[7] Schmitt is notable for breaking the story that the Obama administration was planning to reverse the Bush policy of holding captives in extrajudicial detention in American internment facilities in Afghanistan, without allowing them to learn why they were being held.

[8] On September 12, 2009, Schmitt, quoting officials who did not want to go on the record by name, that Bagram captives would be allowed to request to review and challenge the allegations that lead to their detention.

Schmitt was one of the New York Times journalists who played a key role in reporting the homicide of several Afghan captives in U.S. custody at the Bagram Air Base internment facility in 2003 and 2004.

[11][12] In 2006 Schmitt and a colleague reported on bribery concerns that involved Major Gloria Davis, an officer in the United States Army who was found dead from a gunshot wound shortly thereafter.

[13] In 2011, he published a book, Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda with Thom Shanker, his colleague at the New York Times.