The Things They Carried: The War Reporter

Martha Raddatz isn’t one to shy away from danger. As senior foreign affairs correspondent for ABC News, she has leapt out of helicopters in Afghanistan, ridden shotgun in F-15 fighter jets, and been out on night patrols in Iraq’s Sadr City. “I’m kind of a lone operator,” Raddatz says. “I prefer not being in a pack of 25 journalists.” But it’s less a desire to be a daredevil than a distinctly humanizing touch she brings to delivering the news.

Foreign Policy caught up with Raddatz just off the plane from her latest trip to Afghanistan, where she hopscotched around the country’s south in a pair of V-22 Ospreys alongside top U.S. commander Gen. John Allen. There, with Raddatz in tow, Allen appealed for calm as violence erupted across the country following news that U.S. troops had burned Qurans at Bagram Airfield. Back in Washington on her office’s carpet — a Turkish kilim, the first one she ever bought — Raddatz shared a look at what’s inside her black Baggallini carry-on.