David Welna
David Welna is NPR's national security correspondent.
Having previously covered Congress over a 13-year period starting in 2001, Welna reported extensively on matters related to national security. He covered the debates on Capitol Hill over authorizing the use of military force prior to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the expansion of government surveillance practices arising from Congress' approval of the USA PATRIOT Act. Welna reported on congressional probes into the use of torture by U.S. officials interrogating terrorism suspects. He also traveled with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to Afghanistan on the Pentagon chief's first overseas trip in that post.
As a national security correspondent, Welna has continued covering the overseas travel of Pentagon chiefs who've succeeded Hagel. He has also made regular trips to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to provide ongoing coverage of the detention there of alleged "foreign enemy combatants" and the slow-moving prosecution of some of them in an episodically-convened war court. In Washington, he continues to cover national security-related issues being considered by Congress.
In mid-1998, after 16 years of reporting from abroad for NPR, Welna joined NPR's Chicago bureau. During that posting, he reported on a wide range of issues: changes in Midwestern agriculture that threaten the survival of small farms, the personal impact of foreign conflicts and economic crises in the heartland, and efforts to improve public education. His background in Latin America informed his coverage of the saga of Elian Gonzalez both in Miami and in Cuba.
Welna first filed stories for NPR as a freelancer in 1982, based in Buenos Aires. From there, and subsequently from Rio de Janeiro, he covered events throughout South America. In 1995, Welna became the chief of NPR's Mexico bureau.
Additionally, he has reported for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Financial Times, and The Times of London. Welna's photography has appeared in Esquire, The New York Times, The Paris Review, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Covering a wide range of stories in Latin America, Welna chronicled the wrenching 1985 trial of Argentina's former military leaders who presided over the disappearance of tens of thousands of suspected dissidents. In Brazil, he visited a town in Sao Paulo state called Americana where former slaveholders from America relocated after the Civil War. Welna covered the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, the mass exodus of Cubans who fled the island on rafts in 1994, the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, and the U.S. intervention in Haiti to restore Jean Bertrand Aristide to Haiti's presidency.
Welna was honored with the 2011 Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress, given by the National Press Foundation. In 1995, he was awarded an Overseas Press Club award for his coverage of Haiti. During that same year he was chosen by the Latin American Studies Association to receive their annual award for distinguished coverage of Latin America. Welna was awarded a 1997 Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. In 2002, Welna was elected by his colleagues to a two-year term as a member of the Executive Committee of the Congressional Radio-Television Correspondents' Galleries.
A native of Minnesota, Welna graduated magna cum laude from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, with a Bachelor of Arts degree and distinction in Latin American Studies. He was subsequently a Thomas J. Watson Foundation fellow. He speaks fluent Spanish, French, and Portuguese.
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One of the president's first promises in office was to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba. Congress, however, is trying to shut down the effort to empty the camp of all its inmates. -
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will review bill Tuesday that intends to give Congress a voice on the Iran nuclear agreement.
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As President Obama unveiled a framework of a deal with Iran on its nuclear program, Congress was out of town. Next week, they're back and could prevent sanctions from being lifted. -
The U.S. is about to start training moderate Syrian rebels to fight ISIS militants. But Obama's plan for fighting ISIS is mute on protecting that force against the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad. -
Despite President Obama's after-the-fact request for authorization from Congress to fight ISIS, a new AUMF won't necessarily just be backward-looking. A Senate panel talked with officials Wednesday.
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Five men are charged with planning the Sept. 11 attacks. When they appear for proceedings in Guantanamo Bay, people who lost loved ones that day are flown down to the courtroom to bear witness. -
Endless preliminary motions, official shenanigans and a lack of legal precedent have mired the recently created war court in fitful proceedings. It could be years before the case ever goes to trial. -
Last year's release of a Senate report on CIA interrogation practices means lawyers for the accused Sept. 11 plotters can now discuss in court the treatment they say their clients endured. -
Government prosecutors confirmed in a Guantanamo Bay war court today that an interpreter for one of five alleged co-conspirators in the Sept. 11 attacks had earlier worked for the CIA. But they insisted no federal agency had tried to place the interpreter on the defense team to gather intelligence. Defense lawyers cried foul and asked that all further proceedings be suspended until the issue is resolved.
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The trial of five men accused in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks resumed on Monday at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and then was abruptly halted. Defendants in the case protested that one of the court interpreters at the hearing had been present years before at secret sites where the men had been held and, they claim, tortured. The judge ordered a recess to look into the matter.
