Barton Gellman | |
|---|---|
 Gellman in 2014 | |
| Born | Barton David Gellman 1960 (age 64–65) |
| Alma mater | Princeton University University College, Oxford |
| Occupation | journalist |
| Employer | Brennan Center for Justice |
| Title | Senior Advisor |
| Partner | Dafna Linzer |
Barton David Gellman (born 1960) is an American author and journalist known for his reports on theSeptember 11 attacks, onDick Cheney's vice presidency, and on the global surveillance disclosure.[1]Beginning in June 2013, he authoredThe Washington Post's coverage of the U.S.National Security Agency, based on top secret documents provided to him by ex-NSA contractorEdward Snowden.[2] He published a book forPenguin Press on the rise of the surveillance-industrial state in May 2020, and joined the staff ofThe Atlantic.[3][4]
Gellman was formerly based at theCentury Foundation,[5] where he was a senior fellow, and held appointment as Visiting Lecturer and Author in Residence atPrinceton University'sWoodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.[6] From 2015–2017, Gellman was also a fellow at theCenter for Information Technology Policy at Princeton.[7]
As of January 22, 2024[update], Gellman stepped away fromThe Atlantic staff and became Senior Advisor at theBrennan Center for Justice atNYU Law School.[8]
Gellman was born in 1960. His father was Stuart Gellman and his mother Marcia Jacobs ofPhiladelphia. He is Jewish.[9]
After graduating fromGeorge Washington High School inPhiladelphia, he graduatedsumma cum laude fromWoodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs atPrinceton University. He earned amaster's degree in politics fromUniversity College, Oxford[10] as aRhodes Scholar.[11]
Gellman has said he found his way to his high school newspaper after washing out as a junior varsity gymnast.[12] He began his tenure as editor with a legal battle. Carol Wacker, the principal at George Washington High School, directed him to kill a package of stories about teenage pregnancy. When he refused, Wacker seized and burned his first issue and fired him as editor. Gellman filed a First Amendment challenge in U.S. District Court against the principal and the School District of Philadelphia.[13] He won a favorable settlement nearly a year after graduation, but the articles were never published. Gellman became chairman, or editor in chief, ofThe Daily Princetonian in his junior year of college, and worked as a summer intern atThe New Republic,National Journal,The Miami Herald andThe Washington Post.
The Washington Post editorBen Bradlee hired Gellman as a full-time staff writer in 1988 to coverWashington, D.C. courts, including the trial of formerD.C. mayorMarion Barry. Gellman went on to become Pentagon correspondent during the 1991Persian Gulf War, theU.S. intervention in Somalia and the social upheavals relating to the status ofhomosexuals in the military and the assignment of women to combat roles. In 1994, he moved toJerusalem as bureau chief, covering peace negotiations, theassassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and the ascent ofBenjamin Netanyahu. He returned to Washington as diplomatic correspondent in late 1997, covering Secretary of StateMadeleine Albright and the collapse of theUnited Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) effort to disarm Iraq.
Gellman moved to New York in 1999 to take up a role as special projects reporter, focusing on long-term investigative stories. Among his early projects[14] in the new role was a series on the early life of SenatorBill Bradley, with partner Dale Russakoff, during Bradley's run for the2000 Democratic Party presidential primaries.[15]
In 2000, he led a team of reporters in an award-winning series on the rise of the globalAIDS pandemic and the failure of governments, pharmaceutical companies and theWorld Health Organization to act on clear warnings that the disease was on a path to killing tens of millions of people.[16]
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Gellman wrote an eyewitness account from the scene of theWorld Trade Center.[17] He spent the next two years tracking the war withAl Qaeda. Gellman broke stories on the history of the "Global War on Terror" before 9/11 under PresidentsBill Clinton andGeorge W. Bush; the activation of a secret "shadow government"[18] and the escape ofOsama bin Laden fromTora Bora. In late 2002, he and fellow reporterDana Priest disclosed that the U.S. government was holding terrorism suspects insecret prisons overseas and subjecting them to abusive interrogation techniques.[19]
Gellman broke important stories about the use of and misuse of intelligenceIraqi weapons of mass destruction before and after thewar in Iraq, including an account of the previously undisclosedWhite House Iraq Group.[20] In Iraq, traveling with weapons hunters with theIraq Survey Group, he showed vividly how the search for WMD was failing, even as the Bush administration asserted otherwise.[21][22] When Gellman reported that U.S. and allied teams had exhausted their leads on a "reconstituted" Iraqi nuclear weapons program,[23] the CIA issued a strong rebuttal.[24] In testimony before the U.S. Senate, less than 3 months later, Iraq Study Group headDavid Kay acknowledged that The Post's account had been correct.[25] By January 2004, Gellman used independent interviews on the ground with Iraqi scientists and engineers, U.S. and United Nations officials to tell a comprehensive story about how the prewar allegations fell apart.[26] During the presidential election campaign of 2004, Gellman and partnerDafna Linzer wrote a series on the Bush administration's national security record, offering behind-the-scenes narratives of the war with al Qaeda[27] and of Bush's efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.[28]
In 2005, Gellman discovered that the Defense Department, under SecretaryDonald Rumsfeld, was buildingStrategic Support Branch, a clandestine human intelligence service to rival the CIA, and that the commander had a controversial past.[29] Later that year he uncovered classified details about the FBI's abuse ofNational Security Letters under the new powers granted by theUSA Patriot Act, revealing as well that the bureau issued tens of thousands of those letters every year.[30] The Justice Department mounted a fierce campaign to discredit that story,[31] but eventually was obliged to retract many of its accusations.[32] Congress responded to the story by asking the Justice Department Inspector General to investigate the use of NSLs. The Inspector General's blistering report, nearly two years later, led to substantial reforms.[33]
In 2007, Gellman andJo Becker wrote a four-part series on Vice President Dick Cheney, persuading many of his allies and opponents to speak on the record for the first time.[34] The widely honored series pierced the secrecy protecting the most powerful Number Two in White House history, demonstrating Cheney's dominance of the "iron issues" of national security, economic and legal policy. Gellman took an extended book leave in 2008 to expand the newspaper series into a book for Penguin Press called "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency."
After 21 years on the staff ofThe Washington Post, Gellman resigned in February 2010 to concentrate full-time on book and magazine writing.[35]
Between 2010 and 2013, Gellman was contributing editor at large ofTime magazine,[36] where his work included cover stories on extremist domestic militias,[37] on FBI DirectorRobert Mueller,[38] and on the early influences in the life of Republican Party Presidential NomineeMitt Romney. He also wroteTime's CounterSpy blog on digital privacy and security.[39]
Gellman returned toThe Washington Post on temporary contract in May 2013 to lead the paper's coverage of the 2013 and 2014Global surveillance disclosure, based on top-secret documents leaked by ex-NSA contractorEdward Snowden.[40] In December 2013, after interviewing Snowden inMoscow, Gellman summarized 6 months of reporting in ThePost as follows:
Taken together, the revelations have brought to light a global surveillance system that cast off many of its historical restraints after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Secret legal authorities empowered the NSA to sweep in the telephone, Internet and location records of whole populations.
Gellman has spoken about the revelations in numerous broadcasts and public appearances. Among the most widely cited is an interview on NPR'sFresh Air with host Terry Gross.[2] He spoke of the biblical roots of surveillance in a lecture at St. John's Church (the "church of the presidents")[42] and participated in panel discussions at Princeton,[43] Yale[44] and Harvard.[45] Gellman has twice debated former NSA and CIA DirectorMichael Hayden about the Snowden revelations, first at Duke University[46] and then at American University.[47][48] "The government tries to keep secrets and we try to find them out," Gellman said in the second debate. "There are tradeoffs."[49]
In February 2014, Gellman stated during an event atGeorgetown University that due to legal concerns the full story about his contact with Snowden had not yet been revealed. "I don't rule out that there is legal exposure either criminally in an unlikely case or rather more likely civil compulsion," Gellman said. "Just because Edward Snowden has outted himself doesn't mean every part of my interaction or my reporting around these documents has been disclosed or I'd be willing to disclose any more of it."[50][51]
On September 23, 2020, Gellman published "The Election that Could Break America" inThe Atlantic.[52] Gellman predictedDonald Trump's plan tothwart certification of the election.[53]
Gellman is author ofContending with Kennan: Toward a Philosophy of American Power, a well-received[54] 1985 study of the post-World War II "containment" doctrine and its architectGeorge F. Kennan.
In 2008, Penguin Press published Gellman's bestselling[55]Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency. Gellman helped adapt the book for a screenplay, initially optioned for anHBO miniseries.[56] Screenwriter Debora Cahn reworked the story as a feature film, and her script was voted among the top five unproduced movies of 2013 in Hollywood's annual "Black List."[57] It has since been optioned by independent producerHarvey Weinstein.[citation needed]
In 2020, Penguin Press published Gellman'sDark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State.[58]
Gellman has contributed to threePulitzer Prizes forThe Washington Post, winning as an individual, team member and team leader. In 2002, he was part of the team that won thePulitzer Prize for National Reporting on theSeptember 11 attacks.[59] He and Becker won the same award in 2008 for "a lucid exploration of Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful yet sometimes disguised influence on national policy.[60]The Washington Post andThe Guardian shared the2014Pulitzer Prize for Public Service; Gellman anchored the team for thePost, cited "for its revelation of widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency, marked by authoritative and insightful reports that helped the public understand how the disclosures fit into the larger framework of national security."[1][61]
Previously, Gellman was a jury-nominated Pulitzer finalist in 1999[62] and 2004.[63] Other professional honors include twoEmmy Awards as editorial consultant to thePBS Frontline filmUSA of Secrets,[64] Harvard'sGoldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting,[65] two Overseas Press Club awards,[66][67] twoGeorge Polk Awards,[68] theSigma Delta Chi Award from theSociety of Professional Journalists,[69] the Gerald Ford Foundation Prize for reporting on national defense,[70] the SAIS-Novartis International Journalism Award[71] and the Jesse Laventhol Award for deadline writing from the American Society of Newspaper Editors.[72]
Angler, Gellman's book on Dick Cheney, won theLos Angeles Times Book Prize[73] and was named among the 100 Notable Books of 2008 byThe New York Times.[74]
In 2014, Gellman shared theGerald Loeb Award for Large Newspapers for five stories on the NSA.[75]
Gellman returned to Princeton for two semesters as Ferris Professor of Journalism in 2002 and 2009, teaching courses called "The Literature of Fact" and "Investigative Reporting".[76]
In 2003 and 2004, Gellman organized a lecture series on national security secrecy at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He delivered two of the lectures himself, making arguments that prefigured the debate about the disclosure of secrets obtained ten years later fromEdward Snowden.[77][78]
Since 2011, Gellman has twice taught a course called "Secrecy, Accountability and the National Security State".[79]
Gellman lives with partnerDafna Linzer inNew York City.[80] A previous marriage to Tracy Ellen Sivitz ended in divorce in 2007. He is the father of four children: Abigail, Micah, Lily, and Benjamin Gellman.[81]
Gellman once described himself in an interview as a "very moderately observant Jew".
Taken together, the revelations have brought to light a global surveillance system that cast off many of its historical restraints after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Secret legal authorities empowered the NSA to sweep in the telephone, Internet and location records of whole populations.
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