Barbara Starr is CNN's Pentagon correspondent, based in Washington, D.C. Starr provides viewers with the latest national security news each day from the Pentagon, working her sources to report on the military campaigns against ISIS, investigations in terror attacks and military and intelligence operations. Starr appears regularly on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, New Day and other shows across the network regularly breaking big news and delivering exclusive coverage on the U.S. military and political situation on a global scale.
In 2014, The Panetta Institute for Public Policy honored Starr with a Jefferson-Lincoln Award for her work in journalism. Since 2003, Starr has made repeated trips to Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa, where she has been embedded with U.S. troops. She traveled to Beirut, Lebanon in 2006 with U.S. Marines tasked with evacuating Americans during Israel's war with Hezbollah. Starr has also reported directly from the Persian Gulf, Russia, Central America and the Chinese-North Korean border. In 2016, Starr was the only broadcast journalist to travel to Iraq and Syria with commanding general of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Joseph Votel, the highest-ranking U.S. military official to travel into Syria during the war, to report on the global fight and special operations training of local forces to combat ISIS. Throughout her career, Starr has profiled numerous wounded troops, the plight of homeless veterans and reported on the fallen regularly from Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Starr joined CNN in 2001 from ABC News where she had worked since 1998 as a producer for the network's news originating from the Pentagon, providing on- and off-air reporting on military and national security affairs. She also reported for Nightline, World News This Morning, World News Now, ABC Radio and ABCNews.com. Previously, Starr was the Washington, D.C., bureau chief for Jane's Defence Weekly, a London-based weekly newsmagazine, where for nine years she covered all aspects of national security, the intelligence community, defense and military policy. During this time, she conducted numerous one-on-one interviews with current secretaries of defense and directors of central intelligence. She also traveled to the Balkans, the Persian Gulf and NATO headquarters in Brussels. Before Jane's, Starr worked as a correspondent for Business Week from 1979-1988. Based in the magazine's Washington, D.C., bureau, she served as energy correspondent, covering OPEC and other environmental and economic matters. While at ABC News, she won an Emmy Award as a location producer at NORAD/Cheyenne Mountain, covering the transition to the new millennium at Moscow rollover time.
Starr graduated from California State University, Northridge with a bachelor of arts degree in journalism.