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David D. Kirkpatrick, "Into the Hands of the Soldiers"
David D. Kirkpatrick (born 1970 in Buffalo, New York) is a reporter for The New York Times. He currently serves as its Cairo bureau chief and a Middle East correspondent.
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He earned a B.A. in history and American studies at Princeton University, graduating magna cum laude, and attended the graduate program in American Studies at Yale. He started in the media group at The New York Times in June 2000.
Professional career
During the United States presidential election of 2004, he was assigned to invent a "conservative beat" for The New York Times, with a special focus on religious conservatives. The assignment raised eyebrows among some on the right because of the newspaper's liberal reputation and editorials.
In addition to the Washington, National, and Media desks of the Times, he has written for The New York Times Magazine as well as New York magazine. This included a series exposing plagiarism in non-fiction writing.
On December 28, 2013, Kirkpatrick published a detailed account of the 2012 Benghazi attack titled "A Deadly Mix in Benghazi". Based on extensive interviews with Libyan witnesses and American officials, the article concluded that the attack began neither as a spontaneous protest nor an Al Qaeda plot. It was a planned attack carried out by local Islamist militants, and it was inspired in part by an American-made online video ridiculing Islam.