The Intercept
Nov. 13, 2014
This just happened — while trying to figure out a colorful way to begin the story you’re reading, I toggled to Twitter and saw a link to a short film by two Brooklyn directors who used a drone to film actors having sex. Their project, somewhere between ...
Author: Peter Maass
I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.
A Story About Ben Bradlee
The Intercept
October 22, 2014
“So what have you been doing?”
The question was barked out by Ben Bradlee, and the young reporter who had to come up with a quick answer was me. I had been freelancing for The Washington Post from South Korea for three years, I had scored a half dozen or so front-page ...
Core Secrets
The Intercept
NSA’s Saboteurs in China and South Korea
October 10, 2014
This article was co-authored with Laura Poitras.
The National Security Agency has had agents in China, Germany, and South Korea working on programs that use “physical subversion” to infiltrate and compromise networks and ...
Killing Americans on the White House Lawn Is Wrong
The Intercept
October 3, 2014
America’s forever war has come to this — the front lawn of the White House may become a kill zone. That’s crazier than whatever prompted Iraq war veteran Omar J. Gonzalez to jump the fence on Pennsylvania Avenue two weeks ago, running for the Oval Office.
The Secret ...
Hellish Images for Hellish Wars
The Intercept
Beheading Videos and the Censorship of War Imagery
September 10, 2014
Beheading is barbaric. The men of the Islamic State who executed James Foley and Steve Sotloff are monsters. Yet their monstrosity does not fully explain our fury over their beheading videos, or the ...
A Jungle Eco-Battle
Outside Magazine
There are two sides to the story of the biggest environmental lawsuit ever, but a new book tells only one of them.
August 25, 2014
In the 1970s and 1980s, Texaco extracted more than a billion barrels of oil from the Ecuadorean rainforest but spilled an estimated ...
Bronx Documentary Center
Bronx, NY
I am leading a writing workshop from 10 am-4 pm on June 7 at the Bronx Documentary Center. We will focus on structure and description in literary reportage. Advance registration required; please click here for details.
New School
New York, NY
Discussion with Honor Moore about writing on war and surveillance. In the Klein Conference Room (Room A510), Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street, New York. Sponsored by the School of Writing. Free to New School students, faculty, staff and alumni. Everyone else, $5. ...
Inside the NSA’s Secret Efforts to Hunt and Hack System Administrators
The Intercept
March 20, 2014
This article was co-written with Ryan Gallagher.
Across the world, people who work as system administrators keep computer networks in order – and this has turned them into unwitting targets of the National Security Agency for simply doing ...
Polk/NYT Conference on Surveillance
New York, NY
Panelist at 8:55 a.m. with Jane Mayer, Mark Mazzetti, Robert Deitz and Bob Woodward, on the perils of reporting on national security in an era of government surveillance and the prosecution of leakers and reporters. At the Times Center, in the lobby of the New York Times building, ...