In this satellite image from NOAA, Hurricane Katrina is seen in the Gulf of Mexico August 28, 2005. Photo: Getty Images.

The month before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, I went to Louisiana to report my second-ever story for Current TV. This was before the network had even gone on air, before the idea of Vanguard as a show.

I was there to work on a story about how geography is affected by global warming. In Louisiana, the ocean was creeping up along the coastline, eating up marshland. The people I interviewed living in the southern parts of the state knew they were in a precarious situation, that the encroaching sea was already impacting their way of life.

A fisherman I interviewed named Tom told me I was looking at it all wrong. The levees were vulnerable, he said, but the real danger was that a Category 5 hurricane could wipe everything out. Saltwater from the ocean invading the marshland meant that one last line of defense -- unlike the furious cycle that a storm picks up over open water, marshland can actually help slow down hurricanes -- was also gone. Tom said that it would probably take a major city -- New Orleans -- being threatened to get anyone to take it seriously.

I went back to California, and before I finished assembling the story, Katrina hit. Everything people had told me would happen, did. I had been so fixated on the rising sea level that the risk a hurricane posed to New Orleans, while part of my story, wasn’t the first or biggest thing on my mind.

I wish I could say “I told you so” -- but like the government, like most people, I wasn’t taking it seriously. The people who lived there were right. It’s not the kind of thing anyone wants to be right about.

The global warming story I had originally gone to Louisiana to cover was -- before Katrina -- entirely ignored by the mainstream media. In its wake, as seemingly every journalist on the planet swept into town, it became a major part of the discussion. (I went, too, though I was skeptical about what I could add.) But I was glad so many reporters were there, that finally the long-overdue questions were being asked. People were talking about levees and the impact mankind had on that fragile ecosystem.

But still the coverage was reactionary. We should have known that this place was particularly vulnerable. I had been on the right track, but I didn’t ask all the right questions. When I got back to New Orleans, areas where we had been a month before -- even those relatively unscathed by flooding -- were a ghost town. The voice of that fisherman warning me about hurricanes echoed in my head the whole time.

The lesson to me as a journalist was that we have to stay a step ahead, to be enterprising and ask tough questions -- but also that we can so easily miss the big story if we think we already know what it is. I’m not saying that it’s possible to predict the future, but it’s important for journalists to go where the story is -- and listen when those who know best tell us there’s a storm coming.

Adam Yamaguchi is the executive producer and a correspondent for Current TV's Vanguard.

Alex Simmons produced Vanguard's "War Crimes," about veterans who have been charged with violent crimes.

In the last two years the Army has drastically cut the number of "personality disorder" designations, increasingly diagnosing soldiers instead with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

This change comes after The Nation reported that thousands of soldiers at the height of the Iraq War may have been misdiagnosed, and were thus unable to seek treatment for what they really have -- PTSD.

From one recent news account:

Unlike PTSD, which the Army regards as a treatable mental disability caused by the acute stresses of war, the military designation of a personality disorder can have devastating consequences for soldiers.

Defined as a "deeply ingrained maladaptive pattern of behavior," a personality disorder is considered a "pre-existing condition" that relieves the military of its duty to pay for the person's health care or combat-related disability pay.

In “War Crimes” we saw that PTSD can be treated but -- when it goes unchecked -- it can lead to disastrous scenarios.

Read more from The Nation about this issue.

Watch an extra from "War Crimes" about a Los Angeles organization that treats vets with PTSD:

"War Crimes" airs Wednesday, August 18 at 10/9c on Current TV.

Watch a trailer for the episode after the jump.

The anti-gay legislation investigated in Vanguard's "Missionaries of Hate" is stalled in committee and, according to local gay activists in the country, unlikely to pass during this current parliamentary session.

Correspondent Mariana van Zeller said she was taken aback by the fervor surrounding the anti-gay movement, especially at one of Pastor Ssempa’s inflammatory church rallies.

"One of the shocking experiences that we had [in Uganda] was being in this congregation, with children, old women, and there he was with his laptop, showing these very graphic images of gay porn," Mariana said. [Watch more commentary with Mariana.] "You could see the faces of the congregation. They were completely shocked. And this is what they are taking home with them."

Although religious leaders and politicians had managed to elevate the discourse to fever pitch earlier this year, local activists report that the general population of Uganda is more tolerant, and the government seems to be responding to international pressures that the bill be withdrawn from parliament.

From the Global Post:

“Politicians find that homosexuals are a great scapegoat or red herring to divert attention to more pressing issues ... such as unemployment, corruption, poor health facilities, reform of electoral laws and so forth,” wrote Ugandan lawyer Sylvia Tamale, the first female dean of law at Makerere University law school.

“If we are to be absolutely honest with ourselves, we should ask whether there are not more pressing issues of moral violation in other areas such as domestic violence, torture and corruption. None of these areas have specific laws outlawing their practice,” wrote Tamale.

Rev. Mark Kiyimba of the Ugandan Unitarian Universalist Church, also known as "Pastor Brown," is a leader in Uganda’s LGBT community. He says that international pressure, especially from the Obama administration, has “cooled down progress on the bill.” “We have shifted our focus and are now concentrating on HIV, spirituality and social issues," said Kiyimba. "We don’t hear anything anymore about the bill. Besides, parliament will dissolve next month, so it is too late to debate the bill before the close of parliament.”

Watch a clip from "Missionaries of Hate" in which Mariana and a  Ugandan man survey locals about the bill:

The Justice Department unsealed indictments against 14 Americans who are charged with providing money, personnel and services to Al-Shabaab, the terrorist network Vanguard correspondent Christof Putzel investigated in "American Jihadi."

From The Washington Post:

Among those charged were Omar Shafik Hammami, 26, a former resident of Daphne, Ala., and Jehad Serwan Mostafa, 28, a former resident of San Diego. Both are U.S. citizens who are believed to be at large in Somalia.

In a news conference, [Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.] Holder said Hammami "has assumed an operational role" in al-Shabab and has made recruitment videos that have aroused concern at the FBI and in the Somali community in the United States.

The effort to recruit Somali Americans for al-Shabab targets young men "at difficult points in their lives," a U.S. official said...

"While our investigations are ongoing around the country, these arrests and charges should serve as an unmistakable warning to others considering joining or supporting terrorist groups like al-Shabab," Holder told reporters. "If you choose this route, you can expect to find yourself in a U.S. jail cell or a casualty on the battlefield in Somalia."

Watch a scene from "American Jihadi" about the recruitment by Al-Shabaab of young Western Muslims.

"American Jihadi" airs on Current TV Wednesday, August 11 at 10/9c.

Joanne Shen co-produced Vanguard episode "Rape on the Reservation."

Last week, President Obama signed The Tribal Law and Order Act into law. This historic piece of legislation will give American Indian tribes greater authority to combat high rates of crime on reservations, including cases involving rape. At the signing ceremony, the President was introduced in a moving speech by Lisa Marie Iyotte, a rape survivor from the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, where we filmed “Rape on the Reservation” earlier this year.

Producer John Henion and I met Lisa when we first visited Rosebud last December and her account was one of many stories we heard from Indian women that not only attested to the prevalence of rape on reservations, but shocking lack of justice for victims.

One of the reasons that justice has failed so many Indian women is that major crimes, like murder and rape that are committed on Indian reservations fall under the jurisdiction of federal authorities. It’s up to the feds to work with tribal law enforcement and authorities to gather evidence and prosecute cases. But all too often, cases involving rape or sexual assault fall through the cracks and never see the light of day in federal court.

Federal prosecutors decline to prosecute over 50 percent of violent crimes in Indian country. Victims might not even get clear, straight answers on why their case was stalled or dropped. But with the passage of the Tribal Law and Order Act the Department of Justice must maintain data on declinations and share gathered evidence with tribal authorities if a case is declined.

This is one of the many aspects of this new law that serve to strengthen tribal sovereignty in combating crimes committed on reservations. In addition, tribal courts have been given greater sentencing power of 3 years. Previously, the maximum sentence a tribal court could mete was one year. Another key provision is the deputizing tribal police to enforce federal law on Indian lands, granting them the authority to arrest all suspects, as well as access to criminal history records via federal databases.

Perhaps, even most important, the law gives tribes much-needed funding to prioritize tackling rape cases. $1.1 billion has been allocated to tribal authorities to investigate and prosecute sexual assault cases. Both tribal and federal officers working in Indian country will be required to receive specialized training on how to interview victims of sexual assault and how to collect crime scene evidence.

Finally, the law also addresses prevention. Improved social programs for alcoholism, drug abuse and at-risk Indian youth will hopefully tackle some of the root causes behind the high rates of sexual assault. Through first hand accounts from victims and perpetrators alike in our documentary, we covered the gamut of social and legal factors that have allowed an epidemic of sexual assaults in Indian country to go unchecked for too long. It’s heartening to finally see a law come to fruition that begins to address it.

Watch more from "Rape on the Reservation":

Read more from Joanne about making "Rape on the Reservation."

Congratulations to Vanguard on another Emmy nomination!

"The OxyContin Express," last season's investigation into Florida pain clinics has been nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy in the category of Outstanding Informational Programming - Long Form.

Correspondent Mariana van Zeller, producers Darren Foster and Cerissa Tanner and editor Benita Sills have also been honored with a Peabody Award and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences' "Television with a Conscience" award.

The winner will be announced on September 27.

Watch a trailer for "The OxyContin Express":

Vanguard correpondent Christof Putzel reported from Somalia in 2006 and followed the desperate flight of Somali refugees across the Gulf of Aden in 2008. His most recent documentary, American Jihadi is on Current TV now.

A Somali militant group's claim that it carried out the devastating attack on a popular restaurant in Uganda during the World Cup final triggered widespread fear of a new and frightening threat to innocents in Africa and beyond. The slaughter on Sunday of at least 76 people who had gathered to watch the game on television in Kampala, Uganda's capital, appears to be the first terrorist strike outside Somalia by Al-Shabaab, a militant Islamic group allied with Al Qaeda.

Al-Shabaab has earned a reputation inside its own country for ruthless determination to seize the strife-torn failed state whose weak, supposedly transitional government is clinging to control of the Somali capital of Mogadishu. Its quest, thanks in part to successful recruiting of Muslims in the West, is often described as a jihad, or holy war. I recently profiled a young American for Vanguard, raised as a Christian in Alabama, who is now a leader in Al-Shabaab and an effective Internet propagandist rallying disenchanted young Muslims in the West to come join the cause.

Kampala is, in once sense, an obvious place for Al-Shabaab to strike, because Uganda is the largest contributor of troops to the African's Union's peacekeeping force that shores its principal target, the existing government in Mogadishu. But the coordinated double bombing also serves as a warning to other African nations--and the West as well--that Al-Shabaab's ambitions are growing.

When I was in Mogadishu four years ago, Al-Shabaab was a ragtag band of youths acting as the military arm of the Islamic Court Union, an Islamic coalition that brought momentary calm to the chaos in Somalia. In nearly two decades of disastrous corruption and disruption inside Somalia, hundreds of thousands of Somalis have fled to new communities around the world, including sizable populations in Toronto, Minnesota and elsewhere in North America.

But Al-Shabaab has drawn hundreds of foreign recruits to join its cause its war to establish Islamic rule. They have certainly established their cred among disenchanted exiles, but what has been a recruiting ground could also be a cover for planting cells of homegrown terrorists managed by Al-Shabaab.

Moments before twin bomb blasts tore through crowds of football fans. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Darren Foster is a producer for Vanguard.

Just a few months ago, I sat down for a final dinner in Uganda with Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller and producer Alex Simmons. We were joined by a couple of other foreign reporters who we had become friendly with while covering the country’s controversial anti-gay legislation. One of them, a French photojournalist who is based in Uganda, suggested the place: Ethiopian Village, a leafy outdoor restaurant that’s as popular for its food as for its giant projection screen.

Expats—journalists, missionaries, NGO workers—along with Ugandans regularly gather at Ethiopian Village to watch big sporting events. And that was the scene last night when a large crowd gathered to watch the World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands. The match was entering the final minutes of regular time when a bomb ripped through the packed restaurant. A near simultaneous explosion tore through a rugby field where large screens showing the match had drawn hundreds of spectators. At last count, 74 people were killed, and many more injured.

While reporting in Uganda this kind of terrorism was the furthest thing from our mind. Kampala is a safe and peaceful city. But as early as last week, the leader of the Somali Islamist group, Al-Shabaab, threatened to launch an attack on Uganda, whose troops are part of the African Union peacekeeping force in Mogadishu. Also, lost in the bigger headline of New York Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman’s recent story about child soldiers working for the US-backed government in Somalia was the fact that many of the government forces are trained in Uganda.

The Ugandan military dismissed the threat from Al-Shabaab. They may have thought that Uganda was too far outside the scope of international terror. And while many are reporting that this is Al-Shabaab’s first strike outside of Somalia, that’s not entirely accurate. Al Shabab is a franchise of a global network. A network that put itself on the map with another coordinated bombing in East Africa. In 1998, al Qaeda simultaneously bombed the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania killing hundreds of people.

Lawrence Wright reported in his excellent book on al Qaeda, The Looming Tower, that it was Osama bin Laden’s hope that the bombings would draw the US into Afghanistan, where he had recently moved al Qaeda. All bin Laden got were a few cruise missiles. But three years later, after the Sept. 11 attacks, he finally got his wish.

Since then, Afghanistan and Iraq have largely defined the war on terror. But as the bombings in Kampala show, with terrorism the battlefield isn’t always so clear or obvious.

Alex Simmons is the producer of Vanguard's "War Crimes."

From the front page of The New York Times today:

The government is preparing to issue new rules that will make it substantially easier for veterans who have been found to have post-traumatic stress disorder to receive disability benefits, a change that could affect hundreds of thousands of veterans from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam...

Under the new rule, which applies to veterans of all wars, the department will grant compensation to those with P.T.S.D. if they can simply show that they served in a war zone and in a job consistent with the events that they say caused their conditions. They would not have to prove, for instance, that they came under fire, served in a front-line unit or saw a friend killed.

The new rule would also allow compensation for service members who had good reason to fear traumatic events, known as stressors, even if they did not actually experience them.

The move reflects a greater understanding of PTSD, that one doesn't have to serve on the front-line or come under direct fire to return with the disorder. [Watch an outtake from "War Crimes" about a Los Angeles treatment clinic for veterans with PTSD.]

Of the vets we spoke to with PTSD during the making of Vanguard's "War Crimes," some experienced what are considered classic causes of combat trauma, seeing a good friend die or having their Humvee hit with an IED, like Jesse Bratcher.

But others, like Clark Fish, returned from the war zone traumatized not by fighting on a battlefield, but from working in an emergency room and seeing soldiers, and Iraqi children, die on a daily basis. [Meet Clark Fish in this scene from "War Crimes."]

In the past, it has been much harder for those like Clark to prove they had PTSD after never coming under fire from the enemy. These new rules are attempting to change that.

Watch Vanguard correspondent Kaj Larsen talk about his experiences as a Navy SEAL returning from combat below.