Mike Shuster
Mike Shuster is an award-winning diplomatic correspondent and roving foreign correspondent for NPR News. He is based at NPR West, in Culver City, CA. When not traveling outside the U.S., Shuster covers issues of nuclear non-proliferation and weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and the Pacific Rim.
In recent years, Shuster has helped shape NPRs extensive coverage of the Middle East as one of the leading reporters to cover this region – traveling in the spring of 2007 to Iraq to cover the increased deployment of American forces in Baghdad. He has traveled frequently to Iran – seven times since 2004 – to report on Iran's nuclear program and political changes there. He has also reported frequently from Israel, covering the 2006 war with Hezbollah, the pullout from Gaza in 2005 and the second intifada that erupted in 2000. His 2007 week-long series "The Partisans of Ali" explored the history of Shi'ite faith and politics, providing a rare, comprehensive look at the complexities of the Islamic religion and its impact on the Western world.
Shuster has won numerous awards for his reporting. He was part of the NPR News team to be recognized with a Peabody Award for coverage of September 11th and its aftermath. He was also part of the NPR News teams to receive Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards for coverage of the Iraq War (2007 and 2004); September 11th and the war in Afghanistan (2003); and the Gulf War (1992). In 2003, Shuster was honored for his series "The Middle East: A Century of Conflict" with an Overseas Press Club Lowell Thomas Award and First in Documentary Reporting from the National Headliner Awards. He also received an honorable mention from the Overseas Press Club in 1999, and the SAJA Journalism Award in 1998.
Through his reporting for NPR, Shuster has also taken listeners to India and Pakistan, the Central Asian nations of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan, and the Congo. He was NPR's senior Moscow correspondent in the early 1990s, when he covered the collapse of the Soviet Union and a wide range of political, economic, and social issues in Russia and the other independent states of the former Soviet Union.
From September 1989 to June 1991, Shuster was stationed in England as senior editor of NPR's London Bureau. For two months in early 1991, he was assigned to Saudi Arabia to cover the Gulf War. While at the London Bureau, Shuster also covered the unification of Germany, from the announcement of the opening of the Berlin Wall to the establishment of a single currency for that country. He traveled to Germany monthly during this time to trace the revolution there, from euphoria over the freedom to travel, to the decline of the Communist Party, to the newly independent country's first free elections.
Before moving to London, Shuster worked as a reporter and bureau chief at NPR New York, and an editor of Weekend All Things Considered. He joined NPR in 1980 as a freelance reporter covering business and the economy.
Prior to coming to NPR, Shuster was a United Nations correspondent for Pacifica News Service, during which he covered the 1980 election of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. He traveled throughout Africa as a freelance foreign affairs reporter in 1970 and again in 1976; on this latter trip, Shuster spent five months covering Angolan civil war and its aftermath.
-
As World War II ends, the United States becomes the great outside power in the Middle East, with three main concerns: Persian Gulf oil; support and protection of the new nation of Israel; and containment of the Soviet Union. NPR's Mike Shuster continues his six-part series on the history of Western involvement in the region.
-
World War I completed the European takeover of the Ottoman Empire's territories in the Middle East, and the region's modern boundaries emerged. NPR's Mike Shuster continues his series on the turbulent history of Western involvement in the Middle East.
-
NPR's Alex Chadwick talks with NPR's Mike Shuster about the history of Western involvement in the Middle East. Shuster's six-part series, "The Middle East and the West: A Historical View," airs this week on NPR's All Things Considered.
-
Napoleon's foray into Egypt in 1798 began a long string of European adventures in the Middle East. NPR's Mike Shuster continues his series examining the troubled 900-year history of Western involvement in the region.
-
NPR's Mike Shuster continues a special six-part series on the long and turbulent history of Western involvement in the Middle East with a look at the rise of the Ottoman Empire, an Islamic state that challenged European control of the Mediterranean. -
The history of Western involvement in the Middle East began with the Crusades some 900 years ago. NPR's Mike Shuster begins a special six-part series on the troubled history.
-
NPR's Mike Shuster talks with NPR's Anne Garrells, reporting from Baghdad on the aftermath of another car bombing outside a police station north of the Iraqi capital that killed scores of Iraqi citizens and wounded dozens of others.
-
Slate political commentator Will Saletan has been "blogging" from the Democratic National Convention in Boston, and talks with NPR's Mike Shuster about his impressions on everything from the party's rising star to the party's most celebrated flame-out.
-
The Senate Intelligence Committee unveils a blistering 500-page report that blames the CIA and outgoing director George Tenet for numerous intelligence failures as the Bush administration made the decision to go to war in Iraq. Among the more than 100 conclusions contained in the report: the CIA overstated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and ignored evidence to the contrary. Hear NPR's Mike Shuster and NPR's Madeleine Brand.
-
President George Bush says he might not name a successor to outgoing CIA Director George Tenet before November's election. Tenet, whose post will be filled by a deputy when he steps down on Sunday, is leaving as the Senate Intelligence Committee prepares to release its report on the CIA's intelligence work on Iraq's weapons programs. Hear NPR's Michele Norris and NPR's Mike Shuster.
