Bob Drogin

Infobox journalist
name = Bob Drogin


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spouse = Francoise Joaquin Drogin
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Bob Drogin covers intelligence and national security in the Washington bureau of the "Los Angeles Times."

Drogin first joined the Los Angeles Times in 1983 as a national correspondent based in New York City. He traveled to nearly every state and covered the 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns. He subsequently moved overseas as a foreign correspondent, serving as bureau chief in Manila and Johannesburg. He reported on Nelson Mandela's election as president of South Africa, the genocide in Rwanda, the Persian Gulf War, and other news from nearly 50 countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.Drogin has won or shared numerous journalism prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize, an Overseas Press Club of America Award, two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism awards, an International Center for Investigative Journalism Award, and a George Polk Award. He was a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University in 1997 and a Media Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford in 2006.He is a native of Bayonne, N.J., and a graduate of Oberlin College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He lives with his wife and two children in Silver Spring, MD.He is the author of the 2007 book, "CURVEBALL: Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War,"which describes the role of Iraqi informant who was a key source for claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The Overseas Press Club of America gave CURVEBALL the "Cornelius Ryan Award" for best non-fiction book on international affairs. It also won the Investigative Reporters and Editors book prize.

The book was favorably reviewed, including the following:

"This is a story of willful blindness masquerading as secret intelligence that is worthy of Somerset Maugham or Graham Greene, and Drogin rises to the occasion."— New York Times Sunday Book Review

"Mr. Drogin breathes life into this saga, offering fascinating detail and creating suspense even though we now know how the story will end... How the CIA came to trust a source it couldn't interview and why it insisted on his veracity long after the agency should have walked away from him is at the heart of this page-turner."— The Wall Street Journal

"Drogin's account of the search for weapons of mass destruction after Baghdad fell would be hilarious were the facts not scandalous and the implications not tragic."— George F. Will, Washington Post columnist

"Drogin tells Curveball's story with an eye toward intrigue. He keeps the pace moving, even as he catalogs the snowballing intelligence blunders."— Los Angeles Times

"Mr. Drogin's keen reportage and understanding of the way CIA works puts his book head and shoulders above an abundant crop of other works."— The Washington Times

" 'Curveball' is investigative journalism at its skeptical and determined best. ..."— Boston Globe

"Vivid storytelling..."Curveball" achieves the synthesis all investigative journalism aspires to: penetrating reportage, trenchant political commentary and page-turning drama."— San Francisco Chronicle

"An engrossing read... Exhaustively reported and by turns hilarious, astonishing and deeply distressing."— Baltimore Sun

"An insightful and compelling account... Had Drogin merely pieced together Curveball's story, it alone would have made for a thrilling book. But he provides something more: a frightening glimpse at how easily we could make the same mistakes again"— Washington Monthly

"Amazing and horrifying..."— San Diego Union-Tribune

"Mr. Drogin's story line is a 'cascade of tragic misjudgments and mistakes,' but he doesn't scold or lecture or keel over from shock. He does what a good reporter must: bring the story to life."— New York Observer

"Curveball" offers a squalid and up-to-date procession of real-life fools, traitors and game-players seeking to brighten their rotten lives."— The Economist

"Bob Drogin has done a masterful job."—The Globe and Mail

"Pulitzer Prize-winning LA Times writer Bob Drogin explains why a deluded fantasist and the desperate wishes of American and British spies hoodwinked the world."— The Mail on Sunday

"Simultaneously sobering and infuriating - essential reading for those who follow the headlines."— Kirkus Reviews

"Engrossing... an intimate and revealing portrait of the workings and dysfunctions of the intelligence community."— Publishers Weekly

"The kind of reporting, brimming with internecine fighting and bureaucratic intrigue, that will give the pundits on both sides new grist for debate. It's also a page-turner that feels more like a Tom Clancy novel than most nonfiction."— Alternet

External links

* [http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=72823 Random House profile]