Cam Simpson
Foreign and National Correspondent
Chicago Tribune

Citation
In a gripping two-part series, Cam Simpson writes about an Iraq tragedy most of us probably never noticed: Last year 12 Nepalese men were kidnapped from an unprotected convoy traveling to an American military base in Iraq. They were eventually killed, an event captured in a grisly video. With the zeal of an investigator and the heart of a novelist, Simpson retraces what happened to the men. He travels to Nepal where he reconstructs, in heartbreaking detail, the circumstances that drove the 12 men to find work overseas. He then goes to the Middle East to reveal how large military support companies such as Halliburton use a string of shady contractors to lure poor men into dangerous work. These are victims of the Iraq war few would have mourned if not for Simpson.

Excerpt
Pipeline to Peril
October 9, 2005
KATMANDU, Nepal--The jolting news out of Iraq came to the woman from a neighbor boy.
"What's your son's name?" the child cried out, his voice ringing through their village in the Himalayan foothills, almost 4,000 miles from the American theater of war.
"Bishnu Hari Thapa," the woman called back.
"Turn on your television," the boy shouted.
Peering at the small screen in her family's apartment, Bishnu Maya Thapa saw the solemn face of her firstborn son. Worried for three weeks, ever since he'd left an alarming phone message, she now saw him posed before a black banner emblazoned with Arabic, holding his passport open with his right hand, just below his chin.
Someone beyond the frame's edge held a rifle's muzzle over Bishnu Hari's head. Alongside him stood 11 other Nepalis, as if gathered for some kind of class photo. The 12 men had been seized by terrorists in Iraq, the announcer said, the words robbing the mother of her breath.
It had been only seven weeks since she sent her 18-year-old son off to earn a paycheck that would bring their family a better life. But that paycheck was supposed to come from the safety of a five-star hotel in Jordan, not the combat zone of Iraq.
Whether Bishnu Hari and most of the other 11 Nepalis even knew before leaving home that they were headed to Iraq remains a mystery.
At least three did, but they were deceived about key details. Most of the rest, including Bishnu Hari, appear to have been lured with fraudulent paperwork promising jobs at the luxury hotel in Amman.
They learned Iraq was their real destination only after their families went deeply into debt to pay huge sums demanded by the brokers who sent these sons and brothers to the Middle East.

Biography
Cam Simpson, 39, is a Washington-based correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. He covers U.S. foreign policy and also works on investigative projects in Washington and overseas. Simpson previously covered terrorism and the Department of Justice in Washington for the Tribune, and federal crime and organized crime in Chicago. Prior to joining the Tribune in 2000, Simpson worked for the Chicago Sun-Times, where he covered federal and organized crime, the FBI and U.S. courts. He has also worked for The Indianapolis Star, The Evansville Courier and The News-Gazette in Champaign, Ill. He is a native of St. Charles, Ill., and majored in political science and journalism at Eastern Illinois University. Simpson is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award, once for National Reporting and once for International Reporting. Simpson is the recipient of numerous other state, regional, national and international journalism awards, including the Overseas Press Club's Madeline Dane Ross Award and the Tribune's own Edward Scott Beck Award for Foreign Reporting. He lives in Washington with his wife, Rima.

Articles
"Desperate for Work, Lured into Danger" Part I, Part II, Part III

"Into a War Zone, on a Deadly Road" Part I, Part II, Part III