Tom Gjelten
Tom Gjelten reports on religion, faith, and belief for NPR News, a beat that encompasses such areas as the changing religious landscape in America, the formation of personal identity, the role of religion in politics, and conflict arising from religious differences. His reporting draws on his many years covering national and international news from posts in Washington and around the world.
In 1986, Gjelten became one of NPR's pioneer foreign correspondents, posted first in Latin America and then in Central Europe. Over the next decade, he covered social and political strife in Central and South America, the first Gulf War, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the transitions to democracy in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
His reporting from Sarajevo from 1992 to 1994 was the basis for his book Sarajevo Daily: A City and Its Newspaper Under Siege (HarperCollins), praised by the New York Times as "a chilling portrayal of a city's slow murder." He is also the author of 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).
After returning from his overseas assignments, Gjelten covered U.S. diplomacy and military affairs, 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 early war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. Gjelten has also reported extensively from Cuba in recent years. His 2008 book, Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause (Viking), is a unique history of modern Cuba, told through the life and times of the Bacardi rum family. The New York Times selected it as a "Notable Nonfiction Book," and the Washington Post, Kansas City Star, and San Francisco Chronicle all listed it among their "Best Books of 2008." His latest book, A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story (Simon & Schuster), published in 2015, recounts the impact on America of the 1965 Immigration Act, which officially opened the country's doors to immigrants of color. He has also contributed to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other outlets.
Since joining NPR in 1982 as labor and education reporter, Gjelten has won numerous awards for his work, including two Overseas Press Club Awards, a George Polk Award, and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. A graduate of the University of Minnesota, he began his professional career as a public school teacher and freelance writer.
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America's culture war is being fought inside evangelical Christian circles. Some are resisting secular society's trends that conflict with biblical teaching. Others have found a way to live with them. -
Since the leak of the National Security Agency's data-gathering program, U.S. officials have been defending their strategies. But they've been arguing for years that intelligence gathering has to keep up with the new ways America's enemies are planning and communicating. -
U.S. official displeasure has grown over the problem of Chinese cyber-espionage. The Obama administration has signaled that it will step up the investigation and prosecution of trade-secret theft and has not ruled out punitive measures. -
As North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatens nuclear strikes on South Korea, Japan and the U.S., there is a new determination across the region to adopt a tougher line. There's talk now in Japan and South Korea that they should have nuclear weapons of their own — a position the U.S. opposes. -
U.S. foreign policy and military commitments in the Middle East have long been tied to U.S. dependence on oil from the region. But imports from the Persian Gulf have actually declined sharply in recent years, which may lead to a realignment of policy priorities and an easing up of U.S. presence there. -
U.S. foreign policy and military commitments in the Middle East have long been tied to U.S. dependence on oil from the region. But imports from the Persian Gulf have actually declined sharply in recent years, which may lead to a realignment of policy priorities and an easing up of U.S. presence there.
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For the top brass of companies such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard, talk of cyberweapons and cyberwar could be abstract. But at a classified security briefing in spring 2010, it suddenly became quite real. "We can turn your computer into a brick," government officials reportedly told the startled executives. -
A side-by-side comparison of the Pentagon's secret Guantanamo detainee assessment briefs and federal court rulings shows that intelligence analysts and federal judges can reach starkly opposing conclusions from the same raw intelligence.
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Hundreds of secret documents show that military and counterterrorism analysts sometimes found it difficult to determine whether those held in the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay were truly dangerous. -
Thousands of pages of secret military reports obtained by The New York Times and shared with NPR put a name, a history and a face on some of the hundreds of men held at the detention camp.
