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."[6]
Childhood and education
Baker grew up in Venice, California. His Father , Len Baker, was a systems analyst in the aerospace industry who quit to join the peace movement and one summer sent him to work on a "work farm." His father's politics "rubbed off on Baker," who was quoted as telling Boston magazine that “Putting aside North Korea," he learned that “we may be the most propagandized country on Earth.” He graduated from UCLA with a major in political science, worked for a time in sales, and earned a master's degree in journalism from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.[2][6]
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"; a Boston Magazine profile of Baker said he cited Operation Northwood, "a plan approved in 1962 by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to commit acts of terrorism against Americans and blame Cuba in order to justify invading the tiny island" as a precedent and "sounded open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job."[6] In 2014, he addressed a conference of the Assassination Archives and Research Center on the "role of the Warren Commission on the cover-up."[13] In a 2016 profile, Baker defended appearing at assassination conferences "despite the damage he realizes it does to his reputation" and to the credibility of his WhoWhatWhy website.[2]
Following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, Baker argued a circumstantial case that the Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev had worked as an agent or informant for the FBI prior to the bombings, which the FBI categorically denied; Baker was "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."[6][16]
WhoWhatWhy and departure from mainstream journalism
In the early 2010s, Baker stopped writing for mainstream publications to focus full-time on an anti-establishment news website, WhoWhatWhy, owned by a non-profit, Real News Project, Inc., he had set up.[6][17] To lend the site credibility, Baker recruited a number of well-known journalism figures, among them Alicia Patterson Foundation director Margaret Engel, former Village Voice editor Jonathan Larsen, Pulitzer Prize winner Sydney Schanberg and Salon founder David Talbot, to serve as directors and advisory board members.[6][2]WhoWhatWhy relies on reader contributions and the work of "a mix of paid journalists and skilled volunteers."[18] Its donors have included Joan Konner, a former dean of the Columbia Journalism School, the Larsen Fund, and TV producer and activist Norman Lear.[2] The site claims to explore "deep politics", covering stories the establishment media will not touch, and has used the slogan "We don't cover the news. We uncover the truth."[2][19]
In a January 2015 Boston magazine profile, journalist Ben Schreckinger said that over the previous 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."[6] Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather told Schreckinger Baker was "an indefatigable reporter who has made a specialty of digging deep into stories when most other people have left the story. And he's very good at raising the right questions."[6] Schreckinger 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", noting that Baker was among the first to raise concerns about Colin Powell's now-infamous presentation on Iraq at the United Nations at a time when The New York Times and The Washington Post were still praising Powell.[6]
In a 2016 Columbia Journalism Review profile, Neal Gabler reported that journalist Bill Moyers, who does not know Baker personally, called him an "indefatigable researcher from whom I could learn something about a subject that I hadn't known because he so often looked under the next rock, rounded the next corner, asked the next question after everyone else had gone home or to the local bar", adding that Baker seemed "unimpressed with conventional wisdom, quickly spotted and dismissed spin, and wasn't intimidated by the powers-that-be."[2]
Baker told Gabler that in journalism, "everyone has been taught: Don't go too far. Don't dig too deep." Gabler reported that Baker's critics reject that claim, and say that "reporters are warned not to go farther than the evidence warrants, and they say that what Baker sees as audacity is just a cover for sloppy reporting."[2]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."[2]
In his 2015 profile of Baker, Schreckinger observed that the book was "trounced by the mainstream media".[6]Lev Grossman of Time magazine said that Baker "connects the dots between the Bushes and Watergate, which he far-fetchedly describes not as a ham-handed act of political espionage but as a carefully orchestrated farce designed to take down President Richard Nixon."[5]Washington Post reviewer Jamie Malanowski contended that Baker "overplayed his hand" and "stretches evidence," using rhetorical devices to do so. Malanowski opined that "there are more crutches in these pages than in the grotto at Lourdes.[3] In a Los Angeles Times review, Rutten called the book "preposterous" and said that it was "singularly offensive" because it "recklessly impugns, in the most disgusting possible way," the reputations of living and dead people.[20]
Salon published excerpts from the book in 2018 upon the occasion of Bush's death.[21][22] A 2019 Salon article by Jefferson Morley noted that a "handful of declassified records suggest that Bush’s relationship to the agency might have run deeper than his overt roles as director, vice president, and president. The records, which I believe were first reported in Russ Baker’s 2009 book, 'Family of Secrets,' went unmentioned in the recent media coverage of Bush’s death."[23]
Personal life
Baker has declined to disclose his age, marital status, names of family members, or "anything that would make him more vulnerable to covert surveillance, intimidation, or worse."[6] He also declines to state where he lives or works because he does “sensitive investigative work” and doesn't want people showing up at his door.[2]
