The truly incredible story of a guy named Kirk Johnson who started a list of hundreds of Iraqis who needed to get out of their country. They were getting death threats, and he was their only hope. Only 26 and living in his aunt's basement, he had no idea what to do. How Kirk kind of succeeded spectacularly and failed spectacularly at the same time.
INTERACTIVE: "Emails From a Dead Man"
Prologue
Reluctant Sailor
Kirk sleepwalks through an open window and into a completely different life. He explains how he starts compiling a list of Iraqis who’d worked with the U.S. government after the invasion, whose lives were now in danger because of that. Carrying around that list gets some very strange reactions from government officials. Kirk is founder and executive director of The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies. His memoir To Be a Friend Is Fatal comes out in September. (23 minutes)
Emails from a Dead Man
To get a sense of what may be broken about our process for bringing these Iraqis into the US, the ones who worked with US forces and who believe their lives are now in danger because of that, Kirk Johnson tells Nancy Updike about one guy. Almost a year of his emails were forwarded to Kirk, who printed them out and started to realize that he was looking at a dead man’s attempt to immigrate to the U.S. (29 minutes)
Related
Act Four: The Other Guy
Act Three: Realism 101
Act One: Breaking the Ice
Staff Recommendations
Kindness of Strangers
A locksmith tells the story of an act of kindness he committed, hoping for a small reward. That, and other stories of kindness in New York City.
How I Got Into College
How a stolen library book got one man into his dream school and changed his life forever. Or at least that's the story he tells himself.