Rajiv Chandrasekaran bio

Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a national editor with The Washington Post, covering the federal government, foreign and domestic policy, and national security issues among other assignments. He is the best-selling author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City.

From 2003-2004, Chandrasekaran served as the Baghdad Bureau Chief for The Post, covering U.N. weapon inspections and the U.S. military occupation in Iraq, witnessing the buildup to the Iraq war.

Prior to his time in Iraq, he served as The Post’s Bureau Chief in Cairo, where he moved from his prior assignment in Southeast Asia, as a correspondent based in Jakarta, Indonesia. Following the events of Sep. 11, 2001, Chandrasekaran covered the war in Afghanistan along with a team of reporters from The Post.

In 2005, he went on sabbatical from The Post, serving as Journalist in Residence at the International Reporting Project at John Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies in D.C., also becoming a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. 

He also makes regular appearances on CNN, MSNBC, and NPR shows.

• National Editor, The Washington Post, present
• Former Baghdad Bureau Chief, The Washington Post
• Former Cairo Bureau Chief, The Washington Post
• Former Southeast Asia Correspondent, The Washington Post
• Recipient of the Overseas Press Club Award
• Recipient of the Ron Ridenhour Prize
• Britain’s Samuel Johnson Prize

• B.A., Political Science, Stanford University, year unknown

• Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan, 2012
• Imperial Life in the Emerald City, 2007