Thomas Omestad

Senior Writer

Expertise: State Department | International affairs | Diplomacy | Middle East, including Iran | North Korea and Taiwan | Cuba and Venezuela | U.S.-Asian and U.S.-European relations

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Background: Thomas Omestad covers international affairs and diplomacy. In his 10-plus years with U.S. News, he has covered Mideast peace efforts, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, Cuba under Fidel Castro, Syria’s government, anti-Americanism, Georgia’s new democracy, Taiwanese democracy, Muslims in Europe, Libya’s future, Morocco’s Islamists, German politics, post-authoritarian Indonesia, North Korean political prisons and nuclear challenge, reform efforts in Iran, and more. He writes on general issues of U.S. foreign policy. He occasionally travels with the press corps that accompanies the president and secretary of state. Prior to joining U.S. News in 1997, Omestad was for 10 years the associate editor of the journal Foreign Policy, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In that capacity, he covered firsthand the fall of the Berlin Wall, the “Velvet Revolution” in Czechoslovakia, and the waning days of the Soviet Union. Earlier in his career, he reported for the Los Angeles Times and for the Associated Press in South Dakota. His articles on foreign affairs have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, the New Republic, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, and the Miami Herald, among other publications. Omestad, a Minneapolis native, received a bachelor of science in economics, with honors, from the University of Minnesota in 1982, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. He also studied political science, business, German, and Japanese.

Honors: National Press Club’s Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence, 2005 | Washington Monthly Journalism Award, 1995 | Harrison Salisbury Achievement Award given by the Minnesota Daily Alumni Association, 2006 | Jefferson Fellow with the East-West Center for a study project in India and Pakistan, 2006

Media appearances: Omestad has been interviewed on national radio and television programs such as CNN’s Paula Zahn Now, CNN Headline News, and ABC Radio’s The Warren Pierce Show, as well as major market radio stations across the country.