Barton Gellman is Senior Advisor to the president and executive director of the Brennan Center. His focus is on building safeguards against threats to democracy in the 2024 election and in the presidential administration to come in 2025.
Gellman came to the Brennan Center from The Atlantic, where he was an award-winning staff writer. He is the author most recently of Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State and the bestselling Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency. He has previously held positions as senior fellow at The Century Foundation, Lecturer at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs and visiting research collaborator at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy.
Before joining The Atlantic, Gellman spent 21 years at The Washington Post, where he served tours as legal, diplomatic, military and Middle East correspondent.
Gellman anchored the team that won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the National Security Agency and Edward Snowden. He was previously awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series on Vice President Dick Cheney. In 2002, he was a member of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for coverage of the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath. Other professional honors include two George Polk Awards, two Overseas Press Club awards, two Emmy awards for a PBS Frontline documentary, Harvard’s Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Gellman graduated with highest honors from Princeton University and earned a master’s degree in politics at University College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. He lives in New York City.