Kurt Alexander Eichenwald (born June 28, 1961) is an American journalist and a New York Times bestselling author of five books, one of which, The Informant (2000), was made into a motion picture in 2009.

Eichenwald had been employed by The New York Times since 1986 and primarily covered Wall Street and corporate topics such as insider trading, accounting scandals, and takeovers, but also wrote about a range of issues including terrorism, the Bill Clinton pardon controversy, federal health care policy, and sexual predators on the Internet.

[2] He contacted the United States Department of Health and Human Services and fought his way back into school,[2][3] an experience that he has credited with giving him the willingness to take on institutions in his muckraking reporting.

When Smith began writing his book The Power Game, Eichenwald became his research assistant,[4] leaving in 1986 to become associate editor at The National Journal in Washington.

He also covered the excesses of the takeover era, including the biggest deal of the time, the acquisition of RJR Nabisco by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company.

He wrote a multi-part series for The New York Times, exposing significant deficiencies in the American business of providing kidney dialysis treatments.

After his dialysis series, he joined with Martin Gottlieb, a health reporter with the newspaper, in a multi-year investigation of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation, which at the time was the largest health-care company in the world.

He also teamed with another of the newspaper's reporters, Gina Kolata, for a multi-year investigation into how business interests affect the nation's system for medical research.

"[11] Five months after publication of the article, Eichenwald and Berry both gave Congressional testimony about online child abuse before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Eichenwald claimed in the testimony that he had stumbled across Berry while reporting on documents that proved to be fraudulent, leaving him believing there was no story but fearful there was a child in danger.

In 2007 it came to light that Eichenwald had given Berry an undisclosed $2,000 before writing the reports;[13][14] The New York Times published a note stating that "the check should have been disclosed to editors and readers".

[17][18] In the fall of 2006 Eichenwald left The New York Times and joined the staff of newly created business magazine Condé Nast Portfolio as a senior writer.

An Eichenwald article about terrorism that had been championed by Impoco was killed by editor-in-chief Joanne Lipman, leading to a significant dispute between the two editors.

In 2012, Eichenwald joined Vanity Fair as a contributing editor where he wrote business articles for the magazine and an online column focusing on government and politics.

In February 2017, Sputnik editor Bill Moran filed a libel lawsuit against Newsweek, which later removed the two relevant stories by Eichenwald as part of a settlement.

[23][24] In December 2016, Eichenwald was criticized for breaching journalistic ethics by tweeting an unsubstantiated claim that Donald Trump was "institutionalized in a mental hospital" in 1990.

Also a New York Times bestseller,[citation needed] the book chronicled the events in governments around the world in the 500 days after the 9/11 attacks.

[32] Eichenwald is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award for Excellence in Journalism in 1995 and 1997, for articles about the dialysis industry and fraud at the nation's largest hospital company, Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation.

[citation needed] In a 2002 NewsBios article titled "Kurt Succeeded Where So Many Others Would Have Quit," Dean Rotbart wrote: While Eichenwald has never since hidden his epilepsy, he also didn't make it a centerpiece of his life.