Tom Bowman
Tom Bowman is a NPR National Desk reporter covering the Pentagon.
In his current role, Bowman has traveled to Syria as well as Iraq and Afghanistan often for month-long visits and embedded with U.S. Marines and soldiers.
Before coming to NPR in April 2006, Bowman spent nine years as a Pentagon reporter at The Baltimore Sun. Altogether he was at The Sun for nearly two decades, covering the Maryland Statehouse, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Naval Academy, and the National Security Agency (NSA). His coverage of racial and gender discrimination at NSA led to a Pentagon investigation in 1994.
Initially Bowman imagined his career path would take him into academia as a history, government, or journalism professor. During college Bowman worked as a stringer at The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass. He also worked for the Daily Transcript in Dedham, Mass., and then as a reporter at States News Service, writing for the Miami Herald and the Anniston (Ala.) Star.
Bowman is a co-winner of a 2006 National Headliners' Award for stories on the lack of advanced tourniquets for U.S. troops in Iraq. In 2010, he received an Edward R. Murrow Award for his coverage of a Taliban roadside bomb attack on an Army unit.
Bowman earned a Bachelor of Arts in history from St. Michael's College in Winooski, Vermont, and a master's degree in American Studies from Boston College.
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Following the December attack on a naval air station, the Pentagon has suspended training of all Saudi military students, as investigators conduct a review of the more than 800 students in the U.S. -
The Department of Homeland Security has asked the Pentagon to provide additional active-duty troops to work on barriers in Arizona and California. -
The move would extend the rare deployment of active-duty troops at the U.S.-Mexico border, rather than only National Guard soldiers and personnel. -
The troops are likely to be active-duty Army personnel. As U.S. troops are prohibited from performing law enforcement activities within the United States, they will be in support roles only. -
The bed space has been requested starting in July and running through the end of the year. Officials tell NPR that four bases are expected to provide space. -
The deal the military made with thousands of noncitizen recruits with specialized skills: Sign up and we'll put you on the fast track to citizenship. -
U.S. officials said that more than 50 Tomahawk missile strikes were carried out against a single Syrian air base from the USS Porter and USS Ross in the Eastern Mediterranean. -
The Silver Star recipient is a three-star Army general known as a military intellectual. The president called him "a man of tremendous talent and tremendous experience." -
It won't be your typical Memorial Day at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan. Soldiers and sailors will honor those who have died in the line of duty in their own way — through a physical challenge. -
Pentagon officials say they're opening ground combat jobs to women as a matter of equality. But the military also needs them because the number of military-age men who qualify for service is declining.
