Larry Abramson
Larry Abramson is NPR's National Security Correspondent. He covers the Pentagon, as well as issues relating to the thousands of vets returning home from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Prior to his current role, Abramson was NPR's Education Correspondent covering a wide variety of issues related to education, from federal policy to testing to instructional techniques in the classroom. His reporting focused on the impact of for-profit colleges and universities, and on the role of technology in the classroom. He made a number of trips to New Orleans to chart the progress of school reform there since Hurricane Katrina. Abramson also covers a variety of news stories beyond the education beat.
In 2006, Abramson returned to the education beat after spending nine years covering national security and technology issues for NPR. Since 9/11, Abramson has covered telecommunications regulation, computer privacy, legal issues in cyberspace, and legal issues related to the war on terrorism.
During the late 1990s, Abramson was involved in several special projects related to education. He followed the efforts of a school in Fairfax County, Virginia, to include severely disabled students in regular classroom settings. He joined the National Desk reporting staff in 1997.
For seven years prior to his position as a reporter on the National Desk, Abramson was senior editor for NPR's National Desk. His department was responsible for approximately 25 staff reporters across the United States, five editors in Washington, and news bureaus in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. The National Desk also coordinated domestic news coverage with news departments at many of NPR's member stations. The desk doubled in size during Abramson's tenure. He oversaw the development of specialized beats in general business, high-technology, workplace issues, small business, education, and criminal justice.
Abramson joined NPR in 1985 as a production assistant with Morning Edition. He moved to the National Desk, where he served for two years as Western editor. From there, he became the deputy science editor with NPR's Science Unit, where he helped win a duPont-Columbia Award as editor of a special series on Black Americans and AIDS.
Prior to his work at NPR, Abramson was a freelance reporter in San Francisco and worked with Voice of America in California and in Washington, D.C.
He has a master's degree in comparative literature from the University of California at Berkeley. Abramson also studied overseas at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and at the Free University in Berlin, Germany.
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A federal judge upholds the FBI's search of the office of Rep. William Jefferson, the Louisiana Democrat at the center of a bribery investigation. The judge also denied a request to have the materials seized in the May raid returned.
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Law enforcement officials say they've thwarted a plan by foreign terrorists to bomb a tunnel that connects New York City and New Jersey. The planners reportedly wanted to blow up the Holland Tunnel in the hopes of flooding lower Manhattan.
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Law enforcement officials say a laptop stolen from the home of an employee of the Department of Veterans Affairs has been recovered. The laptop contained sensitive personal information on millions of veterans and active duty service members. The FBI says there is no evidence that the information was accessed.
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Seven people arrested Thursday in Miami have been indicted on suspicion of planning attacks against federal offices in Miami, and the Sears Tower in Chicago. The indictment says the men were conspiring with al-Qaida to "levy war against the United States."
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Americans' telephone records, secretly gathered by tricking telephone companies into revealing private billing information, are often bought by businesses, and sometimes law enforcement agencies. That's the testimony of data-broker witnesses grilled by members of the House Energy and Commerce committee.
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Four Connecticut librarians spoke bitterly Tuesday about a months' long gag order they were subjected to after the FBI requested patrons' records under the Patriot Act. The librarians decried their inability to participate in congressional debate on how to rewrite the act.
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The Senate Intelligence Committee grills Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, the president's nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Much of the questioning centered on Hayden's role in designing two controversial National Security Agency programs, as well as intelligence concerns.
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The nation's largest phone companies -- AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth -- reportedly have been providing the National Security Agency with call records of millions of Americans. The agency says it is not listening to the calls, only using them to form a database to detect potential terrorist activity.
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A federal judge sentences al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui to life in prison, following a jury's finding Wednesday. In court, Moussaoui declared victory over the United States. But Judge Leonie Brinkema told him that everyone else in the courtroom would live free, Moussaoui would spend life in prison.
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U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema sentences Zacarias Moussaoui to prison for life, to "die with a whimper," for his role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In response, Moussaoui declared: "God save Osama bin Laden -- you will never get him."