W.J. Hennigan

Correspondent for New York Times Opinion

United States

W.J. Hennigan writes about the U.S. military and national security issues in Washington, D.C. He has reported from more than two dozen countries across five continents, covering war, the arms trade, and the lives of U.S. service members.

His coverage of domestic extremism and the Jan. 6 Capitol attack was recognized with a Sigma Delta Chi award in 2021. His stories on the COVID-19 pandemic response earned the Gerald R. Ford award for Defense coverage in 2020, an honor he received six years earlier for a series on the aging infrastructure underpinning America's nuclear weapons complex.

In 2018, his coverage documenting how Iraqi civilians were killed during the counter-ISIS campaign earned an Associated Press Media Editors award. He was also part of a team of journalists at the Los Angeles Times who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for coverage of the San Bernardino terror attacks.

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Portfolio
Time
04/27/2023
Inside the Race to Arm Ukraine Before Its Counteroffensive

Squinting at his computer screen through wire-rimmed glasses, Greg Hartl monitors an unmarked 18-wheeler as it cuts through the American heartland. Data from the truck's satellite tracking devices stream into his windowless command center at Scott Air Force Base, about 20 miles east of St.

Time
12/03/2022
Exclusive: The Making of the Military's New Stealth Bomber

In the predawn darkness of the western Mojave Desert, workers make their way across a parking lot toward a sprawling complex of factories, hangars and runways. Teams of armed military and civilian guards patrol the grounds leading to the 5,800-acre facility, which is ringed by an elaborate security system and monitored from space by orbiting reconnaissance satellites.

Time
09/13/2022
Inside the Mission to Modernize America's Nuclear Missiles

If a piece of equipment breaks inside Captain Kaz "Dexter" Moffett's underground command center at the Alpha-01 Missile Alert Facility, it's marked with a paper tag that reads either "warning" or "danger." A few of those are hanging in this cramped capsule buried about 70 ft. below the high plains of eastern Wyoming.

Time
09/02/2021
Grieving One of the Last U.S. Soldiers Killed in Afghanistan

Sergeant First Class Javier Jaguar Gutierrez is buried in Grave 104B of Section 14A at the Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio. The white marble headstone is shaded by a willowy oak and adorned with a miniature American flag and a fistful of red, white and blue flowers.

Time
11/19/2020
Inside New York City's Mass Graveyard on Hart Island

The sun has barely risen above the glassy surface of Long Island Sound. A breeze sweeps over an island half a mile from the Bronx where 15 workers watch a backhoe remove the layer of soil that separates a mass grave from the outside world.