Barry Serafin

— -- Barry Serafin has been a national correspondent for ABCNEWS since January 1981. He reports on a wide range of issues for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, with special emphasis on environmental issues.

A veteran political reporter, Serafin was one of ABCNEWS' principal reporters assigned to cover the 1980, 1984 and 1988 presidential election campaigns. In 1996, he was the first reporter to break the story of the FBI standoff with the Freemen in Montana.

In addition, he has covered a variety of national and international news stories for the network, including the fund-raising activities by private groups to aid the Contras in Nicaragua and the Iranian hostage crisis. During the U.S. Embassy siege in November 1979, Serafin sub-anchored World News Tonight from Tehran.

In 1983, Serafin was the ABCNEWS correspondent in Cuba for 23 days during the U.S. invasion of Grenada. In 1982, he was one of the chief correspondents in Buenos Aires covering the conflict between Great Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands. He later returned to Argentina for a series of follow-up reports on the aftermath of the war.

Before joining ABCNEWS in August 1979, Serafin worked for 10 years at the Washington bureau of CBS. While there he covered a variety of breaking news, including the Hanafi takeover of B'nai B'rith headquarters in Washington in 1977 and the Harrisburg 7 trial, Ronald Reagan's 1976 presidential campaign, and the vice-presidential campaign of Republican candidate Robert Dole.

Serafin won an Emmy Award for his contribution to the CBS News special report, Watergate: The White House Transcripts.

Serafin began his broadcasting career in radio, and went on to become a producer-director at KOAP-TV in Portland, Ore. Following a stint at KOIN-TV in the same city, he joined the CBS-owned KMOX-TV in St. Louis in 1968 as a reporter and anchorman.

A native of Roseburg, Ore., Serafin graduated from Washington State University with a B.A. in radio-television speech. He is married to the former Lynn Van Camp and has two daughters.