Dafna Linzer is a senior reporter at ProPublica. Her coverage of Guantanamo and detention in the Obama Presidency won the 2010 Overseas Press Club award for General Excellence and was honored by the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel award. She was a national security reporter for The Washington Post, covering intelligence and nonproliferation, from 2004 to 2008. Her coverage of the Iranian nuclear issue won the United Nations 2005 Gold Medal award for international reporting. Before joining the Post, she spent ten years as a foreign correspondent for Associated Press. Based in Jerusalem, New York, and the United Nations, she reported from more than a dozen countries covering terrorism, nonproliferation, and conflict. Her reporting from Baghdad, on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction, won national attention and praise, ending with her report that the fruitless hunt had quietly come to an end.
Articles
Jan. 25, 12:57 p.m.
The questions from the House Judiciary Committee follow ProPublica’s investigation into the Justice Department’s pardon office and a finding of racial bias against minorities.
Jan. 19, 2:46 p.m.
Former governor says pardons should be based on “Christian belief in repentance, forgiveness and redemption.”
Jan. 12, 4:23 p.m.
A state judge has blocked the release of 21 people, including five convicted of murder, who were pardoned by the outgoing governor. One issue is whether they had given sufficient public notice of their intent to seek release, allowing time for victims to comment.
Dec. 4, 2011, 11 p.m.
Letters from members of Congress triple a criminal’s chances of receiving a presidential pardon. Roger Adams, longtime pardon attorney at the Justice Department, acknowledges that lawmakers’ support adds “weight” to applicants’ prospects.
Dec. 4, 2011, 11 p.m.
Brushing aside objections from a senior Department of Justice official, the DOJ’s pardon attorney sent a pardon application from Frank Vennes Jr. forward with a favorable recommendation only to find out that Vennes was under federal investigation.
Dec. 3, 2011, 11 p.m.
Few pardons have had a more lasting effect than President Clinton’s 11th-hour decision to forgive Marc Rich.
Dec. 3, 2011, 11 p.m.
A president’s pardon doesn’t wipe someone’s criminal record clean, but it is an official act of forgiveness that can open career doors for offenders like Serena Nunn, whose long-ago felony conviction stands in the way of admission to the Georgia State Bar.
Dec. 3, 2011, 11 p.m.
To avoid repeating a scandal like his predecessor’s, George W. Bush gave career lawyers in the Justice Department far-reaching authority to choose who got presidential pardons. The result: Whites are nearly four times as likely as minorities to win a pardon, even when the type of crime and severity of sentence are taken into account.
May 3, 2011, 2:57 p.m.
According to various reports, a U.S.-held detainee named Hassan Ghul provided key intelligence on the courier who ultimately led authorities to Osama bin Laden. In 2009 we reported that, despite the U.S. government’s silence on his case, Ghul had been captured in Iraq and held in a secret CIA prison. His whereabouts today are still unknown.
April 25, 2011, 7:34 a.m.
A judge’s opinion on Gitmo first hidden, then rewritten, reveals the secret evidence against a detainee the Obama administration wants to hold indefinitely.
March 29, 2011, 4:51 p.m.
The case could make it more difficult for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to win release.
March 18, 2011, 2:36 p.m.
President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, delivered the administration’s most forceful public call to date for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center and the use of federal courts to try some detainees held there.
March 8, 2011, 10:52 a.m.
Prisoners held in indefinite detention at the Guantanamo Bay camp will periodically be reviewed by a board and have a “personal representative” to advocate for them. But the system, similar to what was in effect under the Bush administration, does not bring President Obama closer to shutting Gitmo.
March 4, 2011, 10:19 a.m.
Readers react to the piece I wrote last week about the U.S. citizenship test.
Feb. 23, 2011, 5:31 p.m.
I recently became a U.S. citizen, and found mistakes in the citizenship test.
Jan. 20, 2011, 2:23 p.m.
According to a story in the New York Times, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will authorize new military commission trials for detainees facing charges brought by the Obama administration. The question now is whether this signals a shift from the administration’s long-standing commitment to prosecutions in federal court.
Jan. 7, 2011, 7:01 p.m.
The president says he will seek the repeal of new provisions tucked into defense-spending legislation, but averts a confrontation with the new Congress by not raising constitutional objections.
Jan. 4, 2011, 5:47 p.m.
Obama administration officials have drafted a signing statement that stops short of claiming that provisions in a spending bill on Guantanamo are unconstitutional. But debate continues within the administration and among constitutional experts as to how President Obama should react to legislation limiting where and how he can prosecute prisoners.
