ELAINE SHANNON

Correspondent
TIME Magazine
Washington, D.C.

Elaine Shannon is a correspondent in the TIME Magazine's Washington, D.C. bureau. Since 1976, she has covered criminal justice issues, including international arms trafficking, drug trafficking and money laundering, organized crime, white collar crime, terrorism and espionage.

Ms. Shannon is the author of the best-selling book, Desperados: Latin Drug Lords, U.S. Lawmen, and the War America Can't Win. The book, now in its fourth paperback printing, has sold more than 130,000 copies.

Desperados served as the basis for the Emmy award winning miniseries, Drug Wars: The Camarena Story. The three part docudrama, produced by Michael Mann (Miami Vice, Last of the Mohicans) was broadcast on NBC in January 1990. It starred Treat Williams, Craig T. Nelson, Stephen Bauer, Elizabeth Pena and Miguel Ferrer. The production received the Emmy award as the best miniseries of 1990. A second miniseries, Drug Wars II: The Medellin Cartel, also based on the book, was broadcast on NBC in January, 1992. It starred Julie Carmen and Dennis Farina. It was nominated for an Emmy for best miniseries of 1992.

Shannon was born in Gainesville, Georgia, on November 16, 1946. She was graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1968. While a senior in college, she began working for the Nashville Tennessean and covered civil rights, police violence and abuses in the prison system. She was made the Tennessean's Washington correspondent in 1970. There, she covered the campaigns of Sen. Albert Gore Sr., Richard Nixon, George McGovern and the Watergate scandal.

In 1974, she won a Neiman Fellowship in journalism. She went to Newsday in 1975. In 1976, she joined the staff of Newsweek and covered the Carter campaign and the Mondale-Ferraro campaign in 1980. She left Newsweek in October, 1986 to complete the writing of her book on the drug trade. She joined TIME in April,1987 and in 1993 became a panelist on PBS's To The Contrary.

Shannon has won the Clarion Award from Women in Communications and the New York State Bar Association Award. In October, 1992, she won the Inter-American Press Association IAPA-Bartolome Mitre Award for a TIME cover story on the Cali cocaine cartel. Shannon originated the project, traveling to cartel centers of activity from Cali to Manhattan. She speaks often on drug trafficking and related issues.

Ms. Shannon lives in Washington with her husband, Dan Morgan, a Washington Post correspondent and author of three books, and her son Andrew Shannon.