Nick Schwellenbach

Nick Schwellenbach is a senior investigator at POGO Investigates, the news reporting division of the Project On Government Oversight. He has previously been the communications director at the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, the main federal agency in charge of protecting whistleblowers. He also served on a three-person government team that evaluated whistleblower allegations of abuses of authority, violations of journalistic independence, and other claims involving the first Senate-confirmed CEO at the U.S. Agency for Global Media. He has previously worked at the Center for Public Integrity, Harvard University’s Nieman Watchdog, and the Center for Effective Government. Nick received his B.A. in history from the University of Texas-Austin and his M.A. in journalism from American University. His bylines have appeared in the Washington Post, Time Magazine, Rolling Stone, the New Republic, the Intercept, Politico, the Daily Beast, Yahoo News, Mother Jones, Texas Observer, and other media outlets.

Nick’s work for POGO on excessive secrecy covering up serious misconduct by Justice Department attorneys won the Society of Professional Journalists-DC Chapter’s Robert D.G. Lewis Watchdog Award in 2015, its highest prize. His investigations of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were the basis for two seasons of POGO’s award-winning investigative podcast Bad Watchdog. He has managed investigations that have won awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists and Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. He was the editor of a book by POGO and two other organizations — Caught Between Conscience and Career, a guide for federal whistleblowers — that won the Campaigns & Elections’ Reed Award for Best Civic Education Resource. His reporting on mass deletions of agency officials’ government text messages inside DHS and on sexual harassment and misconduct at the agency prompted federal probes and internal reforms. His investigations into overseas labor and sex trafficking by U.S. military contractors and subcontractors led to a new executive order. He has led and managed investigations into dangerous conditions inside immigrant detention centers, bribery and corruption scandals involving members of Congress, coziness between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Wall Street, poorly secured nuclear materials, whistleblower retaliation across numerous agencies, mismanagement of the Joint Strike Fighter F-35 program, faulty missile defense systems, and many other topics.

Nick is currently focused on DHS, the Justice Department, and oversight of the executive branch. He can be contacted on Signal at schwellenbach.27.