Mary Louise Kelly

Mary Louise Kelly is National Public Radio's senior Pentagon correspondent, reporting on defense and foreign policy issues. She took up that role in January 2009. As part of NPR's national security team, Kelly will cover the incoming Obama administration's approach to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She also plans to focus on whether and how the U.S. will project its military power elsewhere in the world, how the U.S. will react to, and deal with, the emerging global military muscle of countries such as China, and the way in which U.S. foreign policy goals are often sought, and sometimes achieved, through defense and intelligence channels. [1]

Prior to her current assignment, Kelly launched NPR's intelligence beat. She reported on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and other spy agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency, Defence Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency.

Professional work

Kelly has broken numerous security and terrorism-related stories, including the CIA's secret decision to disband the unit aimed at hunting Osama Bin Laden. ([2]). That story caused an uproar and led to the Senate voting on September 8, 2006 to reinstate the unit. [3] [4] Kelly was also the first reporter to interview Gary Schroen, the CIA operative who was dropped in to Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11 with a six man team and a directive to bring back the head of Bin Laden. [5]

Career

Kelly's first foray into journalism was as a senior editor at the Harvard Crimson in 1992, where she covered, among other things, Bill Clinton's inauguration. [6] Upon graduating from Harvard, her first paying position was reporting on local politics for her home-town newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Overseas

After graduate school in Cambridge, England and internships at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in Scotland and London, she joined the Boston team that launched radio news magazine The World, a joint venture between the BBC and Public Radio International. Two years later Kelly moved back to the UK, working as a host, foreign correspondent and senior producer for the BBC World Service, and as a producer at CNN in London. Kelly has earned her stripes at many locations around the world, with reports from the Afghan-Pakistan border, radical Hamburg mosques, Kosovo refugee camps, the deck of a nuclear aircraft carrier, and rural Cambodia. When at the BBC she also covered the peace talks that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland.

Domestic

She moved back to the United States to join NPR in Washington. Before becoming NPR's intelligence correspondent in 2004, Kelly edited NPR's evening newsmagazine, All Things Considered, for three years. She was described as a "bad-ass babe" on the NPR website. [7]

Education and private life

Kelly has a degree in Government and French history and literature from Harvard University. She completed her masters in European Studies at Cambridge University (Emmanuel College) in England. She is married to Nicholas Boyle, an attorney with litigation firm Williams & Connolly.

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Name	Kelly, Mary Louise
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