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Richard Engel (born September 16, 1973) is NBC News's Chief Foreign Correspondent mediabistro.com: TVNewser. He was promoted to that position on April 18, 2008 from being the network's Middle East correspondent and Beirut Bureau chief. Prior to joining NBC News in May 2003, he covered the start of the 2003 war in Iraq from Baghdad for ABC News as a freelance journalist. He speaks and reads Arabic fluently and is also fluent in Italian and Spanish. Engel wrote the book A Fist in the Hornet's Nest, published in 2004, about his experience covering the Iraq War from Baghdad. His newest book, War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq, published in June 2008, picks up where his last book left off.

A winner of the Edward R. Murrow Award, Engel grew up on the Upper East Side of New York City, and attended Stanford University in California, graduating in 1996 with a B.A. in International Relations. He left for Cairo, Egypt, with little money and no contacts or prospects because he felt that the region was where the next story would be. He first lived in a ramshackle seven-story walk-up, learned the Egyptian dialect of Arabic and worked as a freelance reporter out of Cairo for four years. Next he moved to Jerusalem, continuing his freelance reporting for three more years until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq (where he has been predominantly since), and Engel was offered a position as a foreign correspondent with NBC. Engel filed a number of reports from Lebanon during the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, and as of May 2008, continues to cover Iraq for NBC. In mid-May 2008 Engel interviewed U.S. President George W. Bush, largely about his recent speech to the Israeli Knesset. As of early August, Engel has been stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan covering the country's presidential election.

On May 18, 2009, Engel won the Peabody Award for his reports covering U.S. Army Viper Company fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan.

Engel was married to a woman whom he met at Stanford, but the two divorced in 2005. He cites his work as one of the reasons for his failed marriage.

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