Wolf Blitzer is the anchor of CNN's The Situation Room, an afternoon news program that combines traditional reporting methods with the newest innovative online resources, making the entire process of newsgathering more transparent and placing the latest news and information at the viewers' fingertips. Blitzer also hosts Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, the only Sunday talk show seen in more than 200 countries and territories. Blitzer has won numerous awards, including the 2004 Journalist Pillar of Justice Award from the Respect for Law Alliance and the 2003 Daniel Pearl Award from the Chicago Press Veterans Association. He was among the teams awarded a George Foster Peabody award for Hurricane Katrina coverage, an Alfred I. duPont Award for coverage of the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia and an Edward R. Murrow Award for CNN's coverage of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
In November 2002, the American Veteran Awards honored him with the prestigious Ernie Pyle Journalism Award for excellence in military reporting, and, in February 2000, he received the Anti-Defamation League’s Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize. In 1999, Blitzer won the International Platform Association's Lowell Thomas Broadcast Journalism Award for outstanding contributions to broadcast journalism. Blitzer won an Emmy Award for his 1996 coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing. Blitzer was also a member of CNN’s team that was awarded a Golden ACE award for their 1991 Gulf War reporting. In 1994, American Journalism Review cited him and CNN as the overwhelming choice of readers for the coveted Best in the Business Award for "best network coverage of the Clinton administration."
In 2006, Blitzer traveled to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to cover the controversy over Dubai Ports World taking over six U.S. ports. Blitzer was the only American news anchor to cover the story on the ground in Dubai. In 2005, Blitzer traveled to the Middle East to report on the second anniversary of the war in Iraq. During this trip, Blitzer conducted an exclusive interview with Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and spent several days embedded with troops in the region. In 2003, Blitzer traveled to Kuwait City to anchor and report from the Persian Gulf region during the war in Iraq. He provided multiple reports daily throughout the war and conducted several interviews relevant to the news of the day.
Blitzer also anchors other major news events, including CNN's "America Votes 2004," the network's coverage of the presidential race. Throughout "America Votes 2004," Blitzer anchored events including the Iowa caucuses, the New Hampshire primary, the Democratic and Republican national conventions, election night from NASDAQ in Times Square and the second inauguration of President George W. Bush.
Throughout Election 2000, Blitzer interviewed all of the major party presidential candidates--George W. Bush, Al Gore, Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan. He anchored Late Edition from the road in New York, New Hampshire and Iowa during the early primaries and debates. He hosted a town meeting with Senate candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in Buffalo, N.Y., two live two-hour specials at each major party convention this summer and three CNN&TIME Town Meetings in October with undecided voters in battleground states. On Election Night, Blitzer joined the CNN Election 2000 team in Atlanta, reporting on the balance of power in the House and Senate.
Blitzer served as CNN's senior White House correspondent covering President Bill Clinton from his election in November 1992 until 1999. For more than two decades, Blitzer has reported on a wide range of major breaking stories around the world. He began his career in 1972 with the Reuters News Agency in Tel Aviv. Shortly thereafter, he became a Washington, D.C., correspondent for The Jerusalem Post. After more than 15 years of reporting from the nation's capital, Blitzer joined CNN in 1990 as the network's military-affairs correspondent at the Pentagon. During his tenure at the Pentagon, Blitzer was among the team of CNN reporters who won the Golden CableACE from the National Academy of Cable Programming for coverage of the Persian Gulf War.
In August 1991, Blitzer flew to Moscow shortly after the failed coup and spent nearly a month reporting on the Soviet military. He was among the first Western reporters invited into KGB headquarters in Moscow for a rare inside look into the Soviet intelligence apparatus. He returned to Moscow in December 1991 to cover the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transition from Mikhail Gorbachev to Boris Yeltsin.
From the beginning of his career, Blitzer has covered many key events that have shaped the international political landscape. In 1982, Blitzer was in Beirut during the withdrawal of PLO and Syrian forces. Blitzer covered the first Israeli-Egyptian peace conference in Egypt in 1977, and, in 1979, he traveled with then-President Jimmy Carter on visits to Egypt and Israel for the final round of negotiations that resulted in the signing of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty. He was onsite in 1973 when West German Chancellor Willy Brandt visited Israel, the first visit by a German chancellor since the Holocaust.
Blitzer also has interviewed some of recent history's most notable figures including both President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Blitzer has also interviewed former Presidents Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. National newsmakers - including Cabinet officials, members of Congress and social leaders - are regular guests on his programs. Blitzer has interviewed international figures - including former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, former South African President Nelson Mandela, former Israeli prime ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, French President Jacques Chirac, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder - from locations around the world.
Blitzer is the author of two books, Between Washington and Jerusalem: A Reporter's Notebook (Oxford University Press, 1985) and Territory of Lies (Harper and Row, 1989). The latter was cited by The New York Times Book Review as one of the most notable books of 1989. He also has written articles for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times.
Blitzer earned a bachelor of arts degree in history from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a master of arts degree in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. Blitzer also has honorary degrees from State University of New York at Buffalo; King's College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.; Gannon University in Erie, Pa.; Quinnipiac College in New Haven, Conn; St. Louis University, in St. Louis, Mo.; Western New England College in Springfield, Mass, D'Youville College in Buffalo, N.Y, Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., and Catholic University in Washington, D.C .
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