ABOUT KIM GHATTAS

Welcome to my personal website.

I am an author and analyst with more than twenty years of experience in print and broadcast media, covering the Middle East, international affairs and US foreign policy. I am a contributing editor for the Financial Times, a contributing writer for The Atlantic magazine (and host of the podcast show People Like Us— currently on pause!) In 2024, the Washington Post listed me among the Top 50 Next Thought leaders.

Before that, I spent two decades roaming the world as a journalist working for the BBC and the Financial Times, juggling tight deadlines, adrenaline highs, hours of live television and radio reporting— and a Twitter addiction. In 2017, I took a break from the news and moved back to Beirut to write my second book Black Wave. I realized I loved the change of pace and the space to do more considered, in-depth writing. I left the BBC and the world of news.

Black Wave was a NYT 100 notable book of 2020. I am now writing my third book which will again be a work of narrative non fiction, a geopolitical thriller exploring the US-Iran enmity, set in part in Lebanon during bad old days of the civil war. From my base in Beirut, I provide live commentary for television news shows, write my commentary and opinions and travel the world to give lectures and speak at conferences.

I was born and raised in this city, on the front lines of the Lebanese civil war. Searching for answers about the chaos around me is what made me want to become a journalist at the age of 13. 

I started my journalism career in 1998, as an intern in Beirut at the local English-language newspaper The Daily Star. Print was my first love. Within a couple of years, I was reporting for the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant as well as the Financial Times and then the BBC. I spent my time on the road covering the Middle East: reporting from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and of course Lebanon. In 2006, my BBC colleagues and I covered the war between Israel and Hezbollah and we won an Emmy for international news coverage. 

In 2008, I left my posting in Beirut, the city that made me a journalist, to become the BBC's State Department correspondent based in Washington.  For six years, I travelled regularly with Secretaries of State: Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. I was recognized by publications like Monocle for my State Department reporting. 

My front row seat to the making of American foreign policy led me to write my first book, The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power, which became a New York Times best seller. The book includes personal reflections about being a child in war-torn Lebanon, growing up with questions about America. 

My work has also been published in The Daily Beast, The New York Times, TIME, Foreign Policy and The Washington Post. I’m a regular commentator on CNN, NPR, MSNBC, among others.

I serve on the Board of Trustees of the American University of Beirut, my alma mater and a beacon of intellectual engagement in the Middle East. I am also on the board directors of the Global Center for Pluralism and the advisory board of the Atlas for Impunity. For a few years, I also chaired the board of directors for ARIJ, an organization dedicated to training and supporting investigative journalists in the Arab world.

On this website, you’ll find all my recent work, including my writings, my books and the podcast, as well as a small selection of my favorite articles and reports from my two decades as a journalist, covering the Middle East and American foreign policy.