Matthew Schofield covers the Department of Defense, veterans and the military for McClatchy Newspapers, based in Washington, D.C.

This is Schofield's second stint with the McClatchy (formerly Knight Ridder) Washington Bureau. He previously served as European Bureau Chief in Berlin, and has reported from four continents and 40 countries. In 2003 he was embedded with U.S. Marines during the invasion of Iraq, and has returned to write about that nation four times. He spent the summer of 2006 covering Israel's war with Hezbollah.

Before his foreign assignments, he wrote for The Kansas City Star for two decades, first as a school and courts reporter in Independence, then as a national correspondent covering the Great Plains and finally as a senior writer. He returned to the newspaper in 2008 to serve as deputy national editor and, later, on the editorial board.

His stories include "Meth Diary," a seven-part series on a young woman overcoming addiction; "Justice," a nine-part series on efforts to solve the murder of a Marysville, Mo., woman; and "Tobacco on Trial," a three-part series looking at a Kansas City law firm's defense of tobacco companies.

A journalism graduate of the University of Kansas, he is also a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. His awards include a 2009 Investigative Reporters & Editors first place for a series of stories on former Guantanamo Bay detainees. That series also won the 2009 Online Journalism Award for investigative reporting.

Follow Matthew Schofield on Twitter: @mattschodcnews