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Dennie Williams

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Thomas D. Williams, a freelance writer, worked at The Hartford Courant for almost 40 years before retiring in November 2005 to become an investigative freelancer on Internet news sites. He has written a unique nature book, The Spirits of Birds, Bears, Butterflies and All Those Other Wild Creatures. It's summaries, photos and videos are posted on the Internet at http://www.birdscrittersbutterflies.webs.com/

After graduating from Middlebury College in 1962, he became a military intelligence officer specializing in investigating North Korean border crossers and in working on secret and top secret security clearances for government employees in Washington, D.C.

Throughout his career at the Courant, he has been a town reporter, a night police reporter, a state desk reporter, a state and federal court reporter and an investigative team reporter. He has been a supervisor of state reporters assigned to investigative work.

Williams has worked on countless investigations of governmental and business corruption. His earliest inquiries involved the exploitation of immigrants by high priced lawyers using U.S. Congressmen to obtain private immigration bills; and the exorbitant fees charged by lawyers friendly with a Hartford Probate Judge, eventually leading to the state's first impeachment inquiry of the judge. Still other of Williams' inquiries included an expose of Bridgeport Superior Court judge appointing and hiring his friends and relatives for court jobs; an extensive three week two-reporter car surveillance of the state's tax collector who was loafing on state time; misspending of state and federal grants and logging funds by Schaghticoke leaders on the Kent reservation; significant pollution of potential drinking water supplies by Kaman Aerospace; monopoly trash contractors overcharging customers; contract manipulations for companies with political influence at the Mid-Connecticut trash-to-energy plant and the banking bill voting records of legislators with bank interests.

In the past 15 years, he has worked extensively on investigative stories involving so called mysterious Persian Gulf War illnesses haunting U.S. and allied troops, the hazards of depleted uranium munitions and on articles controversies over the safety and legality of the military's mandatory anthrax vaccine.

Throughout his career, Dennie has received numerous local, state and national journalism awards, primarily for investigative reporting.

After retiring from The Courant in November 2005, Williams began freelancing for several Connecticut papers including The Connecticut Law Tribune and for Truthout.org and The Public Record http://pubrecord.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=1, both in depth and investigative reporting news sites.

www.birdscrittersbutterflies.webs.com/

OpEd News Member for 789 week(s) and 3 day(s)

19 Articles, 1 Quick Links, 15 Comments, 0 Diaries, 0 Polls

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SHARE More Sharing        Friday, October 2, 2015
Town Officals Try To Develop a Public Wetlands Town Officials Illegally Take Hold of Wetlands Owned by the Public to Develop It.
(3 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Sunday, July 27, 2014
Failure of The New York Times to Respond to Complaints The New York Times, it seems, pays little heed to many readers' letters of complaints to editors about stories they read in the newspaper or even photos they view there.
SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Critical Complaints About Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses Not Answered A leader in trying to help frustrated, sick Gulf War veterans obtain long overdue and critical health care, is charging there is a serious, on-going cover-up in that critical process by the "highest level" veterans' affairs officials.
(6 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, June 3, 2014
History Shows Consistent Failure Helping Military Vets It would seem the perspective on assisting sick and maimed United States war veterans, who risked their lives for their country, has never, throughout history, been center stage. If it has caught the eyes of the news media, military leadership, politicians, or supposedly responsible government officials, their attention arrived and departed without permanent solutions being reached.
(4 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, May 2, 2014
Trash Chucking Leads To Environmental Destruction Walk down the street on almost any city now and look along the sidewalks or the street gutters themselves and what do you see? Cigarette butts and their filters, broken beer and liquor bottles, fast food garbage and waste paper are randomly spread with varying intensity.
From ImagesAttr
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, April 28, 2014
The BBC Television's Superficial News Broadcasts Based on several days of BBC evening news viewing last week, it is clear that most of the news is both so repetitive and general that even a patient viewer can either lose interest regularly, and/or eventually decide to go elsewhere.
Is part of the beauty of this Bermuda sunset pollution from one or a multitude of sources including vehicle exhaust, fossil fuel consumption, like coal, or scores of other sources, many produced by corporations unwilling to relent?, From ImagesAttr
SHARE More Sharing        Saturday, January 25, 2014
The Greedy Rich Control It would seem from the stream of news out there lately in newspapers, television and Internet that the United States of America is in need of independent and powerful law enforcement agencies above and beyond what exist; or much more intensive public lobbying for better government.
Rolls Royce, From ImagesAttr
(5 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, January 15, 2014
The Powerful Escape Responsibility When can anyone remember throughout U.S. history that any high ranking officer of a bank or Wall Street firm was arrested or fined for serious violations of the law? Aren't they truly, like U.S. presidents and politician, immune? Within the last decade this pattern has become obvious, as powerful banks and stock security firms are constantly fined millions and even billions of dollars for civil and criminal law breeches.
(10 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, December 2, 2013
Sexual Breast Photo Page One New York Times A large Page One photo of the bare breast of "a Tel Aviv woman, 28," years old and unnamed is not only poor taste, too sexual-sensual, but simply unnecessary and inappropriate for a paper like The New York Times.
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Monday, October 28, 2013
Investigative Reporting Credibility The role of an investigative reporter needs to exclude that writer from simultaneously writing separate opinion columns to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, July 3, 2013
It Is Time For The International Security Outrage To Be Investigated and Stopped It is obviously outrageous that the three branches of U.S. federal government have failed to protect its citizens, and foreign citizens, as well as their countries, from what, in principal, is illegal seizure of sensitive and private information. It is again obviously outrageous that without publicly announcing any intention to investigate other obvious government officials or government contractors for alleged violations.
SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Is Alleged National Security Violator Snowden Alone or Are Federal Officials Similarly Vulnerable? The news headlines read: Government Files Charges Against NSA Contract Leaker Edward Snowden, who recently fled his first foreign refuge, Hong Kong, to fly to Russia and search for another country willing to adopt him. So, where are the other headlines exclaiming: Government Sues or Charges Federal Officials with Invasion of Private Citizens' Communications?
Restricted Data stamp, From ImagesAttr
(3 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Friday, June 21, 2013
Why Are Leakors Investigated or Punished Without Reason? There are very critical issues missing from news reports about the U.S. government's protection of so called classified information and its pursuit of that data's leakors. Who classified the data; why; and how is that classification valid? If leakors of so called classified information are to be charged with crimes or heavily criticized in the news media, that information is crucial to protect the accused.
From ImagesAttr
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, May 28, 2013
US Governmental Authorities Fail to Investigate Themsleves Even As They Prosecute Leakers US Authorities have for decades prosecuted leakers of alleged classified data. Yet it seems seldom does the government actually define and substantiate specifically in detail why that information should be classified in the first place.
150 Años Guardia de Honor del Corazón de Jesús_5, From ImagesAttr
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Thursday, March 14, 2013
The Retiring Pope's Cover-up Goes Unreported Major news stories need to be carefully researched to avoid missing critical history. In any preparation for publication an editor or a reporter needs to check their own news archives for such historical perspective. In writing about Pope Benedict's shocking retirement, both The Hartford Courant and The New York Times most probably failed to do so. Their stories left out the Pope's cover-up of a serious sexual abuse predator.
(2 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Wednesday, December 22, 2010
National Security Cover Ups? Lack of official supervision and inspection of U.S. security classifications have for decades allowed public officials to cover up their serious and sometimes even atrocious mistakes. So, now, instead of investigating such conduct, the U.S. Justice Department is investigating only those involved with WikiLeaks for helping the release of at least some scandalous data revealing serious misconduct by public officials.
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Integrity Of The Game, Going, Going, Gone! With all the instant replays and videos of mistaken calls made by referees or umpires I have seen this summer, I am finally getting the point. It seems those most responsible for the integrity of sports either don't care about integrity, or think the lack of it, is part of the game.
(1 comments) SHARE More Sharing        Sunday, May 2, 2010
Never Ending War! Why! War Is Never Ending Citizens Need to Act To Stop It
SHARE More Sharing        Friday, September 4, 2009
The Outrage Factor Inside The News Media Becomes Overwhelming For Only Those Who Care As the news stories about the incredible erosion of the journalistic values within the U.S. news media flow out, the outrage factor becomes too overwhelming to comprehend. What is the journalistic establishment doing to ensure that all of the talent and experience of tens of thousands of reporters is not forever totally lost? Not much so far.

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