James Alan Miklaszewski (; born July 8, 1949), known to his colleagues and contacts as "Mik", is a retired journalist whose career spanned more than forty years, most of it covering the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest (Washington, D.C.), NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president ...

and

Pentagon In geometry, a pentagon () is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the internal angles in a simple polygon, simple pentagon is 540°. A pentagon may be simple or list of self-intersecting polygons, self-intersecting. A self-intersecting ...

for

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Media Group, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's various operations r ...

. On

September 11, 2001 The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

, Miklaszewski was NBC's Chief Pentagon Correspondent reporting live from his desk when

American Airlines Flight 77 American Airlines Flight 77 was a scheduled domestic transcontinental passenger flight from Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia to Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles. The Boeing 757-200 aircraft serving the flig ...

slammed into the building and he was first to report the Pentagon had been attacked. He then led NBC's coverage of US military operations for the

war in Afghanistan War in Afghanistan, Afghan war, or Afghan civil war may refer to: *Conquest of Afghanistan by Alexander the Great (330 BC – 327 BC), the conquest of Afghanistan by the Macedonian Empire * Muslim conquests of Afghanistan, a series of campaigns in ...

, and the hunt for

Osama bin Laden Osama bin Laden (10 March 19572 May 2011) was a militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, Bin Laden participated in the Afghan ''mujahideen'' against the Soviet Union, and support ...

, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attack on America. Miklaszewski's broadcast career began in

West Texas West Texas is a loosely defined region in the U.S. state of Texas, generally encompassing the desert climate, arid and semiarid climate, semiarid lands west of a line drawn between the cities of Wichita Falls, Texas, Wichita Falls, Abilene, Texa ...

at radio stations KVOP in Plainview and KLBK in Lubbock. He then spent several years as a News Director/Reporter for several radio stations in Madison and

La Crosse, Wisconsin La Crosse ( ) is a city in La Crosse County, Wisconsin, United States, and its county seat. Positioned alongside the Mississippi River, La Crosse is the largest city on Wisconsin's western border. La Crosse's population was 52,680 as of the 202 ...

and in

Fort Worth, Texas Fort Worth is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat of Tarrant County, Texas, Tarrant County, covering nearly into Denton County, Texas, Denton, Johnson County, Texas, Johnson, Parker County, Texas, Parker, and Wise County, Te ...

. In 1980, Miklaszewski signed on as one of the "

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

Originals" where he quickly logged considerable battlefield experience covering the wars in

Lebanon Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in the Levant region of West Asia. Situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian Peninsula, it is bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south ...

El Salvador El Salvador, officially the Republic of El Salvador, is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south by the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador's capital and largest city is S ...

and the

Falkland Islands The Falkland Islands (; ), commonly referred to as The Falklands, is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about east of South America's southern Patagonian coast and from Cape Dub ...

. CNN later assigned him to the Reagan White House where he reported on the bombing that killed 241 U.S. and 58 French military personnel in Lebanon, the US military

invasion of Grenada The United States and a Caribbean Peace Force, coalition of Caribbean countries invaded the small island nation of Grenada, north of Venezuela, at dawn on 25 October 1983. Codenamed Operation Urgent Fury by the U.S. military, it resulted in m ...

, and the President and Mrs. Reagan's trip to China. NBC hired Miklaszewski first as a Pentagon correspondent in 1985 where he joined US forces during the " Tanker Wars" in the Persian Gulf. Jim was later assigned to cover President

George H. W. Bush George Herbert Walker BushBefore the outcome of the 2000 United States presidential election, he was usually referred to simply as "George Bush" but became more commonly known as "George H. W. Bush", "Bush Senior," "Bush 41," and even "Bush th ...

during the first

Gulf War , combatant2 = , commander1 = , commander2 = , strength1 = Over 950,000 soldiers3,113 tanks1,800 aircraft2,200 artillery systems , page = https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-PEMD-96- ...

with Iraq, and summits with

Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...

, and

Boris Yeltsin Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician and statesman who served as President of Russia from 1991 to 1999. He was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1961 to ...

. He remained in the White House for President

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, ...

's first term and reelection. Miklaszewski returned to the Pentagon where he covered the 9/11 attack, the US

invasion of Iraq An invasion is a military offensive of combatants of one geopolitical entity, usually in large numbers, entering territory controlled by another similar entity, often involving acts of aggression. Generally, invasions have objectives ...

and ultimately the US Navy SEALs operation that killed Osama bin Laden. During his career Miklaszewski received an

Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the year, each with their own set of rules and award categor ...

for his reporting on the Russian shootdown of

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17) was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Kuala Lumpur that was shot down by Russian-backed forces with a Buk missile system, Bu ...

, an Edward R. Murrow Award for his documentary series ''After Nam'' about the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...

, and a Cable Industray award for his coverage of the Salvadoran Civil War. He retired from NBC on September 28, 2016. He is married to Cheryl Heyse Miklaszewski and has two children, James and Jeffrey and two daughters-in-law, Cybill and Samantha.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Miklaszewski, Jim Living people NBC News people 1949 births Radio personalities from Milwaukee American male journalists American television reporters and correspondents People from Cudahy, Wisconsin