At the
Times, Van Natta was on a six-reporter team, led by
Jeff Gerth, that won the 1999
Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series of stories about American corporations that sold satellite technology with military value to
China. He is a 1986 graduate of
Boston University, where he won the Scarlet Key, an award given to student leaders. At BU, he served for three semesters as the editor-in-chief of
The Daily Free Press, an independent daily newspaper published by students. In 2000,
Boston University's College of Communication presented Van Natta with its Distinguished Alumni Award. In 2005, Boston University honored Van Natta as one of its 22 alumni to have won the
Pulitzer Prize. At the
Times, Van Natta was the first investigative correspondent in the newspaper's history to be posted overseas. He was based in the newspaper's
London,
England bureau for nearly three years, from January 2003 until September 2005. While at the
Times, he has also covered the
impeachment of Bill Clinton, the
deadlocked 2000 election in Florida,
campaign finance and the crash of
TWA Flight 800. Since September 11, 2001, Van Natta has covered terrorism and "
extraordinary rendition," the
CIA program that kidnaps terrorism suspects abroad and sends them to third countries, where they are often tortured. In October 2005, Van Natta was one of three reporters to write a 5,800-word article about former Times reporter
Judith Miller's 85 days in jail for refusing to testify before a grand jury led by special counsel
Patrick Fitzgerald. The article focused in detail on the handling of her case by the Times publisher,
Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and top editors at the Times, including executive editor
Bill Keller. Prior to joining the
Times in July 1995, Van Natta worked for eight years at
The Miami Herald, where he was a member of a team of reporters awarded the
1993 Pulitzer Prize for
Public Service for coverage of
Hurricane Andrew in August 1992. Van Natta was sent by
Herald editors to cover the eye of the storm in Florida City in southern
Dade County. He stayed in a
Comfort Inn, which was destroyed by the 165 m.p.h. winds, and he nearly lost his life. His first-person account of surviving the storm was part of the Herald's Pulitzer winning entry. While at
The Herald, he won numerous national, regional and state awards, including the
American Bar Association's Silver Gavel and the Investigative Reporters & Editors Gold Medal for an eight-part series called "Crime and No Punishment," which revealed Miami had the highest rate of crime but the lowest rate of punishment in America. In April 2003, Van Natta published his first book,
First Off the Tee: Presidential Hackers, Duffers and Cheaters from Taft to Bush (Public Affairs, ). The non-fiction book about Presidential golf was a
New York Times bestseller, and was also excerpted in the March 24, 2003 edition of
Sports Illustrated, and was the cover story in the June 2003 edition of the
Observer Sports Monthly in the United Kingdom.
First Off the Tee was made into a documentary by the
Times Discovery Channel, a show that featured interviews with
Arnold Palmer and
Gary Player. And the book was also named a Notable Non-Fiction Book by
The New York Times and one of the best sports books of the year by
Sports Illustrated. Van Natta's latest book,
Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, was published in 2011 by
Little, Brown. The book was not a bestseller, but in 2012 the
United States Golf Association awarded "Wonder Girl" the "
Herbert Warren Wind Book Award" as the top golf book published in 2011. On September 5, 2010, The New York Times published the results of a 6-month investigation led by Van Natta into alleged malpractice at the
News of the World, a British newspaper owned by
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. The
News of the World dismissed the allegations as unsubstantiated and said "the investigation was tainted by a vested interest in the outcome". They also accused
The New York Times of flawed reporting and of being motivated by commercial rivalry. In a letter to the Times' Public Editor Arthur Brisbane,
The News of the World cited seven breaches of The New York Times' own ethical guidelines on accuracy, use of
anonymous sources, bias, impartiality, honest treatment of competitors, reader benefit and conflict of interest. They also questioned the professional detachment of Van Natta, who they claimed had sent a
Twitter message linking to a personal attack on News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch alongside a message which read: "The Last Great Newspaper War". In a blog post following publication of the News of the World story, media commentator
Michael Wolff characterised Van Natta as a Times's "enforcer" and "insider, loyalist and gun". In his column, Brisbane broadly supported the Times' reporting but conceded that it relied heavily on anonymous sources and that presentation of the story and gratuitous references to Murdoch could leave room for suspicions of a "hidden agenda". Van Natta is played by
Joseph May in the 2025 ITV drama about the
News International phone hacking scandal,
The Hack. ==References==