Russ Baker

Russell Warren "Russ" Baker (born 1958) is an American author, and investigative journalist. Baker is the editor-in-chief and founder of the nonprofit news website ''WhoWhatWhy''. He has written for a variety of publications, including ''The New York Times Magazine,'' ''The New Yorker'', ''The Washington Post'', ''Esquire,'' '' Vanity Fair'', and ''The Village Voice''.

Baker is the author of the 2008 book ''Family of Secrets'' that probes the Bush family and alleges connections between President George H.W. Bush and individuals involved with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Watergate scandal The book was poorly received by critics.Family of Secrets
, review by Lev Grossman, ''Time Magazine'', December 17, 2008.

Baker's reporting has often been at variance with articles published in the mainstream media, and in 2015 he was described by journalist Ben Schreckinger as "a key player on the fringe."

Career

After graduation from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, Baker worked as a metro reporter with ''Newsday'' in New York City. While traveling abroad, he reported on tribal genocide in Burundi for a Dutch paper and the ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'', the fall of the Berlin Wall for CBS Radio and ''The Christian Science Monitor'', and the fall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

In 1989, he became a New York correspondent for ''The Christian Science Monitor''. He also wrote for the ''Village Voice.''

His articles included a report on the efforts of the Church of Scientology to recruit Michael Jackson, ''New York Times'' journalist Judith Miller’s reporting on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the West’s indifference to capturing accused Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic. An article in ''The Nation'' on George W. Bush's military record received a 2005 award from the Deadline Club, the New York chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, for a web-exclusive article.

In March 2010, he appeared before the "Treason in America Conference," a gathering of Sept. 11 truthers and said the 9/11 commission had “no credibility” and appeared "open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job." In 2014, he addressed a conference of the Assassination Archives and Research Center on the "role of the Warren Commission on the cover-up." He has appeared on the Coast to Coast AM radio show, hosted by George Noory.
In a January 2015 ''Boston'' magazine profile, journalist Ben Schreckinger said that over the past decade, "Baker has abandoned the mainstream media and become a key player on the fringe, walking that murky line between conventional investigative journalist and wild-eyed conspiracy theorist."

Baker has raised questions about the Boston Marathon bombings, and "is not willing to rule out the possibility that the bombings were a false-flag operation conducted or permitted by elements of the American government in order to justify the Homeland Security complex.” He argues that FBI recruited the Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an agent or informant, which the FBI has categorically denied. ''Boston'' said "it would be a lot easier to dismiss Baker as a nut and move on if it weren’t for his three decades of award-winning investigative-reporting experience."

''Los Angeles Times'', media critic Tim Rutten said that Baker once may have been a serious and talented journalist but became “mesmerized by the idea of secrets and the Great Seduction. It causes you to lose your perspective and balance.”

Baker has been on the adjunct faculty of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and was a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review. He has appeared on C-SPAN, PBS affiliate stations, on RT, and on radio stations.

''Family of Secrets''

Baker's 2008 book ''Family of Secrets'' outlines historical connections of members of the Bush political dynasty, including Prescott Bush, President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush, to individuals in the Central Intelligence Agency, military-industrial complex and global financial system. Baker asserts that George H. W. Bush was linked to the Watergate scandal and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. ''Family of Secrets'' contends that the first President Bush became an intelligence agent in his teenage years and was later at the center of a plot to assassinate Kennedy that included his father, Prescott Bush, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, CIA Director Allen Dulles, Cuban and Russian exiles and emigrants, and various Texas oilmen. It asserts that Bob Woodward of ''The Washington Post'' was an intelligence agent who conspired with John Dean to remove President Richard Nixon from office for opposing the oil depletion allowance

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