David S. Rohde

"David Rohde" redirects here. For the political scientist, seeDavid W. Rohde.

David S. Rohde
Rohde at the 2018 Pulitzer Prizes
Born	David Stephenson Rohde (1967-08-07)August 7, 1967 Maine,United States
Education	Brown University(B.A.,1990)
Occupation	Investigative journalist
Notable credit(s)	1996Pulitzer Prizewinner 2010Michael Kelly Awardwinner
Spouse	Kristen Mulvihill

David Stephenson Rohde(born August 7, 1967) is anAmericanauthor andinvestigative journalist,he is the former online news director forThe New Yorkerand now serves as Senior Executive Editor, National Security, forNBC News.While a reporter forThe Christian Science Monitor,he won thePulitzer Prize for International Reportingin 1996 for his coverage of theSrebrenica massacre.From 2002 until 2005, he was co-chief ofThe New York Times'South Asiabureau, based inNew Delhi,India.He later contributed to the newspaper's team coverage ofAfghanistanandPakistanthat received the 2009Pulitzer Prizefor International Reporting and was a finalist in his own right in the category in 2010.He is also a global affairs analyst forCNN.

While in Afghanistan, Rohde waskidnapped by members of the Talibanin November 2008, but managed to escape in June 2009 after seven months in captivity. While he was in captivity,The New York Timescollaborated with a number ofmedia outlets,includingal-Jazeeraand Wikipedia,to remove news of the kidnapping from the public eye. This was done to decrease his value as a hostage and bargaining chip, and so increase his chances of eventual survival.

Background

Rohde is a native ofMaine.He is a graduate ofFryeburg Academy,aboarding schoollocated inFryeburg,Maine.He attendedBates Collegebefore transferring toBrown University,where he received aB.A.in history in 1990.He is married to Kristen Mulvihill, apicture editorforCosmopolitanmagazine.

Reporting

Rohde worked as a production secretary for theABC NewsWorld News Tonightprogram from June 1990 to August 1991 and as a production associate for ABC'sNew Turning Pointfrom January to July 1993. He has also worked as afreelancereporter based in theBaltic republics,Cuba,andSyria.He served as a county and municipal reporter forThe Philadelphia Inquirerfrom July 1993 to June 1994 before joiningThe Christian Science Monitor.He initially covered national news, reporting fromBoston,New York City,andWashington, D.C.In November 1994, he was sent toZagreb,Croatia,to work as the newspaper'sEastern Europeancorrespondent,in which role he helped to expose theethnic cleansingandgenocideof theMuslimpopulation of easternBosnia.He joinedThe New York Timesin April 1996and worked for them through mid-2011. He reported from Afghanistan for the first three months of the US-ledwar against the Talibanand served as co-chief of theTimes's South Asia bureau from 2002 to 2005. From 2005 to 2011, he was a member of theTimes's investigations department in New York City.Before joiningThe New Yorkerin May 2017, he worked forReutersin a variety of capacities, including foreign affairs columnist (2011-2013), investigative reporter (2014-2015) and national security investigations editor (2015-2017).

He was described by hisTimescolleagues as "an intrepid yet unassuming reporter who conducts himself modestly around the office, predictably attired in neatly ironed Oxford shirts and, often, his weatheredBoston Red Soxcap. "

Srebrenica

Rohde was the first outside eyewitness of the aftermath of the Srebrenica massacrewhen he traveled to the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica andZepain August 1995, a month after the fall of the towns to theArmy of the Republika Srpska.He reported seeing human bones, "Muslim prayer beads, clothing and still legible receipts and election ballots from Srebrenica", as well as shell casings and ammunition boxes in the vicinity of three large mass graves. He described being told that Bosnian Serb troops were hunting down and summarily executing Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) from the town.He subsequently located eyewitnesses to the massacre and wrote about the circumstances that led up to the killings.

He returned to theRepublika Srpskain October 1995 to follow up his article on the Srebrenica massacre, but was secretly arrested by Bosnian Serb authorities on October 29 in the town ofZvornik,around 80 miles fromSarajevo.He was charged with "illegal border crossing and staying on the territory of the Republika Srpska and for falsifying documents".He was held captive in the Bosnian Serb-held town ofBijeljinafor ten days, during which he was repeatedly interrogated, harassed and kept in a 10-foot-by-20-foot (3m by 7m) cell with five other inmates for over 23 hours a day. Rohde was sentenced to 15 days' imprisonment on the first two charges and was due to be sentenced on the spying charge before he was released.The trial had been held in Serbo-Croatian and, although a translator was present,there was no defense lawyer and no US diplomatic representation as required by theVienna Convention.The espionage charge, the most serious of the three, was "punishable by three to 15 years (imprisonment) in peacetime and 10 years to death in wartime."

Rohde's capture was not initially admitted by the Bosnian Serb authorities, who gave conflicting answers as to whether he had been detained and where he was being held. Five days after he was taken prisoner, the Bosnian Serb news agency issued a statement on his capture. The US Government subsequently brought to bear intense diplomatic pressure to release him. A key role was played byKati Marton,an author and journalist married to the US envoyRichard Holbrooke,who was negotiating with the Serbian presidentSlobodan Miloševićto end theBosnian War.Marton, who was at the time the chairwoman of theCommittee to Protect Journalists,intervened repeatedly during the talks that led to theDayton Agreementto persuade Milošević to use his influence to secure Rohde's release.TheUS Secretary of StateWarren Christopherwas also involved in pressing for Rohde's release at the Dayton talks.A variety of other political and journalistic figures were also involved in campaigning on Rohde's behalf, including SenatorBob Dole,Peter Jennings,Ted Koppel,Samantha Power,andDavid Frost.Rohde was subsequently pardoned by order of the Bosnian Serb leader,Radovan Karadžićin what Karadžić characterized as a goodwill gesture.

Following his release, Rohde reported that he had reached Srebrenica and found substantial evidence of the massacre at four of six of the mass grave sites previously identified by US reconnaissance aircraft and satellites and commented: "A final, accurate accounting of the Srebrenica massacres will only come if Sahanici and the other five sites are dredged for the truth." He described the circumstances of his arrest: "This correspondent changed the date of issue on a Bosnian Serb press accreditation from 19/12/94 to 29/10/95 and used it to pass through Bosnian Serb checkpoints and reach the area. This correspondent was arrested at the execution site by Bosnian Serb police, stripped of all documents and photos taken of the area, accused of espionage, and jailed for 10 days."His ordeal in captivity and the subsequent negotiations to free him were described in detail in a three-part special report published a few days later.

Rohde's reporting from Bosnia, according to the British journalistHenry Porter,"had a deep effect on the journalists who had covered the Bosnian civil war. They became not so much militarised as passionately committed to fighting Milosevic's regime... if Rohde had not – at some personal risk – set out to prove the rumours about the massacres, a great truth would have been buried along with the thousands of men from Srebrenica."Porter observed that "the extent of the slaughter might not have emerged if it had not been for the bravery of David Rohde."

Rohde went on to testify before theUS House of RepresentativesCommittee on Security and Cooperation in Europe in December 1995 on what he had seen at Srebrenica.He returned to Srebrenica with a group of Western reporters at the start of April 1996, reporting that "approximately 70 percent of the larger of the two mass graves and approximately 50 percent of the smaller of the two have been recently dug up" and that other evidence that he had seen the previous October had been removed.

Also in April 1996, Rohde won thePolk Awardfor foreign reporting, being cited for "risking his life to uncover the Srebrenica massacres of Bosnian Muslims, the worst genocide in Europe since the Holocaust."Shortly afterwards, Rohde was awarded the 1996 Pulitzer Prize "for his persistent on-site reporting of the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica.

In 1997, Rohde published a widely acclaimed account of the massacre,Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II(published in paperback asA Safe Area: Srebrenica – Europe's Worst Massacre Since the Second World War). It was described as a "masterly" account of how "good – but conflicted and weakly held – Western intentions were swept away by the racist imperatives of the Serb leaders."Writing inThe Guardian,Julian Borger declared it to be "essential reading" and commented: "It is journalism at its committed best – painstaking, compassionate, full of telling detail and rigorous in its judgments."

Rohde's work was the subject of study by a class in "Elements of International Reporting" atColumbia University's journalism schoolin spring 2001. The study explained: "We felt that Rohde's work was ideal for a case study in reporting on gross human rights violations, presenting opportunities to study both the professional techniques and the moral issues that pertain to such work."

Detainees

While atThe New York Times,Rohde has written about the wars in Afghanistan andIraq.He has reported among other things on the hardships endured by men detained and released from theU.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay,Cuba.During 2004 and 2005 he wrote extensively on the treatment of detainees at the notoriousAbu Ghraibprison inBaghdadand at theBagram Air Basein Afghanistan. He also broke the story of the full extent of the US Government's roundup of American Muslims following theSeptember 11, 2001 attacks.The American Prospectnoted:

Because of pervasive secrecy, little was known about how the detainees were treated untilThe New York Timespublished a story by David Rohde on January 20, 2003. It was datelined Karachi, Pakistan. Rohde had interviewed six Pakistani men deported from the United States after being detained inJohn Ashcroft's sweep.

In April 2009, Rohde shared in a second Pulitzer Prize, awarded to the staff ofThe New York Timesfor "its masterful, groundbreaking coverage of America's deepening military and political challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan, reporting frequently done under perilous conditions."

Kidnapping

Main article:Kidnapping of David Rohde

In November 2008, while in Afghanistan doing research for a book, Rohde and two associates were kidnapped by members of theTaliban.After being held captive for seven months and ten days, in June 2009 Rohde and one of his associates escaped and made their way to safety. The other associate escaped a month later.During his captivity, Rohde's colleagues atThe New York Timesappealed to other members of the news media not to publish any stories relating to the abduction. The resultingmedia blackoutof Rohde's kidnapping has caused a wider debate about the responsibility to report news in a timely manner.Wikipediaco-founderJimmy Walescomplied with a request from theTimesto maintain the blackout, which he did through severaladministrators.

Recognition

In January 2012, Rohde was named one of theInternational Press Institute'sWorld Press Freedom Heroes.

See also

• List of solved missing person cases

Bibliography

• Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II(1997;Farrar, Straus and Giroux;ISBN0-374-25342-0/ 1998;Westview Press;ISBN0-8133-3533-7)
• A Safe Area: Srebrenica – Europe's Worst Massacre Since the Holocaust,1997.
• David Rohde and Kristen Mulvihill,A Rope and a Prayer: A Kidnapping from Two Sides,2010.
• In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth about America's "Deep State"(2020. W. W. Norton & Company)

External links

• AppearancesonC-SPAN
• Held by The Taliban: A Reporting Trip Becomes a Kidnapping– Interactive feature fromThe New York Times