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He was a Newsweek Senior Editor for 25 years. In a lengthy profile, Esquire said that in 33 years, de Borchgrave covered 17 wars and more than 90 countries and traded gossip with Anwar Sadat, sipped tea with Pham Van Dong in Hanoi and was a houseguest of King Hussein's. In a job that requires bluff and bravado, he has outrun the best of them."
He has interviewed most of the world's leaders during the last two decades. His awards include Best Magazine Reporting from Abroad, Best Magazine Interpretation of Foreign Affairs and three New York Newspaper Guild Page One Awards for foreign reporting. In 1981, de Borchgrave received the World Business Council's Medal of Honor and in 1985, he was awarded the George Washington Medal of Honor for Excellence in Published Works.
It was Arnaud de Borchgrave who pioneered dialogues between heads of state on opposite sides of explosive international issues when he interviewed Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in 1969. In 1971 he did back- to-back interviews with President Sadat and Prime Minister Golda Meir. His interviews repeatedly broke new ground and made headlines all over the world
Arnaud de Borchgrave's war reporting included seven tours of duty in Vietnam, where he was wounded twice. In 1981, he walked more than 100 miles behind Angolan lines to get the first interview with two Soviet airmen who had been shot down by anti-Marxist guerrilla forces. In 1979-80, he covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The late author Theodore H. White, universally acclaimed as the best and the most prominent journalist of the 20th century, wrote that de Borchgrave, "is one of America's great foreign correspondents. He is a man of immense wisdom, solid common sense, and enormous sophistication. I know of few correspondents in the past 50 years who have had his subtle knowledge of international relations and the personalities that mesh those relations". Osborn Elliot, former Editor-in-Chief of Newsweek and former Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, wrote, "de Borchgrave has played a role in world affairs known to no other journalist....He has made a significant contribution to world peace and understanding."
Belgian-born, Arnaud de Borchgrave was educated in Belgium (Maredsous), Britain (King's School, Canterbury, H.M.S. Worcester Naval College), and the United States (Andover). Having volunteered at the age of 15, he served in the British Royal Navy from 1942 to 1946. At 21, he was appointed Brussels Bureau Chief for United Press International. Three years later he was Newsweek's Bureau Chief in Paris, then Chief European correspondent, and at the age of 27 he became a senior editor at the magazine.
He resigned from Newsweek in 1980 after co-authoring The Spike with Robert Moss. The book, which dealt with Soviet KGB operations in the Western media, was an international best-seller. Their next book, Monimbo, was a novel about Cuban sponsored terrorism, the Cuban drug connection in the United States, and the DGI, the Cuban secret service, and was on the best-seller list for four months, de Borchgrave was Senior Associate at the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) (1981-85) and Co-Editor of Early Warning (1983-85), a monthly intelligence bulletin.
He was appointed Editor-in-Chief of the Washington Times and Insight magazine in 1985. His appointment was hailed as one of the major developments in journalism in recent years. His stewardship saw major gains in the circulation and influence of The Washington Times, as well as the launch of Insight magazine and its growth to more than one million in circulation.
In December 1998, de Borchgrave was named President and CEO of United Press International. After revamping the century-old news agency for the digital age, de Borchgrave returned in 2001 to globetrotting as Editor-at-Large for UPI, interviewing heads of state and government, and commenting on the critical challenges of the 21st Century.
Arnaud de Borchgrave continues his association with CSIS (Center for Strategic & International Studies) where he is the Director of Transnational Threats Project and The Times where he has served as Editor-at-Large since 1991. With an unparalleled expertise in foreign policy and international affairs, de Borchgrave keeps an active speaking schedule, regularly addressing key government agencies and advising major corporations on transnational threats.
In the 1990s, de Borchgrave directed CSIS studies of, and published reports on, "The Nuclear Black Market"; "Russian Organized Crime (I & II)"; "Cybercrime, Cyberterrorism, Cyberwarfare: Averting an Electronic Waterloo"; "Cyber Challenges of the 21st Century." He also organized the first simulation of a nuclear WMD terrorist attack in the U.S., in conjunction with the National Defense University's Simulation Center.
Post-9/11 in 2001, de Borchgrave made several reporting trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan, following which he published a CSIS study on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. He also created a bridge between Fortune 100 companies and DHS, as well as a dialogue between these same companies and Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte on counter-terrorism intelligence collection priorities.
Mr. de Borchgrave also lectures extensively on both sides of the Atlantic on a wide variety of topics that deal with terrorism and counterterrorism; WMD terrorism; national security and changing defense priorities; transatlantic issues; the Middle East; the future of the European Union.
Arnaud de Borchgrave's Speaking Topics include:
Clash of Civilizations -- or New World Disorder?
The Middle East: Seeds of Global Conflict
The Iraq fiasco: What's next on the geopolitical menu?
The End of Newspapers? Assessing our cyber future
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