Hismaternal grandfather was born in Chisināu, Bessarabia. Robbie's reporting had the impact of an inconvenient truth-it was never what you were hearing from the rest of the press at the time, and it often ripped away pleasant illusions that help the powerful to get their way. His writing appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ, 'The Nation, The New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and many other publications, yet nobody ever told Friedman what to do. His courage is even more remarkable when you realize that except for his six years as a Voice staffer and one season at New York magazine, Friedman's career was conducted entirely as a freelancer. That meant that Robbie wrote about powerful peo- ple and placed himself in dangerous situations without the cautious restrictions so often imposed by editors and publishers, but also without the institutional buffers and personal protection that staff status confers. A short list of the sorts of people Robbie offended during his career - from international bankers, politicians, and gangsters to establishment journalists and fringe wackos - makes his boldness look almost reckless. Friedman castigated the FBI in the Voice for ignoring information ti had deve- loped on the Muslim extremists behind the first bombing of the World Trade Center, warning that without stronger action, terrorists would strike at the towers again. He won a Society of Professional Journalists Award for Best Investigative Reporting.