Don Dahler.
Before leaving CBS-News in May, 2020 to write full time, Don Dahler was a correspondent and fill-in anchor, first joining the network in April, 2013. He filed regular reports for CBS This Morning, CBS Sunday Morning, CBS This Morning Saturday, The CBS Evening News, and 48-Hours. He was also one of the rotating anchors for The CBS Overnight News and the network’s streaming service, CBSN. From 2007 to 2013, Don was a news anchor on the CBS flagship station in New York City, WCBS-TV.
photo credit: David Murray Photography
Don was named correspondent for ABC News in February 1999, providing national and international news reports for all ABC News programs. While at ABC News, Dahler covered many of the biggest stories of the day, including the war in Kosovo, the school shootings at Columbine, the Oklahoma City tornadoes, and the presidential electoral recounts.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Dahler was the first network correspondent to report live from the scene of the WorldTradeCenter attacks, giving eyewitness descriptions from the first moments of the tragedy. He continued reporting day and night from Ground Zero through the following two weeks of rescue and recovery attempts.
Dahler was among the first American journalists to enter Afghanistan prior to U.S. military action against the Taliban regime. His subsequent reports focused on the battlefield activities of the Northern Alliance and, once the American air campaign started, their rapid push southward towards Kabul. He filed live reports on the weeklong siege of Konduz around the clock for Good Morning America, World News Tonight, ABC News Radio, and ABCNEWS.com. He has since returned to Afghanistan three times for follow-up reports.
In the summer of 2002, Dahler, a Nightline producer, and camera crew, slipped across the Syrian border into northern Iraq for a series of exclusive reports on the Kurds. They were the first American television journalists to visit the region in 10 years.
Dahler covered the war in Iraq as an embedded journalist with the 101st Airborne, traveling and living with the Army soldiers, going on foot-patrols and aerial assaults alongside the front-line troops for three months. Using state-of-the-art technology, Dahler often filed live television reports from the field with equipment he carried in his backpack.
He returned to Iraq with various American Army and Marine units three other times, including coverage of the elections in the violent city of Fallujah. From 1997-1999, Dahler served as a correspondent for NBC News, assigned to CNBC’s West Coast bureaus.
He provided long-form reports on the business of the sports and entertainment industries for the evening magazine show Business Center. In addition he covered breaking news and provided live business reports for CNBC’s daytime news programs.
From 1996-1997 he worked as a general assignment reporter for the nascent Fox News Channel in New York, where he did investigative pieces and covered national news events.
Prior to becoming an on-air correspondent, Dahler was a producer for 48 Hours at CBS News. He wrote and produced show segments and coordinated various hour long programs.
For nine years, Dahler produced, wrote and hosted documentaries, nature films and syndicated specials through his production company, traveling extensively throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. He was also a free-lance travel writer during this period, filing pieces primarily for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Two of his first short works of fiction were published in Charlotte Magazine.
From 1982 to 1985 he was a reporter for WGHP-TV in High Point, N.C. He got his first break in the business at KENS-TV in San Antonio as an intern, when the News Director began using him as an on-air reporter.
Dahler is the recipient of almost every major award in broadcast journalism, including two national Emmy Awards, two Edward R. Murrow Awards, a Peabody Award, and an Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award. Dahler is perhaps best known for being the first national correspondent to report live from the scene of the World Trade Center attacks, from which he calmly relayed his observations, mere blocks away from the unfolding devastation, to a shocked world.
As the son of an Air Force Colonel, Dahler grew up in Colorado, Louisiana, Oregon, Virginia, Ohio, and Texas. He holds a BA in history (summa cum laude) from the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and an AA in radio/television/film from San Antonio College.
At 17 Don competed in the Grand National Tae Kwon Do championship in Des Moines, Iowa, taking fourth place. He once held the U.S. record for deep-dive when, live on national TV, he dove to a depth of 150 feet on one breath. While training for that event, Don could eventually stay underwater for 3 1/2 minutes without coming up for air.
Dahler and his wife, Katie, a partner at KPMG, live in New Jersey with their two children, three dogs, two cats, and a gecko.
World News With Don Dahler
Video Library.
Selected Essays.
Remembering 9/11
September 11, 2008 I'd just poured the morning's second cup of coffee when I heard a powerful shriek that rattled the windows of my Duane Street loft apartment. Seconds later came the explosion that literally changed the world, when American Airlines flight 11...
Short Selling, Short Sighted?
September 19, 2008 A good fisherman can look at the ripples and stirrings on the water's surface and know whether it's nothing but the river's eddy, or a hungry trout searching for food. So, too, watching the numbers on the stock market can tell you there's...
Dust To Dust
Dust to Dust From Ground Zero to Afghanistan A Correspondent’s JournalBook ProposalDon Dahler You never think you’re living history. That’s something you read about. Maybe, for some of us, something you studied in college. There are events that happen, of course,...
Alaska
June 20, 2002 I wasn’t prepared for the size. Most maps put a little box with Alaska and Hawaii down in the left hand corner, off the coast of southern California, and proportionally, Alaska looks about the size of Utah. You know it’s bigger than that. But until you...
The Stryker Brigade
December 10, 2003 ABC-News producer Mike Gudgell and I were walking along a dirt road at Camp Udari, Kuwait, just days before we headed into Iraq, when something large and lethal passed us from behind. A 20-ton, eight-wheeled, lightly armored Stryker. We...
Airborne For Life
March 26, 2003 His cot is across the tent from mine. As I look at it now, every camouflage green bag containing Army-issue clothes and Army-issue ammunition and Army-issue gadgets is neatly zipped, strapped and stacked. His towel hangs perfectly straight from...
Practice Makes Perfect
July 27, 2002 On the gigantic canvass of the Kuwaiti desert an abstract painting is being created by the churning tracks of M1-A1 tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and mechanized howitzers. It’s an ensemble piece, the artists being U.S. Army drivers and...
Kuwait Awaits
July 27, 2002 The road to Kuwait City is a six-lane superhighway populated by exotic European luxury cars and the latest SUV’s. It has pedestrian overpasses, well-designed exit-ramps, and trash-free grassy medians that rival anything the U.S. has to offer....
The Stealth Arrive – Again
February 8, 2003 Like a flock of ghosts returning to the place of their first haunting, the F-117A Nighthawks slipped from the skies of the Middle-east late this week and landed at a classified location; an air base belonging to an American ally the U.S. Air Force...
Stealth Fighters – Almost Invisible
February 8, 2003 F-117 Nighthawks are considered “stealthy” because of two technologies, both considered top-secret until fairly recently. One is the radar-absorbing material that coats every exterior surface, and in fact, has to be re-applied to screw-tops or scratches...
On The Front Line
October 8, 2001 "It is very dangerous to go to this place," said Zubair. We sat cross-legged on the floor of the foreign ministry in Khoja Bachoudin eating kebabs and rice. I was asking for permission to visit a village called Zard Kammar that straddles the...
The Taliban Needs You
October 10, 2001 Millions of people in Afghanistan not only belong to the Third World, in many ways they belong to the third century. At the refugee camp near Khaja Bahaod Din, a huge herd of camels make their way languidly down a dusty slope to the Pyandzh River. Boys...
The Siege Of Konduz
November 17, 2001 As we made our way out of the recently-liberated town of Taloqan towards the large northern Afghanistan city of Konduz, we passed about a dozen Soviet-era T-55 tanks, armored personnel carriers, and some mobile artillery parked on the outskirts. Some were...
Return To Taloqan
November 19, 2001 It was a little over a month ago that we shivered on the mountaintops overlooking Taloqan, with a group of Northern Alliance soldiers who were waiting patiently to retake the city that had fallen to the Taliban last year. So much has happened, and...
High Ground
October 18, 2001 Through the binoculars, ominous figures in dark robes could be seen moving about the mountain ridges to the west. This was the Taliban's front line near the city of Taloqan, dotted with mortar emplacements and riven with trenches carved into the...
The Owl And The Value Of Life
October 12, 2001 At the Northern Alliance checkpoint, half a mile from the front, I was busy talking to a 16-year-old soldier and didn't notice the owl until it fluttered against the tether that held it to Earth. Looking closer I saw its left wing hung limply, with a...
