Mike Boettcher
Lecturer
School of International and Area Studies and Gaylord College of Journalism
Gaylord Hall
mikeboettcher@ou.edu
(405) 325-2721

Veteran network news correspondent Mike Boettcher has been recognized with journalism’s top awards for his investigations of the world’s most dangerous terrorist groups.  As the chief correspondent for CNN’s terrorism investigation unit, a team he created in the summer of 2001, Boettcher was awarded a Peabody, his fourth Emmy and a National Headliner award – his fifth.

Currently a correspondent with ABC News assigned to cover the Afghanistan war, he is also writing a book about Al Qaeda and its global network.  Boettcher is frequently asked to lecture on the subject of terrorism, media/military relations and military initiatives at some of the world’s top institutions and corporations, including London’s Royal United Services Institute, Sweden’s National Defense College, Scotland’s St. Andrews University, West Point’s Senior Leaders Conference, Stanford University, The Naval Post Graduate School, The University of Oklahoma, General Dynamics Corporation, The International Aerospace Industries Association and the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism.

In more than a quarter century of assignments covering world conflict for NBC News, ABC News and CNN, he has witnessed, investigated and been a victim of terrorism himself.  Boettcher covered the emergence of modern terrorist tactics in the early 1980’s in Lebanon when the U.S. Marine barracks was bombed, killing 241.  He covered the Pan AM 103 tragedy in Lockerbie and was assigned to investigate it.  His reporting on the plight of Kurdish refugees after Operation Desert Storm, led to the creation of the Iraq “No Fly Zone”.  Boettcher led NBC’s investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing and was one of 3 journalists allowed to speak to Timothy McVeigh in prison.  Since 1998, when the U.S. embassies in Africa were bombed, he has been assigned to investigate every major Al Qaeda attack against American targets. Boettcher has been a witness to dozens of military-diplomatic efforts since 1980.

Boettcher, who was one of a small group of reporters imbedded with U.S. Special Forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom, has reported extensively on the new terrorist threat facing Coalition troops on the ground in Iraq.  He has extensive experience covering Iraq dating back to Operation Desert Storm in 1991 when he was imbedded with U.S. Marines.  That same year he won an Emmy for his coverage of the Kurdish refugee crisis in Iraq.

Boettcher is recognized as one of the worlds most experienced foreign correspondents, covering wars and revolutions in every part of the globe since 1980.   In 2003 he was named a Distinguished Alumnus of the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma.