Nate Thayer

Nate Thayer is an award-winning freelance investigative journalist and correspondent with 25 years of foreign reporting experience, a focus on Asia and political extremism, with a notable expertise on the Khmer Rouge.

He specializes in military conflict, politics, civil unrest, human rights, corruption, asymmetrical warfare, defense, intelligence, and transnational organized crime.

Thayer has covered all of Asia, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, Cuba, Albania, North Korea, and Mongolia. He has been a special correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review,  the Associated Press,  Jane's Defence Weekly,  the Phnom Penh Post,  the Washington Post, Agence France-Presse, Soldier of Fortune Magazine, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. He has published in more than 200 print, television, radio outlets, and online media in Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, North America, and South America. Thayer was a visiting scholar in residence at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC. He now lives in the United States.

Awards and Honours

*World Press Award

*Overseas Press Club of America Award

*“Scoop of the Year” British Press Award

*Francis Frost Wood Award for Courage in Journalism, given to a journalist "judged to best exemplify physical or moral courage in the practice of his or her craft." 

*The Center for Public Integrity's, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting of the Year. The judges noted: "He illuminated a page of history that would have been lost to the world had he not spent years in the Cambodian jungle, in a truly extraordinary quest for first-hand knowledge of the Khmer Rouge and their murderous leader. His investigations of the Cambodian political world required not only great risk and physical hardship but also mastery of an ever-changing cast of factional characters.";

*Peabody Award as a "correspondent" for ABC News' Nightline, which he rejected for ABC's unethical journalistic behavior, the first person in 57 years to turn down a prestigious Peabody Award 

*The SAIS-Novartis Prize for Excellence in International Journalism for "exposing the inside story of the Khmer Rouge killing machine."

*Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by the Wall Street Journal

*The Society of Asian Editor's and Publishers Award for Excellence in Reporting, among several others .

Associations:

The Nate Thayer Scholarship is awarded annually by Hofstra University's School of Communication to the "student with the best foreign story idea." Given to a journalism student based on scholastic merit and financial need, it was established in 1999 by the donation of the prize money the University awarded Thayer for being the recipient of it's annual excellence in journalism award.

*Former Vice President of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand

*Former Vice President of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Cambodia