Biography - John F. Burns

John F. Burns is the longest-serving foreign correspondent in The New York Times' history, having worked for more than 30 years on assignment in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. For many of those years, he has been the paper's representative in countries and regions that have been the focus of the world's attention — South Africa during the last phases of apartheid; China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1970's and its subsequent opening to the world under the "open door" policy; the Soviet Union during one of the harshest periods of the Cold War; the former Yugoslavia during the wars in the early 1990's in Croatia and Bosnia; Afghanistan during the period of the Soviet military withdrawal, the rise of the Taliban, and the American-led military campaign that ended Taliban rule there; and Iraq, during the height of Saddam Hussein's repression, the war that overthrew him, and its aftermath.

Burns became the chief foreign correspondent of The New York Times in April 2003. Before that, he covered the last six months of Saddam Hussein's regime and the war to overthrow him from a base in the Al Rashid and Palestine hotels in Baghdad. Mr. Burns watched the bombing of Saddam Hussein's palaces that began the American overthrow of Mr. Hussein from the roof of the Palestine Hotel on March 20th 2003, and subsequently went into hiding in Baghdad after escaping arrest by Saddam Hussein's secret police. When American troops captured Baghdad, he served as bureau chief for the newspaper in Baghdad until July 1st 2007, covering every aspect of the war there from a base in The New York Times' heavily-fortified compound on the east bank of the Tigris river in Baghdad. After nearly five years in Iraq, Burns has been named to a new post as the newspaper's London bureau chief with effect from the summer of 2007.

Mr. Burns responsibilities in the newspaper’s coverage of the war on terror began on Sept. 12th, 2001, when The Times' executive editor, Howell Raines, appointed him as bureau chief charged with directing the paper's coverage of the military campaign that overthrew the Taliban government in Kabul, first from a base in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, and later from the Afghan capital. Burns’ responsibilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan were in many respects a continuation of his assignment from September 1998 to September 2001 as the first Islamic Affairs correspondent of The New York Times, a position that entailed widespread travel in the Islamic world, much of it focusing on the rise of Al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. In that position, Burns covered the attack on the USS Cole in Aden harbor on Oct. 12 2000, an Al Qaeda-directed operation that was the precursor to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon 11 months later. Official probes into the September 2001 attacks have established that much of the intelligence that might have enabled the CIA and the FBI to foresee and prevent the 9/11 attacks became available during the investigation into the attack on the Cole, which received its most intensive media coverage in Mr. Burns' reporting from Yemen, and what he was able to establish about the Al Qaeda links to that attack.

Mr. Burns' foreign assignments for The New York Times have included South Africa, from 1976 to 1980, and again in 1989 and 1990, including the period of the Soweto riots that began the unravelling of apartheid, and the release from jail of Nelson Mandela; the Soviet Union, from 1981 to 1984; including the period of President Ronald Reagan's challenge to the Soviet hegemony in Afghanistan and eastern Europe, and the deaths of Soviet leaders Leonid I. Brezhnev and Yuri P. Andropov; China, from 1984 to 1986; the period when Deng Xiao-ping declared the "open door" policy that began China's period of rapid economic growth; Canada, from 1986 to 1989, based in Toronto; Afghanistan from 1989 to 1991, and again from 1994 to 2002; the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, from 1991 to 1994; the Indian subcontinent, based in Delhi, from 1994 to 1998; and Iraq, from 2002 to 2007. Mr. Burns joined The Times in October 1975 as a member of the Metropolitan Desk in New York.

In July 1986, Burns was imprisoned by the Chinese government on charges of espionage. After an investigation, a trial was averted when the Chinese deported him to Hong Kong. The Chinese authorities subsequently apologized to The Times, stating the charges had been false and concocted by "bad elements" in the country's state security police.

Among his many awards, Burns has won two Pulitzer prizes, in 1993 for his coverage of the siege and destruction of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, and again in 1997 for his coverage of the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. He has been a nominee for the Pulitzer Prize on several other occasions, and is also a dual winner, in 1979 and 1997, of the George Polk award for foreign reporting, in Africa and Afghanistan. The Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, an association of retired U.S. diplomats, awarded Mr. Burns the Edward R. Weintal Prize for diplomatic reporting in 2005 for his coverage of the war in Iraq. In 2003, the Committee to Protect Journalists named him winner of the Burton Benjamin Memorial Award, describing him as "the eyes and ears for much of the American public" for his reporting on the military campaign that toppled the Hussein regime in The Times and on an array of American television networks, including PBS's The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, the CBS Evening News, and the morning and evening news shows on ABC News, NBC and CNN. He has been a frequent guests on the CNN shows hosted by Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper.

Before joining The Times, Mr. Burns worked for The Toronto Globe and Mail. From 1971 until 1975 he reported on the life and politics of mainland China from his base in Beijing, and from 1969 until 1971, he covered the office of the Canadian prime minister in Ottawa, then Pieree Trudeau, as chief parliamentary correspondent.

From 1967 until 1969, Mr. Burns was a reporter in Toronto, covering crime, education and local politics. During his summers in college, he worked at The Ottawa Citizen and The Ottawa Journal. Burns’ family have lived since the mid-1960's in Vancouver, British Columbia, where his parents settled in retirement. His father, a World War II fighter pilot, served in the Royal Air Force from 1931 to 1966.

John Burns was born in Nottingham, England, on Oct. 4, 1944. He was educated at Stowe School, England, and McGill University in Montreal. He also studied Russian at Harvard University, and Chinese at Cambridge University. From 1998 until 1999, he held a visiting fellowship at King's College, Cambridge, studying Islamic history and culture. In addition to Russian and Chinese, he speaks French and German.