Follow on Facebook Follow on Twitter The Conservative Book Club Podcast

Bill Gertz

Bill Gertz is an award-winning national security journalist and author of seven books. He is currently senior editor of The Washington Free Beacon, an online news outlet, and National Security Columnist for The Washington Times.  His website is The Gertz File (gertzfile.com)

Bill also is the editor and publisher of Flash//CRITIC Cyber Threat News (flashcritic.com), a news site that highlights the growing challenge of cyber security threats.

Bill has an international reputation. Vyachaslav Trubnikov, head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, once called him a “tool of the CIA” after he wrote an article exposing Russian intelligence operations in the Balkans. A senior CIA official once threatened to have a cruise missile fired at his desk at The Washington Times after he wrote a column critical of the CIA’s analysis of China. China’s communist government also has criticized him for his news reports exposing China’s weapons and missile sales to rogues states, accusing him of “spreading lies about China.” The state-run Xinhua news agency in 2006 identified Bill as the No. 1 “anti-China expert” in the world. Bill insists he is very much pro-China — pro-Chinese people and opposed to the communist system.

Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey has stated: “When I was DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] Bill used to drive me crazy because I couldn’t figure out where the leaks were coming from. Now that I’ve been outside for two years, I read him religiously to find out what’s going on.” During the 1990s, Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson told the author: “We talk about your stories at Cabinet meetings.” Defense Secretary William S. Cohen once remarked to China’s military intelligence chief that Bill “has access to more intelligence information than anyone I know.”

Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld once told him: “You are drilling holes in the Pentagon and sucking out information.”

Bill has been a guest lecturer at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Va.; the Central Intelligence Agency; the National Defense University at Fort McNair, Washington, DC; and the Brookings Institution, Washington, DC. He has participated in the National Security Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

He studied English literature at Washington College in Chestertown, Md., and journalism at George Washington University, Washington, DC. In March 2014, Bill was awarded the Reed Irvine Award for Investigative Journalism by Accuracy in Media. In September 1999, Bill was awarded the Western Journalism Center award for investigative journalism. The United States Business and Industrial Council awarded him the “Defender of the National Interest Award” in June 1998, and in 1997 he was recognized by The Washington Times for excellence in achievement.

Oh no.

Something went wrong, and we're unable to process your request.

Please try again later.

Search