Barton David Gellman (born 1960) is an American author and journalist known for his reports on the September 11 attacks, on Dick Cheney's vice presidency, and on the global surveillance disclosure.

[1] Beginning in June 2013, he authored The Washington Post's coverage of the U.S. National Security Agency, based on top secret documents provided to him by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

[3][4] Gellman was formerly based at the Century Foundation,[5] where he was a senior fellow, and held appointment as Visiting Lecturer and Author in Residence at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Gellman became chairman, or editor in chief, of The Daily Princetonian in his junior year of college, and worked as a summer intern at The New Republic, National Journal, The Miami Herald and The Washington Post.

Gellman went on to become Pentagon correspondent during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the U.S. intervention in Somalia and the social upheavals relating to the status of homosexuals in the military and the assignment of women to combat roles.

He returned to Washington as diplomatic correspondent in late 1997, covering Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the collapse of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) effort to disarm Iraq.

[15] In 2000, he led a team of reporters in an award-winning series on the rise of the global AIDS pandemic and the failure of governments, pharmaceutical companies and the World Health Organization to act on clear warnings that the disease was on a path to killing tens of millions of people.

Gellman broke stories on the history of the "Global War on Terror" before 9/11 under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush; the activation of a secret "shadow government"[18] and the escape of Osama bin Laden from Tora Bora.

In late 2002, he and fellow reporter Dana Priest disclosed that the U.S. government was holding terrorism suspects in secret prisons overseas and subjecting them to abusive interrogation techniques.

[28] In 2005, Gellman discovered that the Defense Department, under Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, was building Strategic Support Branch, a clandestine human intelligence service to rival the CIA, and that the commander had a controversial past.

[33] In 2007, Gellman and Jo 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.

[35] Between 2010 and 2013, Gellman was contributing editor at large of Time magazine,[36] where his work included cover stories on extremist domestic militias,[37] on FBI Director Robert Mueller,[38] and on the early influences in the life of Republican Party Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney.

[39] Gellman returned to The Washington Post on temporary contract in May 2013 to lead the paper's coverage of the 2013 and 2014 Global surveillance disclosure, based on top-secret documents leaked by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

[40] In December 2013, after interviewing Snowden in Moscow, Gellman summarized 6 months of reporting in The Post 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.