Terry McDermott bio

Terry McDermott, born in Iowa, has been a news correspondent at eight different newspapers over the past 30 years.

He was most recently a national news correspondent for the Los Angeles Times where he was assigned to investigate the background of Mohamed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers.  That assignment led him to travel to 20 countries on four continents over a three-year-period. 

Prior to his career as a journalist, he worked as a carpenter and as a political campaign manager.

• Former National News Correspondent, Los Angeles Times
• Former Metro Columnist, Seattle Times

• M.A., University of Nebraska Omaha, year unknown
• B.A., University of Nebraska Omaha, year unknown

• 101 Theory Drive: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for Memory, 2010
• Perfect Soldiers: The 9/11 Hijackers: Who They Were, Why They Did It, 2005
• “The Plots and Designs of Al Qaeda’s Engineer Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man believed to be behind 9/11, hides in plain sight–and narrowly escapes capture in Pakistan,” (Co-written with Josh Meyer and Patrick J. McDonnell), Los Angeles Times, Dec. 22, 2002
• “The Plot: How terrorists hatched a simple plan to use planes as bombs,” Los Angeles Times, Sep. 1, 2002
• “A Perfect Soldier: Mohamed Atta, whose hard gaze has stared from a billion television screens and newspaper pages, has become, for many, the face of evil incarnate,” Los Angeles Times,  Jan. 27, 2002