Bob Drogin Intro

I introduced Bob Drogin at one of our public forums. Bob is an incredible journalist and a great guy. I also interviewed him for the Clinton School podcast, The Power of One. Look for that soon. This is the introduction I wrote for his presentation. Enjoy.

-T

Thank you, Dean Rutherford. Since I was 12 years old, I have been a fan of James Bond and Ian Fleming. Moonraker was my first Bond book, and I loved every minute of the intrigue and action of 007 taking down the terrorist Hugo Drax. Imagine my delight when I discovered a real life spymaster was coming to town!

Though not a spy himself, Bob Drogin recently authored CURVEBALL: Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War, which describes the role of a single Iraqi informant who was a key source for claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
A native of Bayonne, New Jersey, Bob Drogin has sought adventure at every turn. Drogin left college to backpack in Asia for a year and would also hitchhike to Alaska. He would graduate from Oberlin College and receive his Master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Drogin continued his thrilling escapades by joining the Los Angeles Times in 1983 as a national correspondent. Based in New York City, he traveled to nearly every state covering the 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns. He then journeyed overseas, serving as bureau chief in Manila and Johannesburg. During that time, he experienced and reported on Nelson Mandela's election as president of South Africa, the genocide in Rwanda, the Persian Gulf War, and other news from nearly 50 countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Drogin eventually returned stateside in 1998, covering intelligence and national security for the L.A. Times Washington bureau.

Drogin has won or shared multiple journalism honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards, an International Center for Investigative Journalism Award, and a George Polk Award. He was a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University in 1997 and a Media Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford in 2006. The Overseas Press Club of America gave CURVEBALL the "Cornelius Ryan Award" for best non-fiction book on international affairs. It also won the Investigative Reporters and Editors book prize.

Curveball received a multitude of positive reviews and was widely praised for its suspenseful narrative. When George Will writes a glowing review of any book criticizing the Bush administration, you know you’ve done something right! Drogin has been interviewed by a wide range of reporters, from NPR’s Diane Rehm to Comedy Central’s Steven Colbert.
Drogin currently lives with his wife and two children in Silver Spring, MD.

Despite my love of 007, Drogin writes in Curveball that "espionage is not James Bond or Jason Bourne… the work demands a balance of delicacy, poise, and timing. It requires a professional detachment that allows the officer to see the truth from half truth, the nuance of act, the coloration bias."

Please join me in welcoming Bob Drogin.