Mike Shuster
Mike Shuster is an award-winning diplomatic correspondent and roving foreign correspondent for NPR News. He is based at NPR West, in Culver City, CA. When not traveling outside the U.S., Shuster covers issues of nuclear non-proliferation and weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and the Pacific Rim.
In recent years, Shuster has helped shape NPRs extensive coverage of the Middle East as one of the leading reporters to cover this region – traveling in the spring of 2007 to Iraq to cover the increased deployment of American forces in Baghdad. He has traveled frequently to Iran – seven times since 2004 – to report on Iran's nuclear program and political changes there. He has also reported frequently from Israel, covering the 2006 war with Hezbollah, the pullout from Gaza in 2005 and the second intifada that erupted in 2000. His 2007 week-long series "The Partisans of Ali" explored the history of Shi'ite faith and politics, providing a rare, comprehensive look at the complexities of the Islamic religion and its impact on the Western world.
Shuster has won numerous awards for his reporting. He was part of the NPR News team to be recognized with a Peabody Award for coverage of September 11th and its aftermath. He was also part of the NPR News teams to receive Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards for coverage of the Iraq War (2007 and 2004); September 11th and the war in Afghanistan (2003); and the Gulf War (1992). In 2003, Shuster was honored for his series "The Middle East: A Century of Conflict" with an Overseas Press Club Lowell Thomas Award and First in Documentary Reporting from the National Headliner Awards. He also received an honorable mention from the Overseas Press Club in 1999, and the SAJA Journalism Award in 1998.
Through his reporting for NPR, Shuster has also taken listeners to India and Pakistan, the Central Asian nations of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan, and the Congo. He was NPR's senior Moscow correspondent in the early 1990s, when he covered the collapse of the Soviet Union and a wide range of political, economic, and social issues in Russia and the other independent states of the former Soviet Union.
From September 1989 to June 1991, Shuster was stationed in England as senior editor of NPR's London Bureau. For two months in early 1991, he was assigned to Saudi Arabia to cover the Gulf War. While at the London Bureau, Shuster also covered the unification of Germany, from the announcement of the opening of the Berlin Wall to the establishment of a single currency for that country. He traveled to Germany monthly during this time to trace the revolution there, from euphoria over the freedom to travel, to the decline of the Communist Party, to the newly independent country's first free elections.
Before moving to London, Shuster worked as a reporter and bureau chief at NPR New York, and an editor of Weekend All Things Considered. He joined NPR in 1980 as a freelance reporter covering business and the economy.
Prior to coming to NPR, Shuster was a United Nations correspondent for Pacifica News Service, during which he covered the 1980 election of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. He traveled throughout Africa as a freelance foreign affairs reporter in 1970 and again in 1976; on this latter trip, Shuster spent five months covering Angolan civil war and its aftermath.
-
U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq examine the 11 empty chemical warheads they discovered at an ammunition storage area. Iraq insists the weapons are old. NPR's Tom Gjelten and NPR's Mike Shuster explore the significance of the find and the potential for war.
-
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly arrives in South Korea for talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program. The visit comes a day after New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson meets with North Korean officials, who insist the country has no plans to build a bomb. Hear NPR's Mike Shuster and Selig Harrison of the Center for International Policy.
-
While many U.S. officials react cautiously to North Korea's announcement that it will abandon a global nuclear weapons treaty, Secretary of State Colin Powell says the North "thumbed its nose" at the international community. And President Bush talks to China's leader in an effort to calm the growing confrontation. NPR's Mike Shuster reports.
-
North Korea withdraws from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, raising the stakes in its standoff with the United States over the communist nation's nuclear program. The announcement comes as North Korean diplomats hold talks in New Mexico with Gov. Bill Richardson, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Hear NPR's Eric Weiner and NPR's Mike Shuster.
-
The International Atomic Energy Agency warns North Korea to reconsider its decision last week to expel arms inspectors and restart its nuclear weapons program. But the IAEA's board of governors declines to refer the matter immediately to the U.N. Security Council for action. NPR's Mike Shuster reports.
-
South Korea holds talks with North Korea's chief ally China in hopes of defusing a showdown between Washington and Pyongyang. Washington refuses to negotiate directly with North Korea over its plans to resume its nuclear weapons program. NPR's Mike Shuster reports.
-
North Korea says it is expelling U.N. Atomic Energy Agency inspectors who had been monitoring a reactor that could be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium. U.S. officials denounce the expulsion and criticize North Korea's "broken commitments." NPR's Mike Shuster reports.