Tom Gjelten (A. Kotok)
Tom Gjelten, who covers global security and economic issues for National Public Radio, offered his take on the direction of U.S. national security policies in the wake of the 2012 election. Mr. Gjelten discussed these developments at the Public Diplomacy Alumni Association luncheon program on Tuesday, November 13, 2012 at the DACOR-Bacon House in Washington, D.C.
Gjelten reviewed changes anticipated from the continuing Obama administration, in policies toward the Middle East and China, as well as probable new faces in key positions.
Gjelten has covered U.S. diplomacy and military affairs for NPR, first from the State Department and then from the Pentagon. He was reporting live from the Pentagon at the moment it was hit on September 11, 2001, and he was NPR’s lead Pentagon reporter during the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq.
Gjelten joined NPR in 1982 as labor and education reporter. He served as NPR’s Latin America correspondent from 1986 to 1990 and in Berlin as Central Europe correspondent from 1990 to 1994. During those years, he covered the wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Colombia, as well as the Gulf War of 1990-1991 and the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. He is the winner of numerous awards for his work including the Overseas Press Club’s Lowell Thomas Award, a George Polk Award, and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.
His reporting from Sarajevo from 1992 to 1994 was the basis for his book Sarajevo Daily: A City and Its Newspaper Under Siege (HarperCollins). Gjelten is also the author of Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause (Viking), Professionalism in War Reporting: A Correspondent’s View (Carnegie Corporation), and a contributor to Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know (W. W. Norton).
