"News are my life..."

ALAN KAUL's TV News Page

I'm a producer at NBC News in Burbank, California, where I usually work for NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, TODAY and MSNBC.

I never traveled to Europe or Asia until 1979. Then in short order, I was in Thailand for the "boat people" and returned home across the Pacific only to be sent across the Atlantic to Iran for the 1979 "Hostage Crisis." In 1980 was in Portland, Oregon, the morning Mt. St. Helens erupted just 35-miles away. I helped cover the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 1980-84-88-96, and travelled with candidates Kennedy, Reagan, Mondale, Hart, Bush, Jackson, Gore, Dole, Dukakis, Bentsen, Quayle and Clinton.

HOT CREEK!

Mammoth, California's "HOT CREEK" Geothermal site. This area about 6-miles SE of Mammoth Lakes is the center of earthquake activity in the Long Valley Caldera--the site of an ancient volcano that erupted 760,000 years ago in an outpouring that made St. Helens look unbelieveably small! Seismic activity has been increasing since 1980 leading to speculation that there could be another volcanic eruption in the near future. The last eruption in the area was at Mono Lake about 250 years ago. The region has experienced an eruption on average about ''every 250 years'' for the last 5,000 years! (photo by me during December 1997!)

I lived in the Middle East for 3-years and covered aircraft and ship hijackings including Achille Lauro and Pan Am 103. I spent time in Beirut, Damascus, Tripoli (Libya), Baghdad, Cairo and a few other locations. I was arrested once in Syria, but released unharmed. And shot at in Lebanon by an Israeli soldier (he fired high as an intended warning shot over our heads----not too high, though! I will always remember the high-pitched, siren-like sound of the rifled slug ZIPPING past my ear!

I was in the Press Box at Giant Stadium in San Francisco during Game 3 of the 1989 World Series and rocked and rolled thru the Loma Prieta M7 Earthquake (it was almost 36-hours later before I got to sleep!). I covered the EXXON VALDEZ oil spill, felt the rocking of the 1994 Northridge Quake, and went to Amman for Desert Storm, Denver for the Oklahoma Federal Building bombing trial and Calcutta for the funeral of Mother Teresa. In 1998, I visited Hanoi for the wedding of the US Ambassador (a former POW) to a woman born in Saigon, and to Ireland for the Clinton State Visit.

(photo by Greg Morgan) I'm the guy in the Hawaiian shirt (center) at Mother Teresa's Shi-Shu Orphanage, attempting to discuss shooting schedule with sound man. Our discussions didn't matter -- nuns from the Order of Missionaries of Charity refused us permission to make any videotapes inside the grounds.

I went to Haiti for the United Nations' action in June of 1994 -- and went thru LAX to catch an American Airlines flight for Miami about 90-minutes before O. J. Simpson ran thru the airport on his way to Chicago -- the night his wife was brutally murdered. When I returned a month later, I was one of the NBC producers assigned to OJ coverage for much of the next two years!

Author (foregound) at laptop computer with soundman David Lerner. We were in Denver on the day before the verdict in the Timothy McVeigh Bombing Trial.

As you might suspect, this site remains under construction! Check back and see how I'm doing!

Some days I'm a cork floating on the ocean... when surf's up -- there I go!

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To Contact me, please e-mail alan.kaul@worldnet.att.net

VISITS SINCE 10/31/97:

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