David Ignatius

After completing his education, Ignatius was an editor at the Washington Monthly before moving to The Wall Street Journal, where he spent ten years as a reporter. At the Journal, Ignatius first covered the steel industry in Pittsburgh. He then moved to Washington, where he covered the Justice Department, the CIA, and the Senate. Ignatius was the Journal's Middle East correspondent from 1980 through 1983, during which time he covered the wars in Lebanon and Iraq. He returned to Washington in 1984, becoming chief diplomatic correspondent. In 1985 he received the Edward Weintal Prize for diplomatic reporting.

In 1986 Ignatius left the Journal for The Washington Post. From 1986 to 1990 he was the editor of the "Outlook" section. From 1990 to 1992 he was foreign editor. From 1993 to 1999 he served as assistant managing editor in charge of business news. In 1999 he began writing a twice-weekly column on global politics, economics and international affairs.

In 2000, he became the executive editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris. He returned to the Post in 2002 when the Post sold its interest in the Herald Tribune. Ignatius continued to write his column once a week during his tenure at the Herald Tribune, resuming twice-weekly columns after his return to the Post. His column is syndicated worldwide by The Washington Post Writers Group. The column won the 2000 Gerald Loeb Award for Commentary[8] and a 2004 Edward Weintal Prize. In writing his column, Ignatius has travelled to the Middle East and interviewed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the Lebanese military organization Hezbollah.

Ignatius's writing has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, Talk Magazine, and The Washington Monthly.

Ignatius's coverage of the CIA has been criticized as being defensive and overly positive. Melvin A. Goodman, a 42-year CIA veteran, Johns Hopkins professor, and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, has called Ignatius "the mainstream media's apologist for the Central Intelligence Agency," citing as examples Ignatius's criticism of the Obama administration for investigating the CIA's role in the use of torture in interrogations during the Iraq War and his charitable defense of the agency's motivations for outsourcing such activities to private contractors.[9][10][11] Columnist Glenn Greenwald has leveled similar criticism against Ignatius.[12]

On March 12, 2014, he wrote a two-page descriptive opinion on Putin's strengths and weaknesses that was published in the Journal and Courier soon after.[13]

In September 2023, Ignatius wrote a column which appeared in The Washington Post, arguing that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris should not run for re-election, despite what Ignatius described as Biden's numerous successes in his time in the Oval Office. The op-ed received widespread recognition from several news publications across the political spectrum.[14][15][16][17][18][19]

In addition to being a journalist, Ignatius has written eleven novels in the suspense/espionage fiction genre that draw on his experience and interest in foreign affairs and his knowledge of intelligence operations. His first novel, Agents of Innocence, was at one point described by the CIA on its website as "a novel but not fiction."[20] His 1999 novel, The Sun King, a reworking of The Great Gatsby set in late-20th-century Washington, is his only departure from the espionage genre.

His 2007 novel, Body of Lies, was adapted into a film by director Ridley Scott. It starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe. Disney and producer Jerry Bruckheimer have acquired the rights to Ignatius's seventh novel, The Increment.[21]

The Quantum Spy, published in 2017, is an espionage thriller about the race between the United States and China to build the world's first hyper-fast quantum computer. His book, The Paladin: A Spy Novel, was published in 2020.

In May 2015, MSNBC's Morning Joe announced that Ignatius would be teaming up with composer Mohammed Fairouz to create a political opera titled The New Prince, based on the teachings of Niccolò Machiavelli. The opera was commissioned by the Dutch National Opera.[22] Speaking with The Washington Post, Ignatius described the broad themes of the opera in terms of three chapters: "The first chapter is about revolution and disorder. Revolutions, like children, are lovable when young, and they become much less lovable as they age. The second lesson Machiavelli tells us is about sexual obsession, among leaders. And then the final chapter is basically is the story of Dick Cheney [and] bin Laden, the way in which those two ideas of what we're obliged to do as leaders converged in such a destructive way."[23]

In 2006, Ignatius wrote a foreword to the American edition of Moazzam Begg's Enemy Combatant, a book about the author's experiences as a detainee at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. In 2008, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, and Ignatius published America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy, a book that collected conversations, moderated by Ignatius, between Brzezinski and Scowcroft. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times named it one of the ten best books of 2008.[24]

Ignatius has been trustee of the German Marshall Fund since 2000. He has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1984. From 1984 to 1990 he was a member of the governing board of St. Albans School.

In 2011 Ignatius held a contest for The Washington Post readers to write a spy novel. Ignatius wrote the first chapter and challenged fans to continue the story. Over eight weeks, readers sent in their versions of what befalls CIA agents Alex Kassem and Sarah Mancini and voted for their favorite entries. Ignatius chose the winning entry for each round, resulting in a six-chapter Web serial. Winners of the subsequent chapters included Chapter 2, "Sweets for the Sweet," by Colin Flaherty; Chapter 3, "Abu Talib," by Jill Borak; Chapter 4, "Go Hard or Go Home," by Vineet Daga; Chapter 5, "Inside Out," by Colin Flaherty; and Chapter 6, "Onward!," by Gina 'Miel' Ard.[25]

In early 2012 Ignatius served as an adjunct lecturer at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, teaching an international affairs course titled Understanding the Arab Spring from the Ground Up: Events in the Middle East, their Roots and Consequences for the United States.[26] He is currently serving as a senior fellow at the Future of Diplomacy Program at Harvard University.

In 2018, he won a George Polk Award for his coverage of the Jamal Khashoggi murder.[27][28]

According to the 2018 membership list, Ignatius is a member of the Trilateral Commission.

At the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Ignatius moderated a discussion including Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Israeli president Shimon Peres, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, and Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa. As the December 2008–January 2009 conflict in Gaza was still fresh in memory, the tone of the discussion was lively.[34] Ignatius gave Erdoğan 12 minutes to speak and gave the Israeli president 25 minutes to respond.[34] Erdoğan objected to Peres's tone and raised his voice during the Israeli president's impassioned defense of his nation's actions. Ignatius gave Erdoğan a minute to respond (Erdoğan repeatedly insisted "One minute,"[35] in English), and when Erdoğan went over his allocated minute, Ignatius repeatedly cut the Turkish prime minister off, telling him and the audience that they were out of time and that they had to adjourn to a dinner.[36] Erdoğan seemed visibly frustrated as he said confrontationally to the Israeli president, "When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill."[34] Ignatius put his arm on Erdoğan's shoulder and continued to tell him that his time was up. Erdoğan subdued Ignatius and criticised Israel's actions. Erdoğan then gathered his papers and walked out, saying, "I do not think I will be coming back to Davos after this because you do not let me speak."[36] It was rumored at the time that Ignatius' double-standard partially stems from the fact that he is of Armenian origin.

Writing about the incident later, Ignatius said that he found himself "in the middle of a fight where there was no longer a middle. [...] Because the Israel–Palestinian conflict provokes such heated emotions on both sides of the debate," Ignatius concluded, "it was impossible for anyone to be seen as an impartial mediator." Ignatius wrote that his experience elucidated a larger truth about failure of the United States' attempt to serve as an impartial mediator in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. "American leaders must give up the notion that they can transform the Middle East and its culture through military force," he wrote, and instead "get out of the elusive middle, step across the threshold of anger, and sit down and talk" with the Middle Eastern leaders.[37]

• Agents of Innocence. W. W. Norton & Company. 1987. ISBN 0-393-02486-5.
• Siro. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1991. ISBN 0-374-26506-2.
• The Bank of Fear. Avon Books. 1995. ISBN 0-380-72280-1.
• A Firing Offense. Random House. 1997. ISBN 0-517-36839-0.
• The Sun King. Random House. 2000. ISBN 0-8129-9243-1.
• Body of Lies. W. W. Norton & Company. 2007. ISBN 978-0-393-33158-5.
• The Increment. W. W. Norton & Company. 2009. ISBN 978-0-393-33831-7.
• Bloodmoney. W. W. Norton & Company. 2011. ISBN 978-0-393-34179-9.
• The Director. W. W. Norton & Company. 2014. ISBN 978-0-393-07814-5.
• The Quantum Spy. W. W. Norton & Company. 2017. ISBN 978-0-393-25415-0.
• The Paladin. W. W. Norton & Company. 2020. ISBN 978-0-393-25417-4.

• America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy. Basic Books; First Trade Paper Edition. 2009. ISBN 978-0-465-01801-7.