Stephen Kinzer (born August 4, 1951) is an American author, historian, and journalist. A former New York Times correspondent, he has published several books and writes for several newspapers and news agencies.

During the 1980s, Kinzer covered revolutions and social upheaval in Central America and wrote his first book, Bitter Fruit, about military coups and destabilization in Guatemala during the 1950s. In 1990, The New York Times appointed Kinzer to head its Berlin bureau,^[1] from which he covered Eastern and Central Europe as they emerged from the Soviet bloc. Kinzer was The New York Times chief in the newly established Istanbul bureau from 1996 to 2000.^[1]

Upon returning to the U.S., Kinzer became the newspaper's culture correspondent, based in Chicago, as well as teaching at Northwestern University.^[1] He then took up residence in Boston and began teaching journalism and U.S. foreign policy at Boston University. He has written several nonfiction books about Turkey, Central America, Iran, and the U.S. overthrow of foreign governments from the late 19th century to the present, as well as Rwanda's recovery from genocide.^[2]

Kinzer also contributes columns to The New York Review of Books,^[3] The Guardian,^[4] and The Boston Globe.^[5] He is a Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.^[6]

In June 2026 Kinzer testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets on the subject of Project MKULTRA.^[7]

Kinzer's reporting on Central America was criticized by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in their book Manufacturing Consent (1988), which cited Edgar Chamorro ("selected by the CIA as press spokesman for the contras") in his interview by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting describing Kinzer as "just responding to what the White House is saying".^[8] In chapter 2 of Manufacturing Consent, Kinzer is criticized for deploying no skepticism in his coverage of the murders of GAM leaders in Guatemala and for "generally employing an apologetic framework" for the Guatemalan military state.^[8]

Kinzer has since that time criticized interventionist U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America and more recently, the Middle East.^[9] In Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq (2006), he critiqued U.S. foreign policy as overly interventionist.^[10] In a 2010 interview with Imagineer Magazine, he said:

• Timeline of United States military operations

• Official website
• Interview with Kinzer for Guernica Magazine
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• "Empirical Evidence", on WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show, April 26, 2006
• Interview with Stephen Kinzer and Martha Cardenas (mp3) February 10, 2008