Elaine Shannon

Shannon was born in Gainesville, Georgia, on November 16, 1946.{{cite web |url=https://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/bios/frames/time/dc.bureau/shannon.html |title=Elaine Shannon|author-link=CNN |department=AllPolitics |website=cnn.com |publisher=CNN |access-date=October 8, 2020}} She was an English major at Vanderbilt University where she graduated in 1968.{{cite news |last1=Patterson |first1=Jim |last2=Read |first2=Jan |date=August 20, 2019 |title=On the Hunt: Elaine Shannon, BA'68, Investigative Journalist |url=https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2019/08/20/on-the-hunt-elaine-shannon-ba68-investigative-journalist/ |work=Vanderbilt News |access-date=October 8, 2020}} While a senior at Vanderbilt, Shannon began working for the Nashville Tennessean where she reported on civil rights, police brutality, and prisoner abuse. In 1970 Shannon became the newspaper's Washington, D.C., correspondent and covered the Senatorial campaign of Albert Gore Sr., the Presidential campaigns of Richard Nixon and George McGovern, and the Watergate scandal. She spent a year at Harvard University where in 1974 she earned a Nieman Fellowship in journalism, then went to work for Newsday the following year.

According to CNN, Shannon "has covered criminal justice issues, including international arms trafficking, drug trafficking and money laundering, organized crime, white collar crime, terrorism and espionage" since 1976. She frequently speaks on issues related to drug trafficking. Through her reporting, Shannon has built "an extensive network of sources as she covered the FBI, DEA, Customs and Justice departments, intelligence and terrorism."

She joined Newsweek in 1976 and covered the Presidential campaigns of Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. In October 1986, she left Newsweek to finish writing her New York Times best-selling book about the drug trade, Desperados: Latin Drug Lords, U.S. Lawmen, and the War America Can't Win.

In April 1987, Shannon joined Time where she was a correspondent in their Washington, D.C., bureau. She became a panelist on PBS's To the Contrary in 1993.

Shannon is the author of four books. Her first, Desperados: Latin Drug Lords, U.S. Lawmen, and the War America Can't Win, sold over 130,000 copies. Publishers Weekly stated that Shannon drew on 10 years of expertise covering the international drug scene for Newsweek to write about the 1985 torture-murder of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena.{{cite web|title=Desperados|url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-670-81026-0|work=publishersweekly.com|publisher=Publishers Weekly|access-date=October 8, 2020|author=Publishers Weekly|author-link=Publishers Weekly|date=October 1, 1988}} In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Kirsch called Desperados "a sock-in-the-eye work of reporting about America's losing struggle against the multinational, multibillion-dollar drug industry"

{{cite news |last=Kirsch |first=Jonanthan |author-link=Jonathan Kirsch |date=November 30, 1988 |title=Book Review : 'Desperados'--a War We May Not Win |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-30-vw-509-story.html |work=Los Angeles Times |access-date=October 8, 2020}} Desperados also served as the basis for Michael Mann's three-part miniseries Drug Wars: The Camarena Story broadcast on NBC in January 1990. The docudrama received an Emmy award as the best miniseries of 1990. A second miniseries based on Desperados, Drug Wars: The Cocaine Cartel, was broadcast on NBC in January 1992 was also nominated for an Emmy for best miniseries of 1992.{{cite web |url=https://www.elaine-shannon.com/new-page-5 |title=About the Author |website=elaine-shannon.com |access-date=October 8, 2020}}

No Heroes: Inside the FBI's Secret Counter-Terror Force was written with Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI Danny Coulson and The Spy Next Door: The Extraordinary Secret Life of Robert Philip Hanssen was co-authored by journalist Ann Blackman.

Shannon's fourth book, Hunting LeRoux, was published in 2019 by William Morrow/HarperCollins. The story discusses Paul Le Roux and the DEA's elite special operation group that tracked him in an effort to bring down his global criminal enterprise. Shannon learned about Le Roux in Afghanistan while researching how warlords and terrorist groups were financed by the heroin trade, and her sources included undercover DEA agents and informants.{{cite news |title=Hunting LeRoux: The Inside Story of the DEA Takedown of a Criminal Genius and His Empire |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/elaine-shannon/hunting-leroux/ |work=Kirkus Reviews |date=February 6, 2019 |access-date=October 8, 2020}} Mann wrote the foreword of the book and as of 2019 had plan to develop it into a movie. Kirkus Reviews called it a "painstaking, fascinating account of crime and punishment" and said Shannon did an especially good job presenting "how the American Drug Enforcement Administration pieced together its multiagency, multigovernmental case against Le Roux". Jeff Ayers' review described the book as a "gripping account that is both well-written and exhaustively researched".{{cite news |last=Ayers |first=Jeff |date=February 26, 2019 |title=Review: Takedown of Paul LeRoux is gripping true-crime tale |url=https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/review-takedown-paul-leroux-gripping-true-crime-tale-61335319 |work=ABC News |agency=Associated Press |access-date=October 8, 2020}}

Shannon has won the Association for Women in Communications' Clarion Award and the New York State Bar Association Award. In 1992, Shannon and John Moody's two-part cover story in Time about the Cali cartel won the Inter American Press Association's IAPA-Bartolome Mitre Award for distinguished journalism.{{cite news |author= |title=IAPA Announces Journalism Awards |url=https://apnews.com/article/8f49d68383d05274edcf03c17b03a8e4 |work=AP |date=July 27, 1992 |access-date=October 8, 2020}} Their story, "Cocaine, Inc.—The New Drug Kings", addressed the drug problem in the United States.

Shannon lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Dan Morgan, author and correspondent for The Washington Post. They have a son, Andrew.

{{reflist}}

• [https://www.elaine-shannon.com/ Official website]
• [https://www.linkedin.com/in/elaine-shannon-02055724 LinkedIn profile]
• [https://www.c-span.org/person/?elaineshannon Appearances on C-SPAN]
• [http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,157350,00.html Cover Stories: New Kings of Coke]
• [http://www.davesaysmoviesmatter.com/elaine-shannon-hunting-leroux.html Interview with Dave Watson of davesaymoviesmatter.com]

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Category:1946 births

Category:Living people

Category:20th-century American journalists

Category:20th-century American women journalists

Category:21st-century American journalists

Category:21st-century American women journalists

Category:American investigative journalists

Category:Journalists from Georgia (U.S. state)

Category:Nieman Fellows

Category:People from Gainesville, Georgia

Category:Vanderbilt University alumni