For two decades during the Cold War, the United States Army tested chemical weapons on American soldiers at Edgewood Arsenal, a secluded research facility on the Chesapeake Bay. Thousands of men were recruited to volunteer; at the arsenal, they were exposed to chemicals ranging from mustard gas and sarin to LSD and PCP. In the December 17th issue of The New Yorker, Raffi Khatchadourian wrote about Colonel James S. Ketchum, who once headed the clinical studies at Edgewood and has become the program’s most prominent defender. In reporting the piece, Khatchadourian obtained hundreds of Army documents and raw scientific data, along with archival films about the human experiments. Some of the material was provided by doctors who worked at the arsenal; some of it was obtained directly from the government, through Freedom of Information Act requests. (These requests were made with the assistance of Betsy Morais, who works on the magazine’s editorial staff.) We have compiled some of that material here, in an online package called “Secrets of Edgewood.” Click-through for more: http://nyr.kr/RSZwLo

Last week in the magazine, Jon Lee Anderson wrote about South Sudan’s first year of independence. In this audio slide show, with photographs by Cedric Gerbehaye and Dominic Nahr, Anderson describes the landscape of the new country and explains the great challenges it faces. “What I’ve been trying to document over the past year is one of Africa’s longest and most insoluble conflicts beginning to enter its endgame,” Anderson says. “It’s extraordinary seeing what people survive.” Click-through to watch the narrated slideshow: http://nyr.kr/OUg1hM