Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor-in-chief of The Washington Times since last March, has covered most of the world’s major news events since becoming Newsweek’s chief foreign correspondent in 1950.
In a lengthy profile, Esquire magazine said that in 33 years, de Brochgrave covered 17 wars and more than 90 countries "traded gossip with Anwar Sadat, sipped tea with Pham Van Dong in Hanoi and was a houseguest of Jordan’s King Hussein."
It was de Borchgrave who pioneered dialogues between heads of state on opposite sides of explosive international issues when he interviewed successively Egyptian President Nasser and Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in 1969. In 1971, he did the first back-to-back interviews with President Sadat and Prime Minister Golda Meir.
His awards include "Best Magazine Reporting from Abroad" and "Best Magazine Interpretation of Foreign Affairs." He is the recipient of three New York Newspaper Guild Page One Awards for foreign reporting. In 1981, de Borchgrave received the World Business Council’s Medal of Honor, and he was awarded the George Washington Medal of Honor for Excellence in Published Works.
Born in Belgium in 1926, de Borchgrave was educated in Belgium, Britain and the United States. He served the British Royal Navy from 1942-46, volunteering at the age of 15. Shortly after his 21st birthday, he was appointed Brussels bureau chief for United Press International, and three years later he was the Newsweek bureau chief in Paris, then chief correspondent and at the age of 27 became a senior editor for the magazine.
He resigned from Newsweek in 1980 after co-authoring The Spike with Robert Moss. The book, which dealt with Soviet KGB operations in the Western media, was an international bestseller. Their next book, Monimbo, is a novel about Cuban-sponsored terrorism, the Cuban drug connection and the Cuban secret service.
De Borchgrave was senior associate at the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies from 1981-85 and co-author of "Early Warning," a monthly intelligence bulletin, from 1983 until his appointment as Times editor-in-chief.
