BRUCE W. NELAN

Senior Writer
TIME Magazine

Bruce Nelan was born in Indiana and grew up in Chicago. He studied Journalism and Political Science at the University of Illinois, earning a B.S. degree with honors in 1956. After graduation, he began his professional career at the Chicago Sun-Times as a police reporter. He remained with the newspaper for three years, then moved to New York to continue his studies at Columbia University, where he was editor-in-chief of the University's Journal of International Affairs. In 1961 he was awarded a Masters in International Affairs and went to work for the Carneigie Endowment for International Peace, directing its Citizen Education in World Affairs Project.

Nelan joined the Washington bureau of the Time-Life News Service in 1965, covering Dean Rusk's State Department. He was transferred to the Hong Kong Bureau in 1968 and became bureau chief in 1970. His reporting focused on the cultural Revolution in China and the war n Vietnam. In 1972 he was named bureau chief in Bonn, where he covered the Chancellorship of Willy Brandt and events in Scandinavia. He returned to Washington in June 1976 to cover Harold Brown's Pentagon for TIME. In September 1978 he became Moscow bureau chief. He returned to Washington in June 1981 to become National Security correspondent and then News Editor for the Time-Life News Service in the capital. He served as bureau chief in Johannesburg from May 1985 until June 1989. Nelan then left the News Service to become a senior writer in the World Section, in New York from 1989 to 1994, and then, in a first for TIME, as a senior writer based in Washington.

Some cover stories Nelan has written include "Soviet Division" (1990); "Boris Yeltsin" (1990); Cheney and Powell" (1990); "German Unity" (1990); "Helmut Kohl" (1990); "Mikhail Gorbachev--Man of the Decade" (1990); "The Russian Revolution" (1991); "Somalia: The U.S. to the Rescue" (1992); "Nelson Mandela" (1994); "D-Day: Ike the Supreme Commander" (1994); "Kim Il Sung" (1994); and "Nuclear Terrorism" (1994). He has also written articles for Foreign Affairs and China Quarterly and has appeared on such television shows as Meet the Press and CNN's Newsmaker Saturday.