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Andrew Kreig

Fellowships & Research Awards 
Books 
Investigative Highlights 
Public Speaking 
Other Affiliations 
Selected Articles

Journalist and attorney Andrew Kreig returns to investigative reporting as a Senior Fellow at the Brandeis University Schuster Institute, after spending a dozen years as president and CEO of a high-tech trade association based in Washington, D.C. A former newspaper reporter and magazine writer, he is the Schuster Institute’s first Washington-based representative. He will contribute reporting on government agencies.

In doing so, Kreig will draw on his experience covering the Department of Justice and federal courts full time from 1976-81 as a reporter for the Hartford Courant, New England’s second-largest circulation newspaper. He has worked as a freelance writer and author investigating such topics as organized crime, official corruption, and failures within the news media itself. Some of his work has exposed wrongdoing, and some has exonerated those wrongly accused.

Kreig earned degrees from Yale Law School and the University of Chicago School of Law before clerking for a Boston federal judge. He then worked as an associate for the law firm Latham & Watkins in its Washington office, and in 1993 became the vice president of the Wireless Communications Association International (WCA), a Latham client. In 1997, he became WCA’s CEO. There he led the association’s evolution into the world’s premier advocate for “broadband wireless” use by consumers and businesses, and also by governments for education, public safety, military preparedness, and disaster relief.

Kreig’s career-long interest in monitoring government includes close cooperation when appropriate. For instance, Kreig compiled evidence in late 1993 to urge a crackdown by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against the marketing of fraudulent wireless “licenses” to investors and entrepreneurs. Beginning in 1994, SEC investigators used his material to shut down the scams nationwide, and to levy civil and criminal penalties. One ringleader pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges of bilking investors of more than $70 million. As reported later in a Forbes Magazine profile entitled “The Grifters,” the enablers included a former chairman of a federal regulatory agency who knew that his clients were targeting Alzheimer’s patients en masse because of their vulnerability.  

Fellowships and research awards

Kreig received a Ford Foundation fellowship to attend Yale Law School from 1982-83, earning a Masters in Studies in Law degree with honors in Yale’s standard first-year curriculum. In 1986, he received the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists’ top annual award for in-depth magazine writing for his article “Death Wish III,” describing his search for justice in tracking down hoodlums who had mugged him at his home. The Fund for Investigative Journalism in Washington, D.C. assisted him with a grant to help research his book published in 1987, “Spiked: How Chain Management Corrupted America’s Oldest Newspaper.”

Books

Assisted by on-the-record whistleblowing journalists, “Spiked” documents instances of news coverage hurt by unwarranted owner influence and reporter/editor bias, including unfair accusations against investigative targets. Kreig appeared on more than 100 radio, TV, and broadcast interviews to discuss the book’s findings. He visited college classrooms that had been assigned the book for study, and fielded questions before professional societies, including his fellow members within Investigative Reporters and Editors. The book’s second edition contains an Afterword describing how the news media handled the original allegations. 

In earning his juris doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1990, Kreig explored the economic and policy issues of media ownership in a year-long independent study project, supervised by constitutional scholar Cass Sunstein. That project has particular relevance to the ideals of Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, who pioneered key elements of jurisprudence regarding privacy and freedom of expression.

Kreig has contributed chapters to several books in specialized areas. In 2006, five co-authors invited him to write the introduction to their “WirelessMAN: Inside the IEEE 802.16 Standard for Wireless Metropolitan Networks,” the authoritative history of the decade-long development of leading technical standard for fourth-generation broadband wireless services. Its co-authors include Dr. Roger B. Marks, the founding chairperson of the broadband standards body within the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).

Earlier, Kreig co-authored a chapter for a 1992 book advising executives on how to protect employees and customers from hazardous materials, “Material Safety Data Sheets [MSDS]: The Writer’s Desk Reference.”  Kreig worked on the chapter “Preparing a Defensible MSDS: Legal Requirements & Liability Considerations,” co-authored with his more senior Latham & Watkins colleague Robert Sussman, who went on to become Deputy Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton Administration and a top environmental advisor for the Obama presidential campaign.

Kreig also contributed a book chapter on using high-tech in disaster management to the 2006 Dutch-language book “Recht Door Zee: Transatlantische Crisisbeheersing” [“Right Straight Ahead: Trans-Atlantic Crisis Management”] authored by Eeelco H. Dykstra, M.D. 

Investigative highlights

Fighting for the Honest Government and Public’s Right to Know

Kreig’s investigative reporting includes two articles that ultimately cost federal judges their jobs, while affording them a full opportunity to tell readers their side of the story. One documented a longtime bankruptcy’ judge’s ethical lapses during the course of an otherwise distinguished career. The other revealed an administrative law judge’s sexual harassment of staff.

• “Dishonorable Intentions,” Connecticut Magazine, April 1985 (PDF)
• “U.S. Judge Criticized By Bankruptcy Lawyers,” Hartford Courant, June 11, 1978 (PDF)

Another exposé grew out of his coverage of a Hartford trial that marked the first major success of prosecutor Paul Coffey, who went on to lead the Justice Department’s national Strike Force on Organized Crime and Racketeering. After the trial, Kreig asked City of Hartford officials: Who recommended a gun permit for a defendant convicted of racketeering? When they refused to answer, Kreig filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) action to compel disclosure—leading to a precedent-setting victory in the Connecticut Supreme Court decision City of Hartford v. Kreig. Disclosures enabled Kreig and the Courant to report that the city’s mayor and the state’s top lower court prosecutor had provided character recommendations for the gangster. The ruling helped solidify FOIA nationally as a way to obtain local records.

Exploring how an innocent person might be sentenced to death, Kreig authored a Courant editorial describing the death row ordeal of murder defendant Jerry Lee Banks, who tragically relied upon an incompetent defense lawyer during a frame-up by local police in Georgia.

All Reporters & Stories Are ‘Investigative’

Most of Kreig’s investigative work has grown out of traditional reporting assignments, with research expanded when circumstances warranted. One pioneering article in 1975, for instance, grew from tips that professional gamblers were fleecing charities after volunteering to run their “Las Vegas Night” games. Another showed that young men ran a serious risk of rape in local jails even while held briefly on minor charges while awaiting bond hearings. After the Courant assigned Kreig to be its first NBA reporter covering the Boston Celtics from 1981-82, he combined game coverage with in-depth perspective, such as analysis of whether sports and political writers think it fair to quote public figures precisely, or “clean up” their quotations.

Past Is Prologue: From Nazis Hunting to the Supreme Court

Kreig, who majored in history as a Cornell University undergraduate, has often explored ties between current and past events. When the Justice Department in the late 1970s revived its long-dormant hunt for U.S.-resident former Nazis, Kreig persuaded the Courant to assign him to the Florida trial of the test-case of the lead defendant. He was Feodor Fedorenko, a Ukrainian-born guard at the death camp Treblinka after being a prisoner of war captured by the Germans. Kreig covered the historic trial, in which Treblinka survivors testified that Fedorenko had lied about his past in order to gain postwar entry to the U.S. and citizenship. Kreig obtained one of just two interviews the defendant granted before his U.S. Supreme Court hearing. The Court then affirmed the government’s right to strip the defendant of his U.S. citizenship, followed by his deportation to the Soviet Union and execution there.

Kreig interviewed “The Brethren” authors and Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong for nearly two hours to explore their book’s perspectives on the Supreme Court, including questions raised by New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis about their book’s reliability.  Kreig obtained the authors’ commitment to provide documentation of disputed points to any legitimate researcher. 

In 1983, the Courant invited Kreig and the newspaper’s investigative team for a nine-month project to identify the most common causes of workplace disease in Connecticut, and to examine how the nation’s insurance systems respond to compensation claims alleging disease or death. The project drew on the records and experiences of large numbers of experts and diseased workers for articles published in 1984 in the Courant and in professional publications. This series ultimately tested the limits of what a general news organization was willing to publish during a period of evolving managements and standards.  

Keeping An Open Mind

Trained to treat allegations as mere claims and to afford all targets a full right of reply, several of Kreig’s experiences converged by coincidence in 1990 when he reported for work as law clerk in Boston for U.S. District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf after being hired in 1989. The judge in the meantime had drawn the assignment to try seven alleged leaders of New England’s Cosa Nostra. The charges (including 23 murder allegations against one defendant) were based on many years of wiretaps and other surveillance, such as a bugging device planted in the mob’s Boston headquarters. To avoid any possibility of unfairness for the parties, Kreig’s previous reporting for Boston Magazine on the case was submitted for review by all defendants and prosecution, who affirmed for the record their willingness to let him continue the clerkship. The judge, now chief judge for the federal district of Massachusetts, is nationally known for scrutinizing corruption and other complex cases, with his questions about prosecutorial methods in the mob investigation prompting many court filings and news stories extending over nearly two decades. The larger patterns were described in “Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the FBI and the Devil’s Deal,” a book co-authored in 2000 by former Boston Globe reporter and Schuster Institute Visiting Journalist-in-Residence, Dick Lehr.

Exploring Government Oversight In Washington

As a law firm associate, Kreig assisted policy leaders working at the firm’s Washington office who have played important roles in the country’s rapidly changing media landscape. These included President Reagan’s first Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Mark Fowler (keynote speaker at WCA’s first convention in 1988), and his successor at the FCC, Reed Hundt, who become President Clinton’s first FCC chairman and a senior advisor to the Obama Presidential campaign.

Working with leaders of both major parties through changing Administrations, Kreig led WCA members’ evolution into advanced wireless technologies both in the U.S. and internationally. To promote the emerging industry, he supervised government relations, published daily and weekly newsletters, and extended the organization’s communications into new media, such as an Internet-based radio show and an award-winning website. At his resignation in August 2008, Kreig was one of the longest-serving CEOs of any Washington-based trade association involving the communications, telecommunications or information technologies industries.

Public speaking

Kreig’s interviews on more than 100 radio, television, and broadcast programs include national appearances on ABC-TV, CNN, CSPAN and National Public Radio, as well as numerous locale network affiliates and major newspapers. He has been invited to speak as an expert before FCC, military, and Senate panels, and has delivered dozens of lectures and presentations on advanced communications topics at conferences in such venues as London, Beijing, Singapore, Amsterdam, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Saõ Paolo and Tokyo. 

Other affiliations

In August 2008, Kreig was named as an affiliated Research Fellow with the Information Economy Project at George Mason University School of Law, succeeding the late cable and satellite visionary and Presidential advisor Clay T. Whitehead. Kreig is a principal with the telecommunications consultancy Eagle View Capital Strategies. He is a founding co-chairman of the Fixed Wireless Communications Coalition, a decade-old group that convenes monthly to advance fixed wireless before the FCC and other regulatory bodies. In another volunteer post, he is on the advisory board for the International Katrina Project / Storm Over Europe.org, which is  based in the disaster management program of George Washington University.

Admitted to the Bar of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Kreig writes a “Reality Check” opinion column for the website of the leading wireless trade magazine RCR Wireless.  He is a member of the National Press Club, American Society of Journalists & Authors, Federal Communications Bar Association, and Society of Professional Journalists. 

Selected articles

"New questions raised about prosecutor who cleared Bush officials in U.S. Attorney firings," Neiman Watchdog, July 25, 2010.

“Did the DoJ Blackmail Siegelman Witness With Sex Scandal?” Huffington Post, July 21, 2009.

“As Rove Testifies About Firings At Justice, Why Did DoJ Fire Whistleblower?” Huffington Post, July 8, 2009.

"Alabama Decisions Illustrate Abuse of Judicial Power," The Huffington Post, June 10, 2009.

“Siegelman's First Trial Judge Blasts U.S. Prosecutors, Seeks Probe of 'Unfounded' Charges,” The Huffington Post, May 21, 2009.

“Siegelman Deserves New Trial Because of Judge's 'Grudge,' Evidence Shows,” The Huffington Post, May 15, 2009.

"Probe the Past to Protect the Future," The Huffington Post, March 5, 2009.

"Broadband subsidies may test Obama’s savvy on ethics, public patience," RCR Wireless Today, February 10, 2009.

“Why the President ‘Stepped Out’ During His Inaugural Parade,” Huffington Post, Jan. 21, 2009.

“Obama Presidency Will Draw From Campaign’s Tech ‘Lessons Learned,’” Reality Check Column, RCR Wireless Online, Nov. 11, 2008.

“Campaign Chairs: Too Soon To Predict House Makeup,” National Press Club Record, Oct. 27, 2008.

“Where Are Today’s Best Job Opportunities?”  Reality Check Column, RCR Wireless Online, Oct. 7, 2008.

“How Financial and Circulation Imperatives Can Distort Reporting of Story,” Society of Professional Journalists Ethics Report, October 1989. (PDF)

“Why Should Murdoch Get Special Treatment?” Boston Globe Op-Ed, Jan. 29, 1988. (PDF)

“Death Wish III,” Connecticut Magazine, July 1986. (PDF)

“Missing Persons: Where Are the Victims of Workplace Deaths?” Occupational Health & Safety News Digest, June 1986. (PDF)

“The Undoing of Austin McGuigan,” Connecticut Magazine, December 1985. (PDF)

“Silencing the Rackets,” Boston Magazine, November 1985. (PDF)

“The Insanity Plea On Trial,” Connecticut Magazine, July 1985. (PDF)

“Power of Attorneys,” Connecticut Magazine, June 1985. (PDF)

“Job-Related Illnesses Mired In Workers’ Compensation System,” Hartford Courant, May 7, 1984.

“Counterfeiting, Coke & Contract Killings,” Hartford Courant Sunday Magazine, Aug. 31, 1981. (13MB PDF)

“Jerry Lee Banks’ Death,” Hartford Courant Editorial, July 15, 1981. (PDF)

“Probe of EB [Electric Boat] Finds Evidence of Fraud,” Hartford Courant, April 24, 1981.

“Overcrowded, Idle City Prisoners Terrorize Newcomers,” Hartford Courant, March 15, 1981. (PDF)

“Different Tacks Taken In Two Supreme Court Portraits” & “Brethren Authors Win Case In Yale Law School Appearance,” Hartford Courant, Jan. 20, 1980. (PDF)

“Hunting Nazis: Trying Task for Immigration Service,” National Law Journal, Nov. 6, 1978.(PDF)

“Pro Gamblers Reap Charity-Night Profit,” Hartford Courant, June 29, 1975. (PDF)

Other publications include more than 200 book reviews published by Hartford Courant, including: “The Antitrust Paradox” by Robert H. Bork (1978); “The Brethren” by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong (1979); “The Court Years” by Justice William O. Douglas (1980); “Khrushchev Remembers” by Nikita Khrushchev, translated by Strobe Talbott (1974); and “Guide to the Supreme Court” by Congressional Quarterly staff (1980). 

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