Currently a senior associate editor of The Washington Post, Lally Weymouth is a well-known American journalist who has conducted high-level one-on-one interviews with foreign heads of state for over 20 years. She started out at The Boston Globe as a reporter, soon becoming a freelance writer for various magazines and ultimately, a contributing editor for New York Magazine from 1977 to 1983. From there, she became a contributing editor of The Los Angeles Times where she began to interview foreign heads of state. After that, she joined The Washington Post. In 2001, she became the special diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek Magazine.
Among Ms. Weymouth’s most famous interviews are her interview with Saddam Hussein in 1984, which was the first interview he granted an American journalist, her 2002 interview with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in his tent in the Libyan desert, and her interview in 2007 with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto two weeks before she was assassinated. Ms. Weymouth has spent significant time in the Middle East, conducting exclusive interviews with Egyptian Presidents Abdel Fatah al-Sissi and Hosni Mubarak before him, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and his father King Hussein. She interviewed Syria’s President Hafez Assad twice, and then conducted the first interview granted to a U.S. publication by his son, the current Syrian President Bashar Assad. She has interviewed every Israeli Prime Minister since 1981, including Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and, most recently, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Ms. Weymouth’s written works have included “America in 1876: The Way We Were,” and she edited and compiled “Thomas Jefferson: The Man, His World, His Influence” in 1973. In 2016, she received the Civil Society Builder Award from the Citizens Union of New York and in 2008, she received the Partners for Democracy Award from the America-Israel Friendship League. She was also honored by the May Chidiac Foundation in Lebanon in 2015. Ms. Weymouth is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a board member of the Asia Society Policy Institute. She is also a member of the Economic Club of New York as well as the Partnership for New York City. Additionally, she serves on the board of the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami.
Ms. Weymouth earned a Bachelor of Arts in American history and literature from Harvard University, from which she graduated with honors. Because of her professional standing, she was honored in the 34th edition of Who’s Who in Finance and Business, as well as multiple editions of Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the East.