Warren Strobel and Isaac Stanley-Becker join The Washington Post’s National Security desk

The additions of two distinguished journalists to our coverage of the CIA, NSA, ODNI and other organizations that make up the U.S. intelligence community underscore The Post’s investment in national security reporting as the second Trump administration begins.

Warren Strobel joins The Post from the Wall Street Journal and is a veteran intelligence reporter with deep experience, robust sourcing and a record of big scoops. He has covered American foreign policy, national security and intelligence agencies for 35 years, in Washington and overseas. He has travelled with seven secretaries of state; reported from nearly 100 countries; and deployed to war zones and other hostile environments, including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Niger and the Palestinian territories.

At the Journal, where he has worked since 2018, Warren was the first to obtain and report on the highly classified CIA assessment of Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman's role in the murder of Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi. He also broke news of a Chinese military site being covertly constructed in the United Arab Emirates. His recent reporting has focused on Chinese espionage and military expansion, the origins of the covid virus and the difficulties of human spying in the age of digital surveillance.

Prior to his work at the Journal, Warren was an editor and correspondent in Reuters’ Washington bureau. Before that, he was a correspondent for Knight Ridder/McClatchy’s Washington bureau, where he was part of a four-person team whose reporting consistently challenged the George W. Bush administration's case for invading Iraq in 2003. The story of their award-winning work was told in the 2017 feature film "Shock and Awe," and in Bill Moyers' documentary "Buying the War."

When not trying to break scoops or digging into investigative work, Warren pursues his other passion: the outdoors. In August 2024, he completed a 21-year section-hike of the entire 2,197-mile Appalachian Trail. He is also an avid birder and has seen over 1,400 of the world's approximately 11,000 bird species.

Isaac Stanley-Becker moves to the intelligence beat after six years at The Post as a superb investigative reporter on the National staff, during which he has tackled some of the most sensitive and competitive stories across the newsroom. His reporting has penetrated complex bureaucracies and held powerful institutions and individuals to account.

Collaborating with reporters on Democracy and Climate, Isaac revealed how alfalfa fields in the Arizona desert fed dairy cows in Saudi Arabia using unregulated supplies of precious groundwater — an investigation that led the state to cancel leases held by the Saudi firm. He scooped the news of Paul Manafort's business ties to China, prompting the consultant's withdrawal from a role at the 2024 Republican National Convention. He also has written about the spread of conspiracy theories fueled by deep fakes and dark money, uncovering a domestic troll farm during the 2020 election. operated by an affiliate of Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA.

Isaac was part of the team that won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for the AR-15 series, “American Icon,” with a piece revealing how states have restricted access to graphic imagery after mass shootings.

Covering campaign finance during the 2022 midterms, Isaac landed scoops about Peter Thiel and other big donors and investigated the financial forces behind far-right media networks, including the obscure mogul keeping Steve Bannon on the air. In 2020 and 2021, during the covid pandemic, he broke news about the national vaccine mobilization and exposed how wealthy donors received priority access to immunization.

A dual U.S.-German citizen, Isaac speaks French and German and has reported from across Europe and the United States. He received his B.A. in history from Yale University and his master's and Ph.D. in history from Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes scholar. His first book, Europe without Borders: A History, will be published in January.

Warren and Isaac will join Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick — two of the Post’s most experienced and scoopy journalists — in reporting on intelligence and related national security topics. Ellen, whose remit as a national security reporter is wide ranging, has a high news metabolism and an enviable network of sources across the landscape, which has made her an invaluable reporter and an expert on foreign cyberattacks and Indo-Pacific geopolitical competition. She has distinguished herself over 29 years in the newsroom as a member of three Pulitzer Prize-winning teams. Joby, a comparative rookie with 28 years at the Post, is one of the country’s foremost experts on counterterrorism. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes — including one for his masterful book on ISIS, “Black Flags” — and this year broke blockbuster stories on Hamas and the Gaza war, while contributing two rich enterprise pieces to the Money War sanctions package.

Warren and Isaac’s first day on the National Security team will be Jan. 6. Please join us in welcoming them.