About the Project

"No Place To Hide" is a unique multimedia collaboration led by Robert O'Harrow, Jr., and the Center for Investigative Reporting. This yearlong investigation into the unprecedented marriage between the revolution of private data collection and the government's vastly expanded surveillance authorities in the wake of September 11 was conducted by O'Harrow, as an associate of CIR, while on leave from The Washington Post. O'Harrow's reporting led to a book published by Free Press, an imprint of Simon and Schuster; an hour-long television documentary for ABC News, co-produced with Peter Jennings Productions; an hour-long public radio documentary, co-produced with John Biewen of American RadioWorks, the documentary unit of American Public Media; and articles for The Washington Post Magazine.

Visit the project home at www.noplacetohide.net.

This project was made possible in part by support to the Center for Investigative Reporting from the Ford Foundation, Deer Creek Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.


Project Partners

The Center for Investigative Reporting

The Center for Investigative Reporting is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to exposing injustice and abuse of power through the tools of journalism. Led by staff in San Francisco and powered by a nationwide team of independent reporters and producers, CIR is organized along three functions: as a journalism venture fund, investing in promising investigations at their early stages to give them a chance in the increasingly competitive news marketplace; as an investigative reporting unit, producing stories for print, television and radio; and as a publicity firm, maximizing the impact of the best investigations by promoting them to decision makers, citizen groups and journalism peers. Together, these activities equip citizens with information needed to participate fully in the democratic process and bring about needed changes in laws, regulations, and the operations of government, corporations, and institutions.


American RadioWorks

American RadioWorks is the national documentary unit of American Public Media. ARW is public radio's largest documentary production unit; it creates documentaries, series projects, and investigative reports for the public radio system and the Internet. ARW is based at St. Paul, Minnesota, with staff journalists in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, CA., and Durham, NC..


Free Press

A division of Simon and Schuster, Free Press is publisher of No Place to Hide. With a distinguished history that spans more than fifty years of publishing groundbreaking and influential books, Free Press publishes fiction and nonfiction for the general reader, in hardcover and paperback. Free Press books consistently generate news and win critical acclaim. The imprint has a solid reputation for publishing in a broad range of areas such as current affairs, history, business, self-help, and narrative nonfiction, as well as novels by original and interesting new writers.


Center for Documentary Studies

The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University teaches, engages in, and presents documentary work grounded in collaborative partnerships and extended fieldwork that uses photography, film/video, audio, and narrative writing to capture and convey contemporary memory, life, and culture.


Peter Jennings Productions

PJP is an independent company that produces documentaries primarily for television. Created by ABC News Anchor Peter Jennings, PJP was founded on the philosophy that the best television is challenging and smart television that makes you think, whether about history, or politics, or religion, or popular culture, or sports. PJP's aim is to serve the public interest and to encourage public discourse in a way that is entertaining. Originally formed in October 2002, PJP was created to expand the work of ABC News' Peter Jennings Reporting unit, the distinguished documentary unit created in 1989 by Mr. Jennings with Tom Yellin as executive producer.

Back to No Place to Hide

©2018 American Public Media