Elaine Shannon

Elaine Shannon (born November 16, 1946) is an American investigative journalist and former correspondent for Newsweek and Time considered an expert on terrorism, organized crime, and espionage. Describing her also as "a leading expert on the evil alliances of drug kingpins and corrupt officials", Newsweek said Shannon "could rightly claim to be the Boswell of thugs and drugs."

Early life Shannon was born in Gainesville, Georgia, on November 16, 1946. She was an English major at Vanderbilt University where she graduated in 1968. While a senior at Vanderbilt, Shannon began working for the Nashville Tennessean where she reported on civil rights, police brutality, and prisoner abuse. 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" Desperados also served as the basis for Michael Mann's three-part miniseries Drug Wars: The Camarena Story broadcast on NBC in January 1990.

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. Mann wrote the foreword of the book and as of 2019 had plan to develop it into a movie.

Awards Shannon has won the Association for Women in Communications' Clarion Award and the New York State Bar Association Award. Their story, "Cocaine, Inc.—The New Drug Kings", addressed the drug problem in the United States.

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