{"id":4550,"date":"2012-05-15T19:10:28","date_gmt":"2012-05-16T01:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4550"},"modified":"2012-05-15T19:11:26","modified_gmt":"2012-05-16T01:11:26","slug":"an-extended-interview-with-steve-coll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4550","title":{"rendered":"An Extended Interview With Steve Coll"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.texasmonthly.com\/2012-05-01\/webextra.php\">Mimi Swartz:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>New Yorker staff writer Steve Coll\u2019s last two books, Ghost Wars and The Bin Ladens, were, as he puts it, big projects about closed institutions\u2014the Central Intelligence Agency and the Middle East\u2019s most famous family, respectively. His latest peek behind tightly drawn curtains, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, is a detailed examination of the influential Irving-based oil corporation. ExxonMobil is famously reticent about its operations, and, as Coll explains in this interview, penetrating the company\u2019s official PR line proved challenging, even for an experienced reporter.<br \/><Br><br \/>\nReporting on Exxon can be so difficult\u2014the company is famous for being secretive and cultish. Can you talk a little about the difficulties of reporting this book?<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I found Coll&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/search.yippy.com\/search?input-form=clusty-simple&#038;v%3Asources=webplus-ns-aaf&#038;v%3Aproject=clusty&#038;query=%22Ghost+Wars%22+coll\">Ghost Wars<\/a> to be an excellent read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mimi Swartz: New Yorker staff writer Steve Coll\u2019s last two books, Ghost Wars and The Bin Ladens, were, as he puts it, big projects about closed institutions\u2014the Central Intelligence Agency and the Middle East\u2019s most famous family, respectively. His latest peek behind tightly drawn curtains, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, is a detailed examination [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4550"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4550"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4553,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4550\/revisions\/4553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}