LAT hires in Washington

Timothy M. Phelps, the Washington bureau chief at Newsday, moves down the hall to the Times bureau as the Washington investigative editor. Memo from LAT bureau chief Doyle McManus:

Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2007 2:19 PM Subject: Washington Investigative Editor To: The Staff From: Doyle McManus, Washington Bureau Chief
We're delighted to announce that Timothy M. Phelps, currently Newsday's Washington bureau chief, will join us as Washington investigative editor to promote and guide investigative, enterprise and project reporting across the entire bureau.

Tim has a long and distinguished record as a reporter and editor on newsfronts from Providence to Basra. As Newsday's bureau chief, he has worked to focus their efforts on investigations and enterprise, and was coauthor of the 2003 story that revealed that Robert Novak blew the identity of a covert CIA officer when he identified Valerie Plame. As a Newsday Washington correspondent in 1991, he broke the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill story and coauthored a book about the Thomas nomination.

He also served as Newsday's Middle East correspondent (based in Cairo) from 1985 to 1991, including the first Gulf War, and as Newsday's foreign editor (based on Long Island) from 1996 to 2001. As an editor, he designed and helped produce ambitious projects on subjects from the Third World's child soldiers to the Bush Administration's politicization of regulatory agencies.

Before all that, Tim was an investigative reporter at the Baltimore Sun, where he revealed secret land deals by the chairman of the St. Mary's County Commission, a story that sent the chairman to jail; reported vote-swapping by state legislators who owned shares in a bank that was seeking a state charter; and broke the story of a union-owned bank extending sweetheart loans to cronies of then-Gov. Marvin Mandel.

He has also worked for the New York Times, the St. Petersburg Times and the Providence Journal. He grew up on a farm in Rhode Island, attended the University of Pennsylvania and served in the U.S. Army.

Tim will report to me and will be our principal liaison with our newly-appointed deputy managing editor for projects, Marc Duvoisin. He will join us on Monday, October 29.