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Former Staff

David S. Hilzenrath

Lead Enterprise and Investigative Reporter

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Areas of Expertise

FDA, Financial Sector, SEC, Veteran's Affairs

David Hilzenrath joined POGO as editor-in-chief in June 2012.  Before that, he was a journalist for The Washington Post.

At POGO, Hilzenrath has overseen or conducted investigative reporting on topics such as:

  • A federal giveaway of offshore drilling rights.
  • The troubling record of offshore drilling safety systems since Deepwater Horizon.
  • Weaknesses in FDA oversight of prescription drugs.
  • The pharmaceutical industry's influence over the FDA.
  • Then CIA director Leon Panetta’s disclosure of Top Secret information about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
  • Systemic problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
  • Prosecutorial misconduct at the Department of Justice.
  • The revolving door at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
  • A mutiny among guards and other security lapses at the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan.

Hilzenrath has led POGO’s investigative staff to nine awards for excellence in journalism, including the Robert D.G. Lewis Watchdog Award, a Sigma Delta Chi award, and three prizes for investigative reporting.

In 2017, he was a lecturer at Georgetown University, where he developed and taught the course “Investigating the Federal Government.”

As a reporter on The Washington Post’s financial desk, he wrote extensively about the intersection of business and government. He reported on the financial crisis, the regulation of the financial industry, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the policing of Wall Street. He probed subjects as diverse as the finances of presidential candidates, offshore banking and money-laundering, executive compensation, the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the workings of Congress, federal tax policy, and accounting fraud. He wrote about corporate scandals from Enron and WorldCom to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Bernie Madoff, and he spotlighted systemic conflicts of interest in the auditing of Corporate America.  He has reported in depth on Obamacare and the health care system. 

He was a contributing author of Landmark: The Inside Story of America’s New Health Care Law and What It Means for Us All (Public Affairs, 2010).  His honors while at The Post included the Morton Mintz Award for Investigative Reporting and the Bill Pryor Memorial Grand Prize for Writing.  He has appeared on radio and television, including NPR, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox News, and C-SPAN.

Hilzenrath studied at the University of Michigan through the program now known as the Knight-Wallace Fellowship.  He is an honors graduate of Harvard College, where he majored in government.

Latest Work

  • Accounting’s Big Lie — and How to Fix It

    report | October 6, 2022

  • Financial Regulator Flexes Its Weakness

    analysis | May 3, 2022

  • At Least Half of Panel Advising Congress on Drug Policy Had Undisclosed Ties to Drug Makers

    investigation | October 28, 2021

  • Discarded Drugs: Infrastructure Bill Leaves Cancer Patients by the Wayside

    investigation | September 29, 2021

  • What the U.K. Can Learn from the U.S. Experience with Audit Reform: Don’t Do What We Did

    analysis | July 7, 2021

  • How Foreign Influence Can Corrupt a President. Legally.

    analysis | June 7, 2021

  • Avoiding the Subject: On Pfizer Vaccine Quality Control, FDA Says Less than European Counterpart

    investigation | March 19, 2021

  • Hearing Without Listening

    analysis | December 16, 2020

Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next

In The News

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  • CDC Exposed For Lying About Pharma Funds

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  • PCAOB sanctions Deloitte, BDO affiliates

    November 01, 2019

  • When the Watchers’ Watchers Look the Other Way

    October 29, 2019

  • Whistleblowers say US audit watchdog is not doing its job. That should worry us all.

    October 16, 2019

  • State of the Profession 2019: We Need to Talk About Accounting’s Big PR Problem

    October 11, 2019

  • Lawmakers take up bills to protect whistleblowers who expose financial and wildlife crimes

    September 24, 2019

  • Report Criticizing PCAOB At Odds with New Survey

    September 23, 2019

  • Report: Whistleblowers could help expose auditing fraud at publicly traded companies

    September 16, 2019

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