WASHINGTON POST EDITOR TO DISCUSS AFGHANISTAN, NEW BOOK IN MARCH 17 TALK
The Washington Post Managing Editor Steve Coll will discuss his new book, "Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001," at Old Dominion University Wednesday, March 17.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the North Cafeteria in Webb University Center.
In "Ghost Wars," Coll examines the CIA's involvement in the covert wars in Afghanistan that fueled Islamic militancy and gave rise to Bin Laden's al Qaeda. Written in a news style, the book comprehensively tells the story of the CIA's program against Soviet troops, to the rise of the Taliban, to the secret efforts of the CIA to capture or kill bin Laden in Afghanistan after 1998.
Coll, who has served as managing editor of The Post since 1998, has been a reporter, foreign correspondent and editor at the newspaper since 1985. After working as a contributing editor at California Magazine and authoring a book about the lawsuit and politics that led to the breakup of AT&T, he joined The Post initially as a feature writer in the Style section.
As The Post's financial correspondent in New York in 1987, he covered the stock market crash, the Ivan Boesky-Michael Milken investigations and the Securities and Exchange Commission. A series about the SEC that Coll wrote with David A. Vise won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism.
In 1989, Coll moved to New Delhi, India, to become The Post's South Asia correspondent. For three years he covered India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal during various revolutions, insurgencies and natural disasters, and he also reported occasionally from the Middle East. His dispatches from South Asia won the 1992 Livingston Award for outstanding international reporting.
That year, Coll became The Post's first international projects and investigative correspondent, based in London. For the next three years he traveled from Kazakhstan to Panama to report and write for the newspaper on subjects such as nuclear proliferation, money laundering, terrorism, the international economy, political changes in the post-Cold War world, and news events from Asia to the Balkans to Northern Ireland.
In the summer of 1995, Coll was appointed editor of The Washington Post Magazine. In 1996, he was appointed publisher of The Magazine as well, overseeing all of its editorial and business operations. In 1998, he was appointed managing editor of the newspaper.
Coll received the 2000 Overseas Press Club's Ed Cunningham Memorial Award and the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy International Print Award for reporting on the civil war in Sierra Leone.
He is the author of four other books: "The Deal of the Century: The Break Up of AT&T" (1986); "The Taking of Getty Oil: The Full Story of the Most Spectacular � & Catastrophic � Takeover of All Time" (1987); "Eagle on the Street: Based on the Pulitzer Prize-Winning Account of the SEC's Battle With Wall Street" (with David A. Vise, 1990); and "On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey into South Asia" (1994).
Coll graduated Phi Beta Kappa, cum laude from Occidental College, Los Angeles, with a degree in English and history.
For more information about the lecture call (757) 683-3114.