"An independent journalist" who won't remain nameless

Summary

If you want to support The Handbasket’s 100% independent journalism, pay for it! For the past 3+ months I’ve tried to keep my head down and do the work. I often remind myself that my problems are wholly insignificant compared to those of the people I speak to and write about, and complaining is a bad look. But even the most hard-nosed journalist has her breaking point, and last night I found mine. CBS News published a piece late Friday with the headline “Trump administration in talks with Rwanda to take deportees from U.S.” Sound familiar? In the fifth paragraph of the story, they wrote, “The Rwanda arrangements were first reported by the Washington Post, which also cited work by an independent journalist who had uncovered the recent deportation from the U.S. of an Iraqi national to Rwanda.” Hi, it’s me. I’m the independent journalist. And a multi-billion dollar news corporation couldn’t be bothered to write my damn name. If you’ll recall, I reported on April 22 that the US had sent an incarcerated man—an Iraqi refugee named Omar Ameen—to Rwanda via a new diplomatic arrangement between the two countries. I first learned of the potential relationship in mid-March when a State Department source shared a copy of a cable sent by the American Embassy in Kigali informing the department of “Rwanda's willingness to accept third country national removals.” I didn’t immediately report on the cable at the time because I wanted to be 100% confident in its veracity, and didn’t want to cause undue alarm if the Rwanda scheme wasn’t so much a plan as a concept of a plan. As story after story rolled in and March gave way to April, I still kept the Rwanda cable in the back of my mind. I’d confirmed with multiple sources that the cable was legitimate, but none could say how serious it was. Something in my gut told me to sit tight. Then on April 22nd, a source reached out to let me know that it actually happened: The US had “relocated” the first prisoner to Rwanda. In a cable dated tha...