Michael Weisskopf

Michael Weisskopf is a senior correspondent for TIME in the magazine's Washington, D.C. bureau. He covers national politics and investigations, and most recently, the ongoing war in Iraq.

In December, 2003, while reporting TIME’s “Person of the Year” story in Baghdad, Weisskopf threw a live, insurgent Iraqi hand grenade from a U.S. Army humvee, saving himself, TIME’s photographer and four soldiers, but losing his right hand. He was sent to the amputee ward at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC, the first reporter wounded in combat ever to be treated at that premiere hospital for soldiers.  There, he met three soldiers whose injury, recovery, and reentry he weaved into his own story in Blood Brothers: Among the Soldiers of Ward 57, a book cited by the New York Times as an "Editors’ Choice."  In August, 2008, Weisskopf received the Army's Distinguished Civilians Service medal for his heroic action, the highest honor that the Army confers on a civilian. He also received the Arm’s Fourth Estate Award and the Veterans of Foreign Wars News Media Award. For his Iraq coverage, Weisskopf won the National Headliners Award, The Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in journalism, honorable mention from the Overseas Press Club and two nominations for the National Magazine Award. Weisskopf appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, which ran a lengthy excerpt of his book in its October 2, 2006 editions.   He was awarded the "Chairman's Citation” of the National Press foundation and Italy's Urbino Press Award.

As an investigative reporter for Time’s nation section, Weisskopf has scored many scoops, including the smoking-gun letter of FBI whistle-blower Coleen Rowley on terrorist suspects and the hidden tapes of Bill Clinton’s fundraising coffees, and he broke stories on Arthur Andersen’s shredding of Enron documents and Clinton’s deal with prosecutors in the Monica Lewinsky case.

In addition to Blood Brothers, Weisskopf is co-author of two books: Truth At Any Cost, a book on the Kenneth Starr investigation of President Clinton published in April, 2000 by HarperCollins, and Tell Newt to Shut Up, a book about the 1995 Republican revolution in congress, published in 1996 by Simon & Schuster's paperback  division.

Weisskopf was won numerous reporting honors, including the Goldsmith Award for Investigative Reporting, George Polk Award for national reporting, Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress, the Clarion Award and the Page One Award.

Weisskopf joined TIME in January 1997 from The Washington Post. In his 20 years with the Post, he covered money in politics, the environment and the Pentagon.  He was the paper's correspondent in China from 1980 to 1985 and covered the hostage crisis in Iran in 1979 and 1980. In 1996 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.

He began his career in journalism at The Montgomery Advertiser in Montgomery, Alabama.  Prior to joining the Post, Weisskopf covered state government for The Baltimore Sun. Weisskopf received his Master of Arts from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and his Bachelors degree from George Washington University, with credits from Princeton and Tulane Universities and Middlebury College.

Weisskopf lives in Washington with the professional singer Rebekah Eden and their four children.