Grey, Stephen 1968-

views updated

Grey, Stephen 1968-

PERSONAL:

Born 1968, in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Education: Attended Oxford University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—London, England. Agent—Robert Kirby, PFD, Drury House, 34-43 Russell St., London WC2B 5HA, England. E-mail—stephen@stephengrey.com.

CAREER:

Freelance journalist. Sunday Times, London, England, former editor of the investigations unit.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Member of British Press Awards' "Team of the Year," for the Sunday Times' coverage of the war in Kosovo; Story of the Year runner-up, Foreign Press Association, 2004, for article "American Gulag"; Amnesty International Media Award, for best periodical article, for "America's Gulag," 2005.

WRITINGS:

Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to publications, including the New York Times, Guardian, Independent, Newsweek, and the Atlantic Monthly, as well as to news programs, including BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio 4, and World Service.

SIDELIGHTS:

Stephen Grey is a London-based journalist who has spent a number of years covering the conflicts in the Middle East. Grey's 2004 article "American Gulag" exposed a secret network of American prisons, and in 2005 the article was awarded the Amnesty International Media Award for best article in a periodical. Grey is also known for breaking the story of the secret CIA planes exporting prisoners to Middle Eastern countries where it would be possible to torture them as part of the interrogation process. This story served as the foundation for his book, Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program, in which Grey takes an in-depth look at CIA practices. He includes detailed accountings of seventy-five individual flights, and the types of torture performed in the destination countries, including Syria, Egypt, and Afghanistan. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews called Grey's effort "disturbing in the depth and detail of its evidence that outsourcing interrogation evaded legal issues and led to systematic brutality." Samir el-Youssef, writing for the New Statesman, remarked that Grey's book "is not only a brilliant piece of journalistic investigation into the shocking facts of the rendition program, it's also a history of the practice and an argument against it."