About

Kevin Baron, 36, is a national security staff writer at  National Journal, developing since 2011 a newly created beat covering the intersection of national security and defense spending – a.k.a. the “business of war” — through NJ’s unique politics-tinted lens. Baron writes for National Journal’s website, magazine, and Congress-focused National Journal Daily. He is also vice president of the Pentagon Press Association.

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN -- Covering Defense Secretary Robert Gates on another visit, May 2011.

For three years prior, Baron worked in  the daily Pentagon press corps for the Washington bureau of Stars and Stripes, the historic newspaper for the U.S. military overseas. He reported on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars; China’s military build-up; expanding special operations forces; the ‘high-value target’ list; increased foreign military training; military vetting war journalists; the militarization of foreign aid; NATO transformation and nuclear policy.

BAGHDAD, IRAQ -- Pentagon reporters enjoy 117 degree heat while awaiting helo transport from Camp Victory to the international zone for a briefing with Defense Secretary Robert Gates. July 28, 2009.

Baron regularly covered the foreign travels of Secretaries of Defense Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, touching down several times for tours of Afghanistan and Iraq, China, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states, Djibouti, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, Belgium, Slovakia, Turkey, Alaska, Hawaii, a refuel in Guam and a few pints of Guinness in Shannon, Ireland.

Previously, from 2004 to 2009, Baron was an exclusive freelance correspondent for The Boston Globe‘s Washington bureau producing long-form investigative projects. Globe assignments took him to Angola, Australia, and Papua New Guinea, and across the United States.

Reporting on assignment for the Boston Globe, on the edge of the southern Atlantic Ocean.

At the Globe, Baron initiated an 18-month investigation into the Bush administration’s expansion of U.S. foreign aid steered to religous organizations, and co-wrote a multipart series on the Pentagon’s expanding search for thousands of missing WWII pilots and the global trade in historic war relics.He also wrote about changing U.S. Army demographics; an Army test cheating scandal; a global black market for cheating on job certification and licensure exams; million-dollar subsidies paid to foreign ship owners transporting sensitive U.S. military cargo to the war zones; and secret lobbying in Congress over billions of dollars in “corporate welfare”.Baron cut his muckraking teeth working for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a project of nonprofit journalism’s Center for Public Integrity, writing on the team that produced 2003’s “Windfalls of War”, the first accounting of U.S. contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

RABUAL, PAPUA NEW GUINEA -- On assignment in the South Pacific with the US Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, on New Britain Island, at the foot of the active volcano Tuvurvur.

RABUAL, PAPUA NEW GUINEA -- On assignment in the South Pacific with the US Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, on New Britain Island, at the foot of the active volcano Tuvurvur.

Originally from Orlando, Florida, Baron earned an M.A. from the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs (SMPA), and a B.A. from the University of Richmond in international studies. He also lived in Paris.

Baron was a policy specialist for three years at the Alliance for International Educational & Cultural Exchange, covering foreign policy, international development and immigration issues. Prior, Baron worked for the United Nations Association of the USA.

A resident of the Washington, DC, area since 1998, Baron lives Northern Virginia with his wife, Dawn, president and founder of Passion Profits Consulting, three sons and an old black dog named ‘The Edge’.

Recognitions:

  • 2010 National Headliner Award, Public Service
  • 2010 Military Reporters & Editors Award
  • 2009 George Polk Award, Military Reporting
  • 2008 Scripps-Howard Foundation National Journalism Award, Washington Reporting, Finalist
  • 2008 ICIJ Daniel Pearl Award for Oustanding International Investigative Reporting, Finalist
  • 2007 Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) Award, International Perspective, Finalist
  • 2006 Monthly Journalism Award, Washington Monthly, December 2006
  • 2003 George Polk Award, Online Journalism (for the Center for Public Integrity)