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Lore & Background

Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1975, Savage earned an undergraduate degree in English and American literature and language from Harvard College in 1998. He earned a Master of Studies in Law (MSL) in 2003 from Yale Law School, where he was a Knight Foundation journalism fellow. He is believed to have written the first mainstream media story about the Dark Side of the Rainbow, the practice of listening to Pink Floyd's album The Dark Side of the Moon while watching the film The Wizard of Oz, in August 1995, while working as a college intern at The Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne. He went on in 1999 to work as a staff writer for the Miami Herald, where, under the byline "Charles Savage", he covered local and state government and occasionally reviewed movies. He changed his byline to "Charlie Savage" when he moved to The Boston Globe's Washington Bureau in 2003 and kept it that way when he moved to the Times Washington Bureau in May 2008. He is married to Luiza Chwialkowska Savage, the editorial director of events for Politico and a commentator on Canadian political news programs. He has taught a seminar at Georgetown University on national security and the Constitution.

Reader's Guide

Savage won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a 2006 series of articles in the Globe about Presidential Signing Statements and their use by the Bush administration as part of a broader effort to expand executive power. Those articles also won the Gerald R. Ford Foundation Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award. In 2007, Savage published a book about the Bush administration's expansion of executive power entitled Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency & the Subversion of American Democracy. The Constitution Project awarded the book its first Award for Constitutional Commentary. It also won the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism and the National Council of Teachers of English's George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contributions to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language. In 2015, Savage published a second book, an investigative history of the Obama administration's national security legal policy, called Power Wars: Inside Obama's Post-9/11 Presidency. While writing the book, he was a Woodrow Wilson Center Public Policy Fellow.

Did You Know?

• Savage is believed to have written the first mainstream media story about the Dark Side of the Rainbow in August 1995, while working as a college intern at The Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne.
• He changed his byline from 'Charles Savage' to 'Charlie Savage' when he moved to The Boston Globe's Washington Bureau in 2003.
• His 2006 series on Presidential Signing Statements won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, the Gerald R. Ford Foundation Prize, and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award.
• His book Takeover won the Constitution Project's first Award for Constitutional Commentary and the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contributions to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language.
• While writing Power Wars, Savage was a Woodrow Wilson Center Public Policy Fellow.

From Fort Wayne to the Nation's Capital

Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1975, Charles Savage built a path from small-town intern to one of the country's most prominent national security reporters. He graduated from Harvard College in 1998 with a degree in English and American literature and language, then pursued a Master of Studies in Law at Yale Law School in 2003, where he served as a Knight Foundation journalism fellow. His first professional foray came in August 1995 as a college intern at the Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, where he is credited with penning the first mainstream media piece about the "Dark Side of the Rainbow" — the quirk of pairing Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon with The Wizard of Oz. In 1999 he joined the Miami Herald as a staff writer, covering local and state government under the byline "Charles Savage" and occasionally reviewing films. A move to The Boston Globe's Washington Bureau in 2003 prompted him to shorten his byline to "Charlie Savage," a name he carried with him when he transferred to The New York Times Washington Bureau in May 2008.

The Signing Statements Investigation

In 2006, while reporting out of The Boston Globe's Washington Bureau, Savage produced a series of articles examining Presidential Signing Statements and how the Bush administration wielded them as part of a broader campaign to stretch executive authority. The work earned him the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, a distinction that recognized the depth and significance of his investigation into the mechanics of presidential power. The same body of reporting also took home the Gerald R. Ford Foundation Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award, underscoring its resonance across both journalistic and legal communities. Savage's beat at the time encompassed a wide swath of national security legal policy — presidential power, surveillance, drone strikes, torture, secrecy, leak investigations, military commissions, war powers, and the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His reporting on signing statements became a landmark in press scrutiny of the executive branch, demonstrating how a single reporter at a major metropolitan paper could illuminate the quiet, procedural tools through which presidential authority was being reshaped in the post-9/11 era.

Two Books, Two Administrations

Savage translated his reporting into two major books, each examining a different administration's approach to executive power. His 2007 volume, Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy, published by Little, Brown and Company, dissected the Bush-era expansion of presidential authority. The book received the Constitution Project's inaugural Award for Constitutional Commentary, the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the National Council of Teachers of English's George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contributions to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language. Eight years later, in 2015, he released Power Wars: Inside Obama's Post-9/11 Presidency, also from Little, Brown, an investigative history of the Obama administration's national security legal policy. While researching that project he held a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Public Policy.

Life Beyond the Byline

Beyond his reporting and books, Savage has maintained a presence in academia and a personal life that intersects with the political world he covers. He has taught a seminar at Georgetown University focused on national security and the Constitution, bringing his front-line reporting experience into the classroom. He is married to Luiza Chwialkowska Savage, who serves as the editorial director of events for Politico and appears as a commentator on Canadian political news programs. His professional focus remains tightly concentrated on the legal architecture of national security — the interplay of presidential power, surveillance programs, drone strikes, torture policy, government secrecy, leak investigations, military commissions, war powers, and the detention operations at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Currently employed by The New York Times, he continues to report from the Washington Bureau, carrying the "Charlie Savage" byline he adopted in 2003. His work has been reviewed in the pages of the Times itself, with critics like Gideon Rose and Michiko Kakutani weighing in on his books, and he has made appearances on C-SPAN to discuss his findings.