Draft:Chris Whipple

Chris Whipple is an American best-selling author, journalist and documentary filmmaker focusing on the inner workings of Washington D.C. and U.S. institutions. He frequently appears on the American TV outlets CNN, MSNBC, and NPR as a guest commentator on U.S. politics.

Education
Whipple attended Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts. He has a Bachelor's degree in history from Yale University, where he graduated with honors in 1975.

Career
From 1986 to 1991 Whipple worked as a producer of 60 Minutes at CBS. In 1991, he became a producer at ABC, where he moved up the ranks to Executive Producer of the show “What Would You Do?”, which he had created himself. He left ABC in 2010 to found his own production company CCWhip Productions, in 2011. From 2018 to 2019 he was an on-air contributor at MSNBC, analysing D.C. politics. Whipple is however most popular for his best-selling books, two of which he turned into documentary films.

The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency
Whipple's most well-known book The Gatekeepers was first published in 2017 by Penguin Random House. It contains profiles of all living 17 chiefs of staff to a U.S. President, whom he personally interviewed for the book. In every chapter he looks at how each president's chief(s) of staff shaped the presidency since Richard Nixon took office, in 1969. An updated version of the book also includes a chapter on Donald Trump's presidency and his chiefs of staff. The book made it onto the New York Times Bestseller List.

The Spymasters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future
The Spymasters was published in 2020 by the U.S. publishing house Scribner. In the same format as Gatekeepers, Whipple portrays CIA directors and role in crucial security issues faced by their respective presidents. Whipple gained access to every living former CIA director, recounting seven decades of CIA history. The book was praised by other intelligence reporters as one of the best books on the CIA.

Both The Gatekeepers and the Spymasters were turned into documentation films.

The Fight of His Life - Inside Joe Biden's White House
Published in November 2023, the book looks behind the scenes of the Biden White House starting with the transfer of power from the Trump administration. Based on many interviews with Biden staffers and his own observations, Whipple recounts the Biden administration's response to the multi-crises, including the pandemic, a plummeting economy, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, inflation and the attack on the capitol.

Private Life
Whipple is married and lives in New York City with his second wife Carrie.