Nick turse
Nick Turse is a fellow at Type Media Center, an investigative reporter, the managing editor TomDispatch, the co-founder of Dispatch Books, and a contributing writer at The Intercept. He is the author or co-author of seven books, most recently Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan, which was a finalist for the 2016 Investigative Reporters and Editors book award, and the New York Times bestseller Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, which received a 2014 American Book Award.
Turse’s work, alone and in collaboration, has been recognized with a number of honors including a Ridenhour Prize for Investigative Reporting, a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, an I.F. Stone “Izzy” Award for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Journalism, a New York Press Club Award for Special Event Reporting, and an Editor & Publisher “Eppy” Award for Best Investigative Feature, among others.
Turse has also received an Ochberg Fellowship from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lannan Foundation Writer’s Residency in Marfa, Texas. He has previously been a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and New York University’s Center for the United States and the Cold War. He has a PhD in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University.
Recent Work
Will They Ever Be Over?
The 20th anniversary of the war on terror arrives.
By Nick Turse in TomDispatch.
U.S.-Funded Counterterrorism Efforts in West Africa Aren’t Helping
Government investigations describe American security assistance efforts as a waste of time and money.
By Nick Turse in Vice.
CIA Contractor Dies in Secret U.S. War in Somalia
Michael Goodboe, a former Navy SEAL, died of injuries sustained in a terrorist attack in Mogadishu, Somalia.
By Nick Turse in The Intercept.
U.S. Troops Might be in Danger. Why Is the Military Trying to Hide It?
Formerly secret files raise questions about the security of American military bases in Africa.
By Nick Turse in VICE News.
How One of the Most Stable Nations in West Africa Descended Into Mayhem
Burkina Faso once looked like a success story for U.S. military aid. But now it’s contending with a growing insurgency, an unfolding humanitarian crisis — and a security force targeting civilians.
By Nick Turse in The New York Times.
The Trump Administration’s Air Strikes in Somalia Are On the Rise Again—and Civilians Are Paying the Price
In the first seven months of 2020, the Trump administration conducted more air strikes in Somalia than the previous two administrations combined.
By Nick Turse in Time.
Exclusive: Inside the secret world of US commandos in Africa
Investigation reveals the scale of operations of America’s elite combat troops in Africa.
By Nick Turse in Atavist.
Where Did a U.S. General Put the Ceremonial Gifts He Got From Foreign Leaders? In the trash.
Military documents show that former AFRICOM chief Gen. Thomas Waldhauser regularly put gifts he received from African leaders into the trash.
By Nick Turse in The Intercept.
U.S. Commandos at Risk for Suicide: Is the Military Doing Enough?
An unreleased report commissioned by U.S. Special Operations Command found deficiencies in the military’s suicide-prevention programs for its elite troops.
By Nick Turse in The New York Times.
Will the Death of George Floyd Mark the Rebirth of America?
A man forced to die with his face pressed to the ground may yet shift the Earth under your feet.
By Nick Turse in TomDispatch.
Next Time They'll Come to Count the Dead
For six weeks in the Spring of 2015, award-winning journalist Nick Turse traveled on foot as well as by car, SUV, and helicopter around war-torn South Sudan talking to military officers and child soldiers, United Nations officials and humanitarian workers, civil servants, civil society activists, and internally displaced persons–people whose lives had been blown apart by a ceaseless conflict there. In fast-paced and dramatic fashion, Turse reveals the harsh reality of modern warfare in the developing world and the ways people manage to survive the unimaginable.
Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead isn’t about combat, it’s about the human condition, about ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances, about death, life, and the crimes of war in the newest nation on earth.
Tomorrow's Battlefield
You won’t see segments about it on the nightly news or read about it on the front page of America’s newspapers, but the Pentagon is fighting a new shadow war in Africa, helping to destabilize whole countries and preparing the ground for future blowback. Behind closed doors, U.S. officers now claim that Africa is the battlefield of tomorrow, today.” In Tomorrow’s Battlefield, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Nick Turse exposes the shocking true story of the U.S. military’s spreading secret wars in Africa.
Kill Anything That Moves
Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were isolated incidents in the Vietnam War, carried out by just a few “bad apples.” But as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this groundbreaking investigation, violence against Vietnamese noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the conflict. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to “kill anything that moves.”
Drawing on more than a decade of research into secret Pentagon archives and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time the workings of a military machine that resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded-what one soldier called “a My Lai a month.” Devastating and definitive, Kill Anything That Moves finally brings us face-to-face with the truth of a war that haunts America to this day.