Richard Engel

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Person.png Richard Engel   TwitterRdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
(journalist)
Richard Engel 2015.jpg
Born1973-09-16
New York City, New York, U.S.
NationalityUS
Alma materRiverdale Country School, Stanford University
SpouseMary Forrest
Member ofCouncil on Foreign Relations/Members
Interests • 2021 Washington D.C. Riots
• Bellingcat
Corporate media outlet NBC News' chief foreign correspondent, manufacturing American public opinion for deep state interests. Works with Bellingcat too.

Richard Engel is the chief foreign correspondent of the US corporate media NBC News.

Early Life

Engel grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City[1]. His father, Peter, is a former Goldman Sachs financier.[2]

Engel attended the Riverdale Country School, a highly competitive college-prep school in New York City,[3].

He later went to Stanford University. Engel spent one summer as an unpaid intern at CNN Business News in New York City.[4] He graduated from Stanford in 1996 with a B.A. in international relations.[3]

Broadcasting career

After graduating from Stanford, Engel left for Cairo, feeling the region was where the next big story would erupt. He first lived in a ramshackle seven-story walk-up, learned Egyptian Arabic and worked as a freelance reporter in Cairo for four years.

Engel worked as the Middle East correspondent for The World, a joint production of BBC World Service, Public Radio International (PRI) and WGBH from 2001–03. He also reported for USA Today, Reuters, AFP and Jane's Defence Weekly.[5]

Engel worked for ABC News as a freelance journalist during the initial invasion of Iraq by U.S. forces. Engel continued his coverage of the Iraq war in Baghdad as NBC's primary Iraq correspondent.[5]

Not all journalists are equal

In 2013, Engel spoke at a memorial ceremony for the 88 journalists killed around the world during the last year. With involuntary self-insight, he stated:


Specifically there have been some critics who oppose the inclusion of several people who were killed while working for a Hamas-run television station and state televisions that broadcast propaganda. I frankly agree, there is a distinction, and that several of the people on this list aren’t strictly journalists, but - political activists who worked in the media. And just because you carry a camera and a notebook doesn’t make you a journalist.[6]

Skripal affair

In a March 2018 article Engel wrote that MI5 officer Christopher Steele, the maker of the Dodgy Dossier, was on a Russian hit list. The list also allegedly included Russian defector Boris Karpichkov, who Engel interviewed and showed a full picture of in the article; and Victor Makarov, who Engel helpfully pointed out lives in a "public housing block in the sleepy northern England town of Haltwhistle."[7]. Karpichkov states that he was warned "by an old friend" in mid February, a month before the Skripal affair.[8]

Kidnapped by own side in Syria

On December 13, 2012, Engel and his five crew members were abducted in Syria. Having escaped after five days in captivity, Engel said he believed that a Shabiha group loyal to the Syrian government was behind the abduction, and that the crew was freed by the Ahrar al-Sham group five days later.[9]

In April 2015, NBC had to revise the kidnapping account, following further investigations by The New York Times, who had conducted several dozen interviews, suggesting that the NBC team was almost certainly taken by a Sunni group affiliated with the US proxy force the Free Syrian Army, rather than by a loyalist Shia group.[10]

2021 Washington D.C. Riots

Engel was one of the main spreaders of the "policeman killed by fire extinguisher story", a story that is not true but still was widely distributed.[11]

In April 2021, Engel conducted a joint investigation with "Bellingcat and its volunteers" into the January 2021 Washington D.C. Riots.[12]

Engel claimed in a tweet that a Capitol police officer. Brian Sicknick, was “clubbed to death with a fire extinguisher by a pro-Trump mob,” a story that was widely spread by corporate media, but "is false in all respects.”[13]


 

Events Participated in

EventStartEndLocation(s)Description
Bilderberg/20169 June 201612 June 2016Germany
Dresden
The 2016 Bilderberg meeting took place in Dresden, Germany.
Halifax International Security Forum/201020 November 201022 November 2010Canada
Halifax
Nova Scotia
Spooky conference in Canada in November 2010
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References