John Ismay on Muck Rack

John Ismay

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Washington, D.C.
As seen in: The New York Times, MSN, The New York Times en Español, The New York Times Magazine, UOL, Estadão, MSN India, MSN UK, The Economic Times, The Independent (UK), The Times of India and
Reporter, The New York Times. Formerly of @amnesty, @KPCC, & U.S. Navy EOD. Iraq vet. john.ismay@nytimes.com
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The WWII-Era Plane Giving the F-35 a Run for Its Money

The WWII-Era Plane Giving the F-35 a Run for Its Money

Vice — In Afghanistan, US troops didn't need airplanes that could evade detection from enemy radar; they needed planes that flew low enough for pilots to see the enemy eye-to-eye. They needed bombs dropped close enough to hurt them, bullets shot from the sky landing just out of arm's reach and into the enemy. They needed the Taliban dead.
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SEAL Team 6: A Secret History of Quiet Killings and Blurred Lines

SEAL Team 6: A Secret History of Quiet Killings and Blurred Lines

New York Times — They have plotted deadly missions from secret bases in the badlands of Somalia. In Afghanistan, they have engaged in combat so intimate that they have emerged soaked in blood that was not their own. On clandestine raids in the dead of the night, their weapons of choice have ranged from customized carbines to primeval tomahawks. Around the world, they have run spying stations disguised as commercial boats, posed as civilian employees of front companies and operated undercover at embassies as male-female pairs, tracking those the United States wants to kill or capture.
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Examining a Rare Nerve-Agent Shell That Wounded American Troops in Iraq

Examining a Rare Nerve-Agent Shell That Wounded American Troops in Iraq

New York Times — The attack began like many others. Early on May 15, 2004, an American patrol was sweeping a highway in Baghdad, trying to clear the route for a convoy. An attacker in hiding, watching a spot where a roadside bomb had been hidden, detonated the bomb as the patrol neared the anticipated kill zone. There was a small blast, but something was clearly different from the typical explosions that accompanied roadside bombs. Although the soldiers did not yet know it, they had just been attacked by a previously unseen type of makeshift bomb: a device made from an artillery shell designed to disperse a nerve agent.
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An Iraq Veteran's Experience With Chemical Weapons

An Iraq Veteran's Experience With Chemical Weapons

New York Times — We found chemical weapons my first week in Iraq. At Contingency Operating Base Speicher, I was a lieutenant working in the operations department for an explosive ordnance disposal battalion. We were responsible for the entire northern sector of the country, about 50,000 square kilometers (or roughly 19,300 square miles) of ground touching the Syrian, Turkish and Iranian borders. The information came to me in an otherwise benign email, alongside the dozens of field reports that hit my inbox every hour. After just a couple of days as the new guy on the team, the reports showing the aftermath of vehicles and soldiers torn apart by explosives started feeling routine.
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How the US Pulled Off Its Humanitarian Aid Missions to the Yazidis

How the US Pulled Off Its Humanitarian Aid Missions to the Yazidis

GlobalPost — US Air Force cargo planes have flown seven missions over northern Iraq this week to drop humanitarian aid to Yazidis trapped by the Islamic State on Mount Sinjar in Nineva Province. While the US Central Command won't specify where these flights are coming from, a little research can uncover more information than the government is willing to share. As many as 20,000 to 30,000 Iraqis were estimated to be trapped on the 50-mile-long Mount Sinjar range, but the Pentagon's top spokesman declared Thursday, following an assessment by a US military team, that " far fewer" now remain.
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Sending Ammunition to Israeli Military, US Shows a Legal Loophole

Sending Ammunition to Israeli Military, US Shows a Legal Loophole

GlobalPost — The United States has transferred tank ammunition and grenades to the Israeli military in order to refill stocks being depleted in Operation Protective Edge, according to recent reports. You might ask: How can the US government do this, especially when Israel has reportedly killed upward of 900 civilians in Gaza? Aren't there prohibitions against America supplying governments accused of what the United Nations has called potential war crimes? The answer is yes, the US has laws and policies against supplying weapons and ammunition to governments credibly accused of war crimes.
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Seeing My Friend Depicted in 'Lone Survivor'

Seeing My Friend Depicted in 'Lone Survivor'

New York Times — I dreaded the idea of seeing my old roommate's death depicted on screen in the movie "Lone Survivor." But when I saw a pair of Birkenstocks walking away from the camera on the big screen, I knew someone had taken the time to get the details right. Someone really cared about this story. The actor Eric Bana plays the role of my friend, Erik Kristensen, a Navy SEAL officer killed in Afghanistan on June 28, 2005. I'd known Erik since I was a kid - he'd gone to Gonzaga College High School in Washington with my older brother Dave, and they later rowed crew together at the U.S.
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CJS Tech Breakfast Video

CJS Tech Breakfast Video

www.youtube.com — I created this video to explain the purpose and methodology behind my "Quantified Bodega" project from first semester at Columbia Journalism School.
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Please Don't Ask a Veteran, "Have You Killed Anyone?"

Please Don't Ask a Veteran, "Have You Killed Anyone?"

www.policymic.com — It's the question you've wanted to ask that veteran in your office or your classroom but it's also the question you should really never ask. Here's why.
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The Most Lethal Weapon Americans Faced in Iraq

The Most Lethal Weapon Americans Faced in Iraq

New York Times — In the first part of this series, At War explored the various conventional weapons used by insurgents in Iraq, as evidenced by reports, called "storyboards," written by United States forces detailing the contents of captured weapons caches. Often times these weapons had been considered obsolete before 2003. But they were well known to Western intelligence services and militaries. Today, we look at weapons that the American military could not have reasonably foreseen entering the fray, but that caused large numbers of casualties. These are the improvised weapons that were made by hand, or in small shops, and that, with one exception, were not made in industrial factories.
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Insight Into How Insurgents Fought in Iraq

Insight Into How Insurgents Fought in Iraq

New York Times — The grainy videos hinted at a lethal form of surprise. Two RKG-3 hand grenades wobbled through the air, thrown simultaneously by a pair of young Iraqi men. The small chute on each grenade opened, stabilizing the ordnance in flight and orienting their explosive shaped charges toward their targets. The men had thrown them ahead of a vehicle in a passing American convoy, leading the target by putting the grenade where they expected the vehicle to be in a moment. The vehicle and one of the grenades met. An explosion flashed on the screen. This kind of attack occurred many times in Iraq, often with fatal consequences.
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What Exactly Are Chemical Weapons? A Military Insider Explains What These Killing Tools Actually ...

What Exactly Are Chemical Weapons? A Military Insider Explains What These Killing Tools Actually ...

www.policymic.com —
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The Quantified Bodega v. 3

The Quantified Bodega v. 3

www.youtube.com — Corrected two typos in v.2.
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We Watched the Twin Towers Fall - Nobody Could Imagine What Came Next

We Watched the Twin Towers Fall - Nobody Could Imagine What Came Next

www.policymic.com — For some reason I chose to listen to public radio in the car that morning instead of music. A few miles down 5 South, the KPBS anchor announced a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. Someone on-air speculated that it was a single-engine Cessna. As I drove, my mind recalled a History Channel special about an incident in the 1940s where a U.S. Air Force bomber flew into the Empire State Building in heavy fog. Nothing to worry about, I thought. Probably bad weather. An accident.
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Happy Airstrike Eve, Everyone

Happy Airstrike Eve, Everyone

www.policymic.com — By now you've probably read about the Obama administration's plans to launch Tomahawk airstrikes against selected targets inside Syria. Why are we doing this? Because our government thinks - thinks, mind you - that Bashar al-Assad's forces killed upwards of 400 civilians earlier this week with chemical weapons. If killing is killing, does the method of slaughter really matter? Just last month, the UN upped its estimate of Syrians killed in the civil war to 100,000. And how were they killed? By the standard tools of warfare: bullets, bombs, missiles and rockets. Kill one hundred thousand people with conventional weapons: no military action.
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The Sarin Sweepstakes

The Sarin Sweepstakes

www.foreignpolicy.com — On May 24, an anonymous party posted a curious challenge online, offering $50,000 to anyone who can destroy or neutralize large amounts of chemical munitions. The proposal, made on the crowdsourcing website InnoCentive, was odd in a number of ways. First, Innocentive usually asks for ideas on how to solve technical problems, not military ones. Second, the wording of the offer strongly suggests that it was made by someone in the U.S. government who is looking for ways to deal with the Syrian chemical weapons program. In the InnoCentive challenge, an unnamed "Seeker" asks for ideas on novel approaches to tackling the "demilitarization, destruction, or neutralization of a hypothetical stockpile of chemical warfare agents."
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One Man's Attempt to Create a Fertilizer Compound That Won't Explode

One Man's Attempt to Create a Fertilizer Compound That Won't Explode

New York Times — Randy Montoya "I hope this pans out. It's in the early stages." Kevin Fleming is a humble guy. He knows his creation works in laboratory tests, but he feels it needs more development to see if it's practical at the industrial scale. He was referring to his formulation of a new ammonium nitrate fertilizer compound - one that cannot be used as an explosive. Though long used by the blasting industry, ammonium nitrate and its power when mixed with diesel fuel first became known to many Americans as a result of the 1995 destruction of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
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It Wasn't Supposed to End This Way for Tim Johns

It Wasn't Supposed to End This Way for Tim Johns

New York Times — The first time I heard Timmy Johns' name, it was in a casualty report. From the personal photos of Scott Russell In 2007, he stepped on a concealed pressure plate while entering a home in Baqubah, Iraq, and the entire house exploded on him. My skipper and command master chief grabbed a helicopter and flew to Forward Operating Base Warhorse to see him before he was evacuated to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Word came back to our battalion operations center: Timmy was going to make it. This was his second deployment to Iraq in under a year.
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What Would a Fighter Jet Buy 60 Years After Eisenhower's Speech?

What Would a Fighter Jet Buy 60 Years After Eisenhower's Speech?

New York Times — DOD/Associated Press Shortly after the death of Joseph Stalin, President Dwight D. Eisenhower believed a rare opportunity existed to reset United States-Soviet relations, and he announced it to the world 60 years ago Tuesday in his 1953 Chance for Peace speech. With a new Soviet premier taking office, and newly inaugurated himself, President Dwight D. Eisenhower believed that Stalin's demise presented an opening to end the rapidly accelerating arms race between the two countries. Eisenhower directed his speechwriters to develop an address that clearly conveyed that desire to his Russian counterpart.
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Leaving Guantánamo With the World on the Nuclear Brink

Leaving Guantánamo With the World on the Nuclear Brink

New York Times — "YOU MAY NOT TAKE PETS WITH YOU. Leave house keys on table in the living room. DO NOT PROCEED BY CAR. Do not ask questions or request exemptions. The evacuation will be by ship. PUT THIS IN YOUR PURSE. DO NOT LEAVE IT LYING AROUND THE HOUSE OR YARD." - Guantánamo Bay Evacuation Order, Oct. 22, 1962 Fifty years ago this week, nearly 3,000 American civilians found themselves caught in the middle of history's most dire nuclear standoff. Aerial images from United States intelligence showed Russian nuclear missiles on Cuban soil. The defense secretary briefed President John F.
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American White Phosphorus Shells in Libya: A Challenge to a Pentagon Chestnut

American White Phosphorus Shells in Libya: A Challenge to a Pentagon Chestnut

New York Times — The history of how Libya became a bunker state reduces readily to short-hand. After overthrowing King Idris in 1969, Muammar el-Qaddafi, a young army officer, used his nation's oil revenue to underwrite a decades' long arms-purchasing spree, stockpiling weapons from the West but principally from Russia, China and the Eastern bloc. As his holdings grew, he used his arsenal to supply his expanding army and internal security units, as well as a source of items to export to guerrilla or terrorist groups in Chad, the Palestinian territories, Ireland and beyond. This was one of the many ways that Libya became a menace and regional scourge.
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