Jane Mayer
Jane Meredith Mayer is an American investigative journalist who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1995. She has written for the publication about money in politics; government prosecution of whistleblowers; the United States Predator drone program; Donald Trump's ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz; and Trump's financial backer, Robert Mercer. In 2016, Mayer's book Dark Money—in which she investigated the history of the conservative fundraising Koch brothers—was published to critical acclaim.
Early life and education
Mayer was born in New York City. Her mother, Meredith, is a painter, print-maker and former president of the Manhattan Graphics Center. Her father, William Mayer, was a composer. Her paternal great-great-grandfather was Emanuel Lehman, one of the founders of Lehman Brothers. Her maternal grandparents were Mary Fleming and Allan Nevins, a historian and John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s authorized biographer.Mayer attended two private non-secondary schools: Fieldston, in the northwest area of the Bronx borough of New York City; and—as an exchange student in 1972-1973—Bedales, a boarding school in the village of Steep, Hampshire, England.
A 1977 magna cum laude graduate of Yale University, she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and served as senior editor of the Yale Daily News and as campus stringer for Time magazine..
Career
Mayer began her career as a journalist in Vermont writing for two small weekly papers, The Weathersfield Weekly and The Black River Tribune, before moving to the daily Rutland Herald. She worked as a metropolitan reporter for the now-defunct Washington Star, and in 1982 joined The Wall Street Journal, where she worked for 12 years. She was the first woman at the WSJ to be named White House correspondent, and subsequently, senior writer and front page editor.She served as a war correspondent and foreign correspondent for the Journal, where she reported on the bombing of the American barracks in Beirut, the Persian Gulf War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the last days of Communism in the former Soviet Union. Mayer also contributes to the New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the American Prospect.
Mayer has co-authored two books: Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas , a study of the nomination and appointment of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court; and Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984–1988, an account of Ronald Reagan's second term in the White House. Strange Justice was adapted as a 1999 Showtime television movie of the same name, starring Delroy Lindo, Mandy Patinkin, and Regina Taylor. Strange Justice was a finalist for the 1994 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and both books were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Time magazine said of Strange Justice: "Its portrait of Thomas as an id suffering in the role of a Republican superego is more detailed and convincing than anything that has appeared so far." Of Landslide, The New York Times Washington correspondent Steven V. Roberts said, "This is clearly a reporter's book, full of rich anecdote and telling detail.... I am impressed with the amount of inside information collected here."
In an Elle magazine interview, Mayer said about her next article, "I'm focusing broadly on stories about abuses of power, threats to democracy, and corruption."
''The Dark Side''
Mayer's third nonfiction book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, addresses the origins, legal justifications, and possible war crimes liability of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on detainees and the subsequent deaths of detainees, sometimes victims of mistaken identity, under such interrogation by the CIA and DOD. The roles of Dick Cheney and attorneys David Addington and John Yoo in providing cover for the grisly procedures were prominent. The book was a finalist for the National Book Awards.In her New York Times review of The Dark Side, Jennifer Schuessler described the book as "the most vivid and comprehensive account we have so far of how a government founded on checks and balances and respect for individual rights could have been turned against those ideals." The Times subsequently named The Dark Side one of its ten most notable books of the year.
Military and diplomatic historian Colonel Andrew J. Bacevich, reviewing the book in The Washington Post, wrote: " achievement lies less in bringing new revelations to light than in weaving into a comprehensive narrative a story revealed elsewhere in bits and pieces." Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick reported that Mayer's book revealed that a Central Intelligence Agency analyst warned the Bush administration that "up to a third of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have been imprisoned by mistake." The administration ignored the warning and insisted that all were enemy combatants.
In a story appearing the same day in The New York Times, reporter Scott Shane reported Mayer's book as disclosing International Committee of the Red Cross officials had concluded in a secret report in 2007: "the Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes." Mayer said of her book: "I see myself more as a reporter than as an advocate."
Civil liberties
Mayer covered the Obama administration's prosecution of whistleblowers with an article about former National Security Agency official Thomas Drake. Mayer wrote that despite Obama's campaign promises of transparency, his administration "has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness." She won the Polk Award for the article, and the judges said her article helped expose "prosecutorial excess" and "helped lead to all major charges against Drake being dropped."Drones
In 2009, Mayer covered the Obama administration's use of drones. "The number of drone strikes has risen dramatically since Obama became President", she wrote. Her article described errors, ethical concerns, and potential unintended consequences in the increased use of drone strikes.Money in politics
Mayer has written about money in politics for many years, covering and criticizing both liberals and conservatives. In 1997, she wrote an article about "dubious Democratic Party fundraising tactics leading to the 1996 election." The article described how the Clinton campaign "marketed the prestige and glamour of the Presidency as never before."In 2004, she wrote an article on George Soros and other activist billionaires who sought "to use their fortunes to engineer the defeat of President George W. Bush in the 2004 election." The article described Soros's "extreme measures" and how his "outsized financial role in the election" had "stirred alarm".
In 2010, Mayer published an article about the political activities of the Koch brothers, describing their "war against Obama" and funding of the Tea Party and nonprofit organizations that sought to block liberal policy proposals and defeat Democratic candidates. The article was a finalist for the 2011 National Magazine Awards.
In 2011, Mayer reported on retail sales millionaire Art Pope's dominant spending in North Carolina politics. It documented his extraordinarily successful efforts as a Koch brothers ally, who held seats on the boards of their Americans for Prosperity and Citizens for a Sound Economy organizations, to target both Democrats and moderate Republican state legislators. It predicted the redistricting-generated loss of Democratic congressional delegation seats. Her article won a Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, and the judges called it "the kind of journalism that strengthens democracy and shows the value of a free press." Mark Bauerlein, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, was critical of the piece, saying the article was "a tendentious, poorly-researched, and weakly argued bit of journalism" and that "Pope never gets a fair shake." In response to criticism, Mayer supplemented her article with a blog entry pointing out that, despite Pope's claims that he was "not an heir", his "political career was launched" by more than $300,000 from his parents.
In 2012, Mayer wrote an article about President Obama's efforts to raise money from liberal billionaires and his campaign's decision to flip-flop and encourage fundraising from super PACs.
Following the 2016 election cycle, Mayer covered the exertion of the considerable influence of former Democratic strategist and pollster Patrick Caddell, in his capacity as advisor to reclusive contributor Robert Mercer for The New Yorker. Hedge fund director Mercer, joined in his efforts by his daughter Rebekah, has been an increasingly important source of substantial funding for right-wing campaigns, including the successful candidacy of Donald Trump.