Philip Shenon bio

Philip Shenon is an investigative reporter and best-selling author based in Washington, D.C.  He spent almost his entire career at The New York Times, where he was a reporter from 1981 until 2008. He left the paper in May 2008 a few weeks after his first book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, hit the best-seller lists of both The New York Times and The Washington Post. The book, a behind-the-scenes history of the 9/11 Commission, was hailed by reviewers as “mesmerizing” (The New York Times), “stunning” and “spellbinding” (Publishers Weekly), and a “rich slice of investigative journalism” (The Observer, London). 

At The Times, he was a foreign correspondent, reporting from scores of countries across six continents, and held several of the most important reporting assignments in the paper’s Washington bureau, including the State Department, the Pentagon, the Justice Department, and Congress. He has reported from several war zones and was one of two reporters from The Times embedded with American ground troops during the invasion of Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War.

Shenon joined The Times as an assistant to the columnist James Reston, the paper’s former Washington Bureau Chief and Executive Editor, a few days after his graduation from Brown University in 1981. He is a regular contributor to The Daily Beast website on national security and law-enforcement issues. He is also a frequent guest on National Public Radio, CNN, MSNBC, and the BBC.

• The New York Times Washington Bureau assignment as Chief Defense Department Correspondent
• The New York Times Washington Bureau assignment as Diplomatic Correspondent
• The New York Times Washington Bureau assignment as Congressional Correspondent
• The New York Times Washington Bureau assignment as  Justice Department Correspondent

• Degree unknown, Brown University , 1981

• The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11, 2008

Phone: (212) 223-0720