Elaine Shannon
journalist
Elaine Shannon (born November 16, 1946) is an American investigative journalist and former correspondent for Newsweek and Time considered an expert on terrorism, organized crime, and espionage. Describing her also as "a leading expert on the evil alliances of drug kingpins and corrupt officials", Newsweek said Shannon "could rightly claim to be the Boswell of thugs and drugs."
Early life
Shannon was born in Gainesville, Georgia, on November 16, 1946. She was an English major at Vanderbilt University where she graduated in 1968. While a senior at Vanderbilt, Shannon began working for the Nashville Tennessean where she reported on civil rights, police brutality, and prisoner abuse. In 1970 Shannon became the newspaper's Washington, D.C., correspondent and covered the Senatorial campaign of Albert Gore Sr., the Presidential campaigns of Richard Nixon and George McGovern, and the Watergate scandal. She spent a year at Harvard University where in 1974 she earned a Nieman Fellowship in journalism, then went to work for Newsday the following year.
Career
According to CNN, Shannon "has covered criminal justice issues, including international arms trafficking, drug trafficking and money laundering, organized crime, white collar crime, terrorism and espionage" since 1976. She frequently speaks on issues related to drug trafficking. Through her reporting, Shannon has built "an extensive network of sources as she covered the FBI, DEA, Customs and Justice departments, intelligence and terrorism."
She joined Newsweek in 1976 and covered the Presidential campaigns of Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. In October 1986, she left Newsweek to finish writing her New York Times best-selling book about the drug trade, Desperados: Latin Drug Lords, U.S. Lawmen, and the War America Can't Win.
“Elaine Shannon” enters the record as journalist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Elaine, Shannon and journalist can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Elaine Shannon” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Elaine, Shannon and journalist provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q100231213. VIAF identifies the subject as 84599414. The Library of Congress control number is n88015369. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946, 1968, 1970 and 1974.
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This entry incorporates text from “Elaine Shannon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.