Dina Temple-Raston
Dina Temple-Raston is a correspondent on NPR's Investigations team focusing on breaking news stories and national security, technology and social justice.
Previously, Temple-Raston worked in NPR's programming department to create and host I'll Be Seeing You, a four-part series of radio specials for the network that focused on the technologies that watch us. Before that, she served as NPR's counter-terrorism correspondent for more than a decade, reporting from all over the world to cover deadly terror attacks, the evolution of ISIS and radicalization. While on leave from NPR in 2018, she independently executive produced and hosted a non-NPR podcast called What Were You Thinking, which looked at what the latest neuroscience can reveal about the adolescent decision-making process.
In 2014, she completed a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University where, as the first Murrey Marder Nieman Fellow in Watchdog Journalism, she studied the intersection of Big Data and intelligence.
Prior to joining NPR in 2007, Temple-Raston was a longtime foreign correspondent for Bloomberg News in China and served as Bloomberg's White House correspondent during the Clinton Administration. She has written four books, including The Jihad Next Door: Rough Justice in the Age of Terror, about the Lackawanna Six terrorism case, and A Death in Texas: A Story About Race, Murder and a Small Town's Struggle for Redemption, about the racially-motivated murder of James Byrd, Jr. in Jasper, Texas, which won the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers prize. She is a regular reviewer of national security books for the Washington Post Book World, and also contributes to The New Yorker, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Radiolab, the TLS and the Columbia Journalism Review, among others.
She is a graduate of Northwestern University and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, and she has an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Manhattanville College.
Temple-Raston was born in Belgium and her first language is French. She also speaks Mandarin and a smattering of Arabic.
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The Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston office Rick DesLauriers hopes someone, somewhere heard something that will point to a suspect in the Boston Marathon attack. Three people were killed Monday in the attack.
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The FBI is taking the lead in the investigation into the bombing at the Boston Marathon on Monday. So far there is no clear lead to indicate what person or group is responsible. But officials are appealing for information, including photos and videos from the public, and also looking at forensic evidence. Melissa Block talks to Dina Temple-Raston about the investigation.
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Investigators are working to determine who is responsible for the explosions at the Boston Marathon. At least three people were killed. Sources told NPR it could take some time before officials can definitively say who was behind this.
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Former al-Qaida spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was captured by U.S. officials in February. His arrest is significant, analysts say, because the Obama administration has decided to try him in a federal court instead of using a military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. -
Pakistan's isolated Swat Valley is ground zero for a quiet experiment by the Pakistani army: a little-known program aimed at re-educating thousands of young men who were taken in by the Taliban. Using international funds and a contingent of army officers, Pakistan is trying to turn would-be terrorists into law-abiding citizens. -
Sulaiman Abu Ghaith may be best known for his appearance in videos. He was sitting next to bin Laden when the al-Qaida leader took credit for the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Ghaith may appear in a Manhattan court on Friday. -
A pretrial hearing in the Sept. 11 case was suspended briefly last week to investigate allegations of eavesdropping. The commissions' chief prosecutor launched an investigation, and said no one was "listening, monitoring, recording" the proceedings. Defense attorneys seemed to take his word, which given the history of the commissions, is a baby step toward progress.
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Pretrial hearings resume Monday for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men accused of helping plot the Sept. 11 attacks. There will be two competing narratives in the courtroom, however, with the prosecution focusing on the attacks, and the defense stressing the defendants' treatment after they were captured.
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Analysts and administration officials are talking about terrorist groups not just as part of an ideological movement, but rather as criminal syndicates. With funding sources drying up, local terrorist groups are going beyond traditional deep pocket donors. Now they are bilking local economies. Al-Qaida is robbing banks in Iraq, the Taliban is taking hostages in Afghanistan and al-Shabab is laundering money in Somalia.
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A Pakistani man who went to London to sell fish has become an unlikely YouTube music star, thanks to the catchy song he made up to lure customers. The video for the song, "One Pound Fish," became a Web hit, and even brought him a record deal.
