Georgie Anne Geyer

Georgie Anne Geyer was born in Chicago and graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 1956. Geyer, who speaks Spanish, Portuguese, German and Russian, then attended the University of Vienna on a Fulbright Scholarship to study modern history. 

She began her career as a reporter for the Chicago Southtown Economist. From 1959 to 1974, Geyer was a reporter for the Chicago Daily News, where she became a foreign correspondent specializing in Latin America.

In 1973, she was the first Western reporter to interview Saddam Hussein, then vice president of Iraq, and has also interviewed Yasir Arafat, Shimon Peres, Anwar Sadat, Fidel Castro, Moammar Gadhafi, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Hugo Chavez, Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Geyer focuses beyond surface events and the next deadline to examine root causes of revolution and political upheaval. She has narrowly escaped an airport bombing in Managua, been threatened with death by Guatemala's White Hand death squad, and was once jailed in Angola for predicting a Soviet-sponsored coup against the Cuban-backed Marxist government.

Geyer has written a definitive biography of Fidel Castro, "Guerrilla Prince" and is the author of "Americans No More: The Death of Citizenship" and "Buying the Night Flight: The Autobiography of a Woman Foreign Correspondent." She was also a regular commentator on public television's "Washington Week in Review."