Elaine Shannon (born November 16, 1946) is an American investigative journalist and former correspondent for Newsweek and Time considered an expert on terrorism, organized crime, and espionage.
[3][4] While a senior at Vanderbilt, Shannon began working for the Nashville Tennessean where she reported on civil rights, police brutality, and prisoner abuse.
[4] The story discusses Paul Le Roux and the DEA's elite special operation group that tracked him in an effort to bring down his global criminal enterprise.
[4] Shannon learned about Le Roux in Afghanistan while researching how warlords and terrorist groups were financed by the heroin trade,[4] and her sources included undercover DEA agents and informants.
[4] Kirkus Reviews called it a "painstaking, fascinating account of crime and punishment" and said Shannon did an especially good job presenting "how the American Drug Enforcement Administration pieced together its multiagency, multigovernmental case against Le Roux".
[3] In 1992, Shannon and John Moody's two-part cover story in Time about the Cali cartel won the Inter American Press Association's IAPA-Bartolome Mitre Award for distinguished journalism.