An investigative and international reporter, Michael Hedges probed the Marion Barry administration for the Washington Times and led the paper’s coverage of Operation Desert Storm, then covered conflicts in Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the West Bank, Rwanda, Haiti and elsewhere. After five years at the Scripps Howard News Service, he became Washington correspondent for the Houston Chronicle. He was at the Pentagon on 9/11, filing stories on the attack, and was one of the first journalists in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s fall. In 2003 he was embedded with U.S. forces in Iraq and returned there and to Afghanistan to cover the ongoing conflicts. After serving as managing editor of the Washington Examiner, he moved to AARP, where he is an editor of the nation’s largest-circulation publications. He is a native of Silver Grove and studied journalism at Northern Kentucky University.