1. Murray S Waas is an American independent journalist and investigative journalist best known for his coverage of the White House planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and ensuing controversies and American political scandals such as the Plame affair.
For much of his career, Waas focused on national security reporting, but has written about social issues and corporate malfeasance.
Murray Waas was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and originally hoped to have a career in law and city politics.
Murray Waas first began taking classes at age 16, while still in high school, as part of a program that allowed some accomplished students to begin college early.
Murray Waas later left college prior to graduation to instead work as a journalist.
In 1987, when Murray Waas was only twenty-six years old, he learned that he had a life-threatening "advanced form" of cancer.
Murray Waas was credited with saving the lives of countless other cancer patients like himself, and making sure that tens of thousands of other people did not have their insurance unfairly canceled.
Several of the individuals involved in the political battle to have the sanctions imposed have credited Murray Waas' reporting as indispensable to making the sanctions the law and official policy of the United States, without which Amin would have likely remained in power, and his genocide would have continued unabated.
Murray Waas's rule was defined by torture, support for international terrorism, extrajudicial killings, the barbaric and random murders of ordinary citizens, and ethnic cleansing.
Nurnberger wrote that the congressional initiative to impose the sanctions had attracted scant attention or support outside a small number of members of Congress and congressional staff interested in the matter until "Jack Anderson assigned one of his reporters, Murray Waas to follow the issue" and to regularly write about it.
The tremendous reach of Anderson's column amplified Murray Waas' reporting on Amin and his advocacy of sanctions.
Murray Waas was eighteen and nineteen years old at the time he wrote the series of columns.
Murray Waas won an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship in 1992 to research and write about the rights of the institutionalized and incarcerated in the US For his fellowship, he investigated substandard conditions and questionable deaths at institutions for the mentally retarded, mental hospitals, nursing homes, juvenile detention centers, and jails and prisons.
In 1998 and 1999, Murray Waas reported on Whitewater and the Clinton impeachment for Salon.
Also during the Trump administration, Murray Waas broke more than two dozen significant stories regarding special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, focusing primarily on whether President Trump obstructed justice during investigations by the FBI, Justice Department, and special counsel Robert Mueller into whether Trump or anyone close to him had encouraged had aided a covert initiative to prevent Hillary Clinton's election as president in 20016, and help elect Trump.
Murray Waas broke the first story disclosing that former FBI Director James Comey had corroboratory witnesses when it came to Comey's allegations that President Trump ordered him to shut down an FBI investigation into whether his then National Security Advisor Micheal Flynn had lied to the FBI about his conversations with a Russian diplomat, while Trump and Comey were completely alone in the Oval Office, on February 14,2017.
Murray Waas wrote that more than one of the senior FBI officials made contemporaneous notes of their conversations with Comey regarding Trump's obstruction of justice.
Murray Waas was one of the first reporters to disclose how President Trump attempted to exploit the US Department of Justice to improperly investigate his perceived political enemies.
On November 9,2018, Murray Waas reported in Vox that then-Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker had privately advised Trump as to how the Justice Department might be exploited to investigate Trump's political adversaries.
In 2019, Murray Waas broke numerous other exclusive stories for The New York Review of Books about the first impeachment investigation of President Trump.
In 2019 and 2020, Murray Waas wrote a series of articles in The New York Review of Books and The Guardian detailing new allegations the politicization and corruption of the Department of Justice during the Trump administration.
In 2021 and 2022, Murray Waas wrote a series of investigative stories about the attorneys, working on behalf of then president Donald Trump, who attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Lewis Libby, edited and with reporting by Murray Waas, was published by Sterling Publishing's Union Square Press imprint on June 5,2007.
The book included an original essay written by Murray Waas, entitled "The Last Compartment", which contained new information and reporting.
In November 2005, Hendrick Hertzberg, then the executive editor of The New Yorker, wrote that Murray Waas' reporting was crucial to demonstrating that it was untrue that President Bush and his administration "were themselves misinformed", rather than having purposefully "lied", while falsely claiming that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, in making the case to the American people to go to war with Iraq.
Hertzberg noted that Murray Waas had further reported that the same intelligence information "was not shared with Congress before the war" and then likewise similarly withheld later from the various "commissions and senatorial committees" which investigated how the US had come to go to war with Iraq.
Baker further pointed out that Murray Waas had earlier been one of only a handful of reporters who had written about the covert Reagan and Bush administrations' covert foreign policies leading up to hostilities with Iraq, prior to the war itself.
Baker noted that the Village Voice on Dec 18,1990 "published a major investigation" by Murray Waas demonstrating that George Bush had been a major behind-the-scenes advocate of a pro-Iraq tilt, during and after the Iran-Iraq war.
Murray Waas said that he wrote for Salon because 'I like the daily rhythm and the immediacy.
Murray Waas was the winner in 1998 of the Society of Professional Journalists Award for Depth Reporting for his coverage of Whitewater and the impeachment crisis.
Murray Waas explained to Kurtz that while many reporters were only pursuing stories "to get "television appearances or million-dollar book contracts, it is difficult for us to play our proper role.
Krugman wrote that Murray Waas' story demonstrated that we then had in place "a system that creates huge incentives for bad, one might say demonic, behavior" by the health insurance industry.
Murray Waas pointed out that in 2007, the California Department of Managed Health Care had randomly examined 90 cases in which Anthem Blue Cross of California had canceled the health insurance policies of customers recently diagnosed with cancer or other life-threatening health conditions to see how many were legally justified.
Murray Waas won a second award by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in the category of investigative reporting for reporting the same stories.