REPORTING ON NATIONAL SECURITY and intelligence maters has traditionally been the province of Ivy League-educated reporters working for elite papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post. Bill Gertz hardly fits this profile. He never graduated from college, and he writes for the Washington Times, a conservative daily Washington elites frequently dismiss as right-wing trash published by Moonies. Not only that, but Gertz is himself a follower of Sun Myung Moon and a member of Moon’s Unification Church. These facts make his achievements and reputation all the more impressive. For in his 11 years at the Washington Times, Gertz has become the nation’s most influential daily reporter on intelligence and national security. He has accumulated some remarkable fans.
“I’m a Bill Gertz admirer,” says Jamie McIntyre, CNN’s Pentagon correspondent. “He has broken an incredible number of stories.” New York Times columnist A. M. Rosenthal, formerly the paper’s executive editor, calls Gertz “a very valuable reporter. . . . Every time he writes a piece I take care to read it.” Even White House spokesman Mike McCurry, whose boss has been the target of many of Gertz’s stories, says the unassuming and even- tempered Gertz is a “straight-shooter” who has done “more interesting reporting on national security than anyone else on the beat.” The quantity and quality of Gertz’s scoops this year surpass anything he’s uncovered in the past and have sent the CIA and the FBI scrambling to identify the source of his prodigious leaks inside the national-security apparatus.
