Patrick Radden Keefe
Patrick Radden Keefe (born 1976) is an American writer and investigative journalist. He is the author of five books—"Chatter," "The Snakehead," "Say Nothing," "Empire of Pain," and "Rogues"—and has written extensively for many publications, including "The New Yorker", "Slate", and "The New York Times Magazine". He is a staff writer at "The New Yorker". Career. Keefe grew up in Dorchester, Massachusetts, attended Milton Academy, and received his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1999. He was a resident of Schapiro Hall. Keefe earned a J.D. degree from Yale Law School, an M.Phil. in International Relations from Cambridge  University, and an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics. He has received many fellowships, including those from the Marshall Scholarship Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. He was a policy adviser in the Office of the Secretary of Defense between 2010 and 2011. Keefe has written investigative reports on a broad array of topics and issues during his career. Topics included a conflict over ownership of iron reserves in Guinea, policy complications faced by states legalizing recreational marijuana, and the capture  of Mexican drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera. Keefe's 2013 story in the New Yorker, titled "A Loaded Gun", on the personal history of mass shooter Amy Bishop received the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. In addition to winning the National Magazine Award in 2014, he was also nominated for "The Hunt for El Chapo" in 2015 and for "Where the Bodies are Buried" in 2016 about a woman who disappeared in Northern Ireland. He won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award (nonfiction) for "Say Nothing". Keefe is the host of the 2020 podcast "Wind of  Change", which explores a rumor that the song Wind of Change by the Scorpions was secretly written by the CIA, rather than by the band's lead singer, Klaus Meine. Keefe won the 2021 Ambies award for "Best Podcast Host". Books. In "Chatter: Dispatches From the Secret World Of Global Eavesdropping", Keefe described how American security agencies, including the National Security Agency, eavesdrop on communications between individuals suspected of involvement in terrorism to determine the likelihood of terrorist attacks occurring in the near future. Keefe describes the electronic intelligence gathering apparatus for detecting this communication, often referred to as "chatter , which he examines in the context of the September 11 attacks. In a review of the book for The New York Times, William Grimes states that Mr. Keefe writes, crisply and entertainingly, as an interested private citizen rather than an expert." Keefe's "The Snakehead" reported on Cheng Chui Ping and her Snakehead gang in New York City that operated between 1984 and 2000. Keefe described how Ping illegally smuggled immigrants from China into the United States on a massive scale through cargo ships. The book included interviews with several of those immigrants where they describe their lives in the  United States. In 2000, Ping was arrested by the United States government and sentenced to 35 years in prison for her part in leading these operations. Janet Maslin of the "New York Times" described "The Snakehead" as a "formidably well-researched book that is as much a paean to its author's industriousness as it is a chronicle of crime." Section::::"Say Nothing". "Say Nothing" focuses on The Troubles in Northern Ireland, beginning with the 1972 abduction and murder of Jean McConville. Keefe began researching and writing the book after reading the obituary for Dolours Price in 2013. Section::::"Empire of Pain . In April, 2021, his book Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty" was published by Doubleday. The book examines the Sackler family and their responsibility in the manufacturing of the painkiller OxyContin by Purdue Pharma. The book is an extension of his 2017 "New Yorker" article "The Family That Built an Empire of Pain."