Mary Louise Kelly
Mary Louise Kelly is a co-host of All Things Considered, NPR's award-winning afternoon newsmagazine.
Previously, she spent a decade as national security correspondent for NPR News, and she's kept that focus in her role as anchor. That's meant taking All Things Considered to Russia, North Korea, and beyond (including live coverage from Helsinki, for the infamous Trump-Putin summit). Her past reporting has tracked the CIA and other spy agencies, terrorism, wars, and rising nuclear powers. Kelly's assignments have found her deep in interviews at the Khyber Pass, at mosques in Hamburg, and in grimy Belfast bars.
Kelly first launched NPR's intelligence beat in 2004. After one particularly tough trip to Baghdad — so tough she wrote an essay about it for Newsweek — she decided to try trading the spy beat for spy fiction. Her debut espionage novel, Anonymous Sources, was published by Simon and Schuster in 2013. It's a tale of journalists, spies, and Pakistan's nuclear security. Her second novel, The Bullet, followed in 2015.
Kelly's writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, Washingtonian, The Atlantic, and other publications. She has lectured at Harvard and Stanford, and taught a course on national security and journalism at Georgetown University. In addition to her NPR work, Kelly serves as a contributing editor at The Atlantic, moderating newsmaker interviews at forums from Aspen to Abu Dhabi.
A Georgia native, Kelly's first job was pounding the streets as a political reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In 1996, she made the leap to broadcasting, joining the team that launched BBC/Public Radio International's The World. The following year, Kelly moved to London to work as a producer for CNN and as a senior producer, host, and reporter for the BBC World Service.
Kelly graduated from Harvard University in 1993 with degrees in government, French language, and literature. Two years later, she completed a master's degree in European studies at Cambridge University in England.
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Kara Swisher of Recode discusses the resignation of Uber's controversial CEO Travis Kalanick. Also, Republican Karen Handel won a special election in Georgia, dashing Democrats' hopes for an upset.
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On assignment in Russia last week, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly wondered if she was being watched. As she was typing, her cursor moved on its own. And why was she referred to a man in a blacked-out Volga? -
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who wants to challenge Vladimir Putin for the presidency of Russia, called for the protests. He was detained outside his home before he could make it to a protest.
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Thousands of protesters took to the streets across Russia on Monday for anti-corruption demonstrations. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who's been detained by authorities, organized the protests.
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Former FBI Director James Comey appeared before a Senate panel on Thursday. In Moscow, people interviewed on the streets don't think Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election.
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"We are back in the business of stealing secrets," says CIA chief Mike Pompeo, who made the comment Tuesday night in a session at CIA headquarters in northern Virginia. We examine what he meant.
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The latest on the deadly attack at a concert in Manchester, England. Also, new developments in the FBI and congressional probes into Russian meddling and the Trump budget for 2018 is revealed.
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Lawyers for the former national security adviser cited "public frenzy" against him. Meanwhile, another congressional committee says Michael Flynn may have lied to security clearance investigators. -
A look ahead to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit to Washington, D.C. next week, and his promise of a "new beginning" in U.S.-Turkish relations.
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Leaders at the evangelical Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. were among President Trump's earliest supporters. On Saturday, Trump gave his first commencement address as president at the university.
