Douglas Waller was born on June 30, 1949, in Norfolk, Virginia, and holds a B.A. in English from Wake Forest University as well as an M.A. in Urban Administration from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Waller describes himself as a veteran correspondent, author, and lecturer. From 1994 to 2007, Waller served in TIME Magazine’s Washington Bureau, where he covered foreign affairs as a diplomatic correspondent. He came to TIME in 1994 from Newsweek, where he reported major military conflicts. Waller joined Newsweek in 1988, after serving as a legislative assistant on the staffs of Senator William Proxmire and Representative Edward J. Markey.
In a review posted online on June 25, 2015, Kirkus Reviews described his book Disciples as “one of the more interesting spy books this year.”
Books in order of publication:
Congress and the Nuclear Freeze: An Inside Look at the Politics of a Mass Movement. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press (1987).
Commandos: The Making of America’s Secret Soldiers, from Training to Desert Storm. New York: Simon & Schuster (1994).
Air Warriors: The Inside Story of the Making of a Navy Pilot. New York: Simon & Schuster (1998).
Big Red: The Three-Month Voyage of a Trident Nuclear Submarine. New York: HarperCollins (2001).
A Question of Loyalty: Gen. Billy Mitchell and the Court-Martial that Gripped the Nation. New York: HarperCollins Publishers (2004).
Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage. New York: Free Press (2011).
Disciples: The World War II Missions of the CIA Directors Who Fought for Wild Bill Donovan. New York: Simon & Schuster (2015).
Lincoln’s Spies: Their Secret War to Save a Nation. New York: Simon & Schuster (2019).
The Determined Spy: The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner. Penguin Publishing (2025).
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