR in April 2008, he started a second national security blog, called Attackerman, at ThinkProgress.[26][27] In June 2008, Ackerman moved the blog to Firedoglake.[28][29]
In August 2009, Politico reported Ackerman was one of numerous reporters profiled by the Rendon Group, a public relations firm hired by the Pentagon to vet journalists requesting embeds with U.S. forces in Iraq.[30] The requests were granted based on whether their coverage of the conflict portrayed the U.S. military in a positive light.[31][32] The revelations prompted the military to end their contract with the firm.[33]
Ackerman joined Wired magazine's Danger Room in June 2010, a national security blog.[34][35]
In July 2010, The Daily Caller reported on Ackerman's membership in JournoList, a private Google Groups forum for discussing politics and the news media created by Ezra Klein in February 2007.[36] Responding to the Jeremiah Wright controversy surrounding Barack Obama's presidential campaign, Ackerman stated, "If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them – Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares – and call them racists".[37][38] Ackerman was also quoted as saying, "find a right winger's [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously, I mean this rhetorically."[39]
Ackerman's comments were made while writing for The Washington Independent.[36] In a column for The Wall Street Journal, James Taranto, criticized Ackerman for "privately strategizing about how to suppress the news."[37] Ackerman faced additional criticism from conservatives like Ed Morrissey, Daniel Foster, Matt Welch, and Andrew Sullivan.[40][41][42][43] Steve Krakauer of Mediaite and Jonathan Chait of The New Republic, however, questioned whether the forum represented a controversy,[44][45] and Chait noted that conservative bloggers participate in similar forums.[46] A spokesperson for Wired defended Ackerman, adding the publication was aware of his political views.[39]
Due to his blog's affiliation with Firedoglake, Ackerman experienced difficulties obtaining permanent press credentials from the Congressional Press Gallery.[47][48] He left Firedoglake in December 2010 to host the Attackerman blog independently.[49]
In 2011, Ackerman won the National Magazine Award for Digital Media for his series on exposing the use of Islamophobic material to train recruits in counterterrorism at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.[50][51][52] Following the revelations, at the mandate of the Obama Administration, the FBI launched an investigation and turned to the U.S. Army's Combating Terrorism Center at West Point before eventually purging the materials.[53]
In a January 2012 column for Tablet magazine, Ackerman expressed disagreement with the use of the term "Israel Firster", writing, "if you can’t do it without sounding like Pat Buchanan, who has nothing but antipathy and contempt for Jews, then you’ve lost the debate."[54] Identifying himself as part of the Jewish left, Ackerman noted the term was first used by far-right activist Willis Carto and neo-Nazi David Duke.[55] The Jerusalem Post editorial board and Commentary's then assistant editor, Alana Goodman, came to Ackerman's defense.[56][57] He was criticized by Richard Silverstein in Eurasia Review and Philip Weiss in Mondoweiss.[58][59]
In June 2013, Ackerman joined The Guardian as a national security editor, initially at their Washington bureau before relocating back to New York.[60] During his onboarding process, Ackerman's job orientation functioned as cover for a briefing on the 2013 Global surveillance disclosures, which the publication had just received from Edward Snowden.[61] He contributed to several stories on the NSA’s surveillance programs based on these leaks, leading to The Guardian winning the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.[62][63] Ackerman and colleagues also shared the Investigative Reporters and Editors medal for investigative journalisml[64] and the 2014 Scripps Howard Foundation Roy W. Howard Award for Public Service Reporting.[65]
Alongside his colleague Zach Stafford, Ackerman was a 2016 finalist for the Online New Association's Online Journalism Awards for their reporting on a previously little-known detention facility run by the Chicago Police known as Homan Square.[66] The investigation began when Ackerman profiled the U.S. military's employment of Richard Zuley, a Chicago Police investigator, to develop interrogation techniques on detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.[67] A source mentioned the Chicago Police operated a facility resembling a black site.[68] Ackerman uncovered the facility and revealed that interrogators engaged in beating, rape, excessive shackling, deprived arrestees access to counsel for extended periods, and turned attorneys away from the facility.[69][70]
Starting in 2015, Ackerman attached a statement to his email signature, warning that unilateral declarations of anonymity from potential sources would not be honored.[71] In an interview with CNN's Brian Stelter on Reliable Sources, Ackerman explained that a reporter should only grant anonymity following a discussion with the source regarding the reasons for anonymity.[72]
Ackerman joined The Daily Beast as a senior national security correspondent in May 2017, reuniting with his former editor from Wired, Noah Shachtman.[73][74]
In 2021, Ackerman stepped down at The Daily Beast[75] and launched Forever Wars, a Substack newsletter focused on international politics through a socialist lens, critiquing American militarism and exceptionalism.[76][77]
Ackerman's book Reign of Terror, a history and critique of the War on Terror was published in August 2021. It was named a best nonfiction book of 2021 by The New York Times, The Washington Post and Foreign Policy.[78][79][80]
In 2019, Ackerman co-hosted, with Laura Hudson, the "Citadel Dropouts," a Wired podcast about the final season of Game of Thrones.[81]
The Guardian
Wired
The Daily Targum
While the media focuses on "the surge," this panel takes a holistic look at Iraq in geopolitical terms for the Middle East, the U.S., and the world. Young turks of the blogosphere Matt Yglesias and Spencer Ackerman are joined by the National Security Network's Ilan Goldenberg and A.J. Rossmiller.
A Brooklyn native, he graduated from Rutgers University in 2002 with a BA in philosophy
SCULLY:What did you study at Rutgers? ACKERMAN:I was a philosophy student at Rutgers.
CM. Spencer Ackerman, "Too Close To Call," The Daily Targum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
The more I poked into the details of the wars, the more fucked up they looked. Peter Beinart [ed. note: now Jewish Currents’ editor-at-large] was the editor of TNR at the time, and the Iraq War was looking pretty bad to him as well. He thought it was important for a magazine that had done so much to advance the cause of war to have a consistent chronicle of what it was in practice, and that became my job, in the form of a blog called "Iraq’d" that I started in January 2004. By that point Iraq was totally on fire; I thought I would be writing about the uneven struggle of the Iraqi people to organize a viable democracy, and instead I was blogging about torture jails and sectarian civil war. I realized pretty quickly that I no longer held the ideological position the blog was launched from, and I felt compelled to say that. It was just obvious—though unfortunately it hadn’t been to me earlier—that Iraq was not only a mistake but a moral emergency requiring immediate redress.
The New Republic has never been a particularly modest publication; in the mid 90s it claimed to be the "in-flight magazine of Air Force One." The Libby indictment gave rise to a new boast: "When The New Republic Makes History, Are You There?" Ackerman wouldn’t be there much longer. Less than a year later, his boss Franklin Foer called and asked him to come in for a talk. Ackerman was working from home that day, maintaining the magazine’s baseball playoffs blog and posting a bit on Too Hot for TNR, his personal blog which he had just set up that weekend. Ackerman says his relationship with Foer had begun to deteriorate eight months before, in March of 2006, when Foer, who was thirty-one at the time, was given the magazine’s top job by Martin Peretz, TNR’s then owner and editor-in-chief."As I was on the bus on the way down, I thought, ‘This is it. I’m probably going to be fired.’ I’d thought that before, but this felt different," says Ackerman. This was different. Foer sat Ackerman down and told him that his behavior—both in the office and on his blog—had been unacceptable. His career at the magazine was over.
My departure is pretty mundane: the congressional press galleries are wary of giving me permanent credentials while I’m affiliated here, and I don’t want to impede any of my reporting responsibilities at my day job with Wired‘s Danger Room.
In addition to systemic undertraining with regards to hate crime laws, anti-Muslim law enforcement workshops, speakers and training materials have long been an issue in the U.S. In particular, the groundbreaking story in 2011 by Spencer Ackerman in Wired revealed a systemic anti-Muslim bias in "counterterrorism" training within the U.S. government. The Obama Administration cited Ackerman’s report in a memorandum that mandated a federal agency-wide review of all "government counterterrorism training materials." The review resulted in the purge of countless documents and training materials that contained anti-Muslim bias.
But if you can’t do it without sounding like Pat Buchanan, who has nothing but antipathy and contempt for Jews, then you’ve lost the debate.
"Israel Firster" has a nasty anti-Semitic pedigree, one that many Jews will intuitively understand without knowing its specific history. It turns out white supremacist Willis Carto was reportedly the first to use it, and David Duke popularized it through his propaganda network...Throughout my career, I’ve been associated with the Jewish left—I was to the left of the New Republic staff when I worked there, moved on to Talking Points Memo, hosted my blog at Firedoglake for years, and so on. I’ve criticized the American Jewish right’s myopic, destructive, tribal conception of what it means to love Israel.
On the Jewish website Tablet, left-wing journalist Spencer Ackerman, who said he has criticized the American Jewish Right’s "myopic, destructive, tribal conception of what it means to love Israel," nevertheless admits that by using the term "Israel-firster" one loses the debate by revealing one’s "antipathy and contempt for Jews." More profoundly, Ackerman pointed out that many on the Left who are fond of the "Israel-firster" smear and categorically deny its anti-Semitic undertone are "very good at hearing and analyzing dog-whistles when they’re used to dehumanize Arabs and Muslims."
Spencer’s column is important because it draws a line on the left between acceptable discourse – which includes plenty of discourse that may be stupid or inaccurate – and vulgar anti-Semitic fallacies that should be repudiated by all respectable progressive thinkers and writers. Every once in awhile, these lines need to be drawn.
But no, he has it precisely wrong when he attempts to lay out the "right" and "wrong" way for Jews to argue. I would concede that there are certain terms that are not just offensive, but impermissible in such arguments. Scatology, threats of violence, Nazi references–all are treif whether coming from the left or right. And I’ve censored, moderated and banned comments here on both sides of this debate.
Well Ackerman is wrong. The term Israel Firster was used by a Zionist before it was used by white supremacists. I just got a hold of the American Jewish Committee’s Yearbook for 1961. It cites the use of the term "Israel Firster" by a legendary Zionist, the late Abram Leon Sachar, the leading American historian of Jews and president of Brandeis when he said it.
Others on the team of journalists included Spencer Ackerman, James Ball, David Blishen, Gabriel Dance, Julian Borger, Nick Davies, David Leigh and Dominic Rushe. In Australia the editor was Katharine Viner and the reporter Lenore Taylor.
And as I was discussing this with a Chicago police reform activist, in the course of that conversation, that guy, Tracy Siska of the Chicago Justice Project, mentioned to me that institutional problems with Chicago policing ran so deep that Chicago even operates its own form of a black site. And I was just like, "What? That can’t be right. That doesn’t happen in the United States. That’s nuts."
Spencer Ackerman, who turned heads when he left Guardian US last week, is moving over to The Daily Beast. He'll be senior national security correspondent for the news organization... covering homeland security, counterterrorism, intel and more... and reuniting with his former colleague Noah Shachtman, who's now the Beast's exec editor. Ackerman says via email: 'The Daily Beast is the place to do the kind of journalism that matters most right now ...'
The Daily Beast as a senior national security correspondent, 'covering homeland security, counterterrorism, intel and more... and reuniting with his former colleague Noah Shachtman, who's now the Beast's exec editor,' CNN's Brian Stelter reported last night
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