— -- Jeffrey Kofman is a London-based correspondent for ABC News. He reports from around the globe for the network's broadcasts and digital platforms, including "World News With Diane Sawyer," "Nightline" and "Good Morning America." Before his assignment overseas, Kofman was based in Miami, covering Florida, the Caribbean and Latin America.
Most recently, he was one of the first American news correspondents on the scene when the Chilean mine collapsed in August, and he reported from the scene during the historic 10-week rescue effort. Kofman also played a prominent role in ABC News' coverage of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, scoring numerous exclusives for the network, including the first television interview with BP CEO Tony Hayward.
Since joining ABC News in January 2001, Kofman has traveled extensively to report on developing stories and political events in Florida and the southeast, and more than 20 countries in the Western Hemisphere. He has traveled extensively through some of the most remote regions of South and Central America. He has covered every major hurricane of the past decade and reported from New Orleans before, during and after Hurricane Katrina hit the area in 2005.
Kofman has also traveled well beyond his region, including six tours in the Middle East since Sept. 11, 2001; four in Iraq; one as an embedded reporter aboard an aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea during the war in Afghanistan; and one in Pakistan during the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl.
While in Iraq, Kofman was embedded with U.S. Marines in the southern part of the country. He also traveled extensively to some of the most troubled regions, including Fallujah and Samarra. In July 2003 he reported on the declining morale of U.S. troops in the region as their tours of duty kept getting extended. The story was picked up by outlets around the world when one soldier called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign.
Kofman's reporting regularly takes him to Latin America and the Caribbean. He has developed a specialty in original reporting from the Americas, including stories on obscure but important cancer research in Ecuador and environmental reports from Patagonia, the Galapagos, the Andes and the Amazon. Kofman rode horses into the mountains of Mexico to look at the wintering grounds of millions of Monarch butterflies; he lived with researchers on a remote island in Southern Chile as they studied a previously unknown population of blue whales, the largest mammals on earth; he flew with American environmentalist/millionaire Doug Tompkins through Patagonia for a look at the massive private parks Tompkins is assembling to preserve the wilderness in that region; and he biked down the World's Most Dangerous Road, which has become Bolivia's biggest tourist attraction.
Kofman spent a month in Haiti in early 2004 when guerillas took control of much of the country. He was the only network television journalist to interview President Jean Bertrand Aristide before the president fled the country. He has traveled throughout Colombia, covering U.S. efforts to wipe out the drug trade there. In September 2003, he flew aboard President Alvaro Uribe's government jet as the president made a surprise visit to a small city under guerilla control, and in May 2002 he traveled into the Andes aboard Colombian military helicopters, following the anti-narcotic police as they blew up cocaine production labs deep in the jungle.
Kofman also covers Cuba, which he has visited half a dozen times, reporting on the impact of the long embargo between the U.S. and that country. He was also among the first group of journalists reporting from the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when Afghan prisoners of war were first brought there in January 2002.
His extensive work covering instability in developing countries has given him special insights into the challenges of establishing stable democracies in Third World nations.
Kofman's work for ABC News has been recognized with an Edward R. Murrow Award, a DuPont Award and a special Emmy Award for ABC's coverage of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.Kofman came to ABC News from CBS News, where he was a correspondent in the network's New York Bureau. At CBS he reported for the "CBS Evening News" and "Sunday Morning," covering stories from Moscow, London and across the U.S. Before joining CBS, he was a correspondent at CBC National News in Toronto.
During his 11 years at the CBC, Kofman was host of an award-winning weekly current affairs program, anchor of the CBC's Toronto newscast, a network radio host, and subanchor for the CBC's flagship nightly network newscast, "The National." He has won several major Canadian journalism awards, including the National Media Human Rights Award for a groundbreaking 1987 CBC documentary on AIDS discrimination. He began his television career at Global Television News in Toronto in 1982.
Kofman speaks French and Spanish. Born in Toronto, he is a graduate of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, where he studied political science.