Wolf Blitzer

Wolf Isaac Blitzer (born March 22, 1948) is an American journalist, television news anchor, and author who has been a CNN reporter since 1990, and who currently serves as one of the principal anchors at the network. He has been a host of The Situation Room, now formally known as The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown, since 2005. Since March 2025, Blitzer co-hosts the show with Pamela Brown; previously he served as the network's lead political anchor until 2021 and as the sole host of The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer during the show's early evening run between 2005 and 2025.

Blitzer was born in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany, near Munich in 1948, during the post–World War II Allied occupation the son of Cesia Blitzer (née Zylberfuden), a homemaker, and David Blitzer, a home builder. His parents were Polish Jewish refugees from German-occupied Poland who survived the Nazi concentration camps; his grandparents, two uncles, and two aunts on his father's side were all murdered in Auschwitz. His maternal grandparents were rounded up in Poland and sent to a labor camp to make ammunition for the German war effort, and later died of typhoid fever.

Blitzer and his family immigrated to the United States under the provisions of the 1948 Displaced Persons Act. He was raised in Kenmore, New York, and graduated from Kenmore West Senior High School. He received a Bachelor of Arts in history from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1970. While there, he was a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi. In 1972, he received a Master of Arts in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). While at SAIS, he studied abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he learned Hebrew.

Blitzer has said he has frequently been asked about his name, which has been characterized as seemingly made for TV. He explained that his surname goes back for generations, and that "Wolf" is the same first name as that of his maternal grandfather. His middle name, Isaac, comes from his paternal grandfather.

Blitzer began his career in journalism in the early 1970s, in the Tel Aviv bureau of the Reuters news agency. In 1973, he caught the eye of Jerusalem Post editor Ari Rath, who hired Blitzer as a Washington correspondent for the English-language Israeli newspaper. Blitzer remained with The Jerusalem Post until 1990, covering both American politics and developments in the Middle East.

Fluent in Hebrew, Blitzer also published articles in several Hebrew-language newspapers. Under the name Ze'ev Blitzer, he wrote for Al HaMishmar. Using the name Ze'ev Barak, he had work published in Yedioth Ahronoth. Ze'ev (זאב) is the Hebrew word for "wolf", and Barak (ברק) is the Hebrew word for "lightning" (which in German/Yiddish is Blitz/blits).

In the mid-1970s, Blitzer also worked for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as the editor of their monthly publication, the Near East Report. While at AIPAC, Blitzer's writing focused on Middle East affairs as they relate to United States foreign policy.

At an April 1977 White House press conference, Blitzer asked Egyptian President Anwar Sadat why Egyptian scholars, athletes, and journalists were not permitted to visit Israel. Sadat responded that such visits would be possible after an end to the state of belligerence between the two nations. In November of that year, Sadat made a historic visit to Israel, and Blitzer covered the negotiations between the two countries from the first joint Israeli-Egyptian press conference in 1977, to the final negotiations that would lead to the signing of the Egypt–Israel peace treaty two years later.