After 21 years on the staff of The Washington Post., Gellman resigned in February 2010 to work full time on book and magazine writing. He is contributing Editor At Large of Time magazine , where he writes cover stories and the CounterSpy blog on digital privacy and security. He is based at the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law., where he holds a senior research fellowship.
In 2008, Gellman published the bestselling The Cheney Vice Presidency, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was named among the 100 Notable Books of 2008 by The New York Times. Gellman is now helping adapt the book for an HBO miniseries.
"Angler" grew out of a series of articles with partner Jo Becker on Dick Cheney in The Washington Post, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize, a George Polk Award , and the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting . Gellman also shared a Pulitzer for national reporting in 2002.
Gellman has previously been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, in 1999 and 2004. Other professional honors include two Overseas Press Club awards , the Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists , the Gerald Ford Foundation Prize for reporting on national defense , the SAIS-Novartis International Journalism Award and the Jesse Laventhol Award for deadline writing from the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Gellman broke important stories about the use of intelligence leading to the war in Iraq, including the first public reporting on the secretive White House Iraq Group.
In previous postings, Gellman covered Washington DC courts, including the trial of former mayor Marion Barry; was Pentagon correspondent during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the U.S. intervention in Somalia and the social upheavals relating to the status of gays in the military and the assignment of women to combat roles; became Jerusalem bureau chief in 1994, covering peace negotiations, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and the ascent of Benjamin Netanyahu; returned to Washington as diplomatic correspondent, covering Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the collapse of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) effort to disarm Iraq; and moved to New York in 1999 to take up the special projects role.
Gellman graduated summa cum laude from Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and was a Rhodes Scholar, earning a master's degree in politics from University College, Oxford . He 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." .
In addition to the Cheney book, Gellman is author of Contending with Kennan: Toward a Philosophy of American Power, a well-received 1985 study of the post-World War II "containment" doctrine and its architect, George F. Kennan.
The son of Stuart Gellman of Tucson, Arizona, and Marcia Jacobs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he lives with partner Dafna Linzer in New York City. A previous marriage to Tracy Ellen Sivitz ended in divorce. He is the father of four children: Abigail, Michael, Lily and Benjamin Gellman.
Contending with Kennan: Toward a Philosophy of American Power. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1985. ISBN 0-275-91737-1 (10). ISBN 978-0-275-91737-1 (13). [Hardcover ed.] New York: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1985. ISBN 0-275-91805-X (10). ISBN 978-0-275-91805-7 (13). [Paperback ed.]
The Cheney Vice Presidency. New York: Penguin Press, 2008. ISBN 1594201862 (10). ISBN 978-1594201868 (13). [Hardcover ed.]
