Kaj Larsen Biography
Kaj Larsen is an American journalist, correspondent, and producer born in Santa Cruz, California. He has worked for Vice News, CNN, NowThis News, and Current TV. Larsen worked for the Vanguard international news documentary investigative reporting show on Current TV beginning in 2005.
From 2010 to 2011, Kaj produced the documentary series LOCKUP Maricopa County and LOCKUP RAW for MSNBC. He also became a producer and correspondent for CNN until he was laid off in 2012 after CNN abolished its investigative news departments. He then became a correspondent for VICE News and hosted the series VICE on HBO.
Larsen has also covered international and domestic conflict, including stories about waterboarding, Ebola outbreaks, drug trafficking, Boko Haram, Somalia, and the militarization of the Arctic.
Kaj joined the United States Naval Academy where he played water polo, but he then transferred to the University of California, Santa Cruz after two years. He aspired to be a Naval Aviator, having taken flying lessons growing up. He graduated with a degree in political science from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Larsen then received a master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. At Harvard, he was awarded a fellowship from the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy.
Larsen was also a joint fellow at Tufts University Jebsen Center for Counter-Terrorism studies.
He worked on US Navy Pirate Hunters, a one-hour special for Spike TV, and Lockup, the MSNBC show about life in an American prison as a producer. Larsen has had an Emmy nomination, a Peabody nomination, two Telly Awards, and also several Golden Cine Awards. He is also a two-time national champion open-water swimmer, he placed third in the Escape from Alcatraz duathalon.
Larsen helped launch The Mission Continues, providing fellowships to veterans, and continues to serve on the group’s board of directors. He is also close friends with politician and former Navy Seal Eric Greitens as both served together in Iraq.
Kaj Larsen Age
Larsen was born in Santa Cruz, California. He has however not disclosed his year of birth.
Kaj Larsen Family
Larsen was born to a former U.S. Marine father.
Kaj Larsen Navy Seal
He is a combat veteran Navy Seal who served in the War on Terror during Operation Enduring Freedom. Larsen stayed in the US Naval Reserves earning the rank of Lieutenant Commander after his five-year active duty service. He was then assigned as a Maritime operations officer at Special Operations Command Africa.
Kaj Larsen Current TV
His media career began in 2005 when he joined Current TV, a cable channel created by former Vice President Al Gore. He volunteered to have himself waterboarded on TV in an effort to help viewers understand the controversial interrogation technique. During the controversial hearings for the confirmation of Michael Mukasey as United States Attorney General in 2007, the video of Larsen being waterboarded video was widely circulated.
He conducted the first on-camera interview with James Elmer Mitchell in 2013, whose firm Mitchell Jessen and Associates received $81 million on contract from the CIA to carry out debriefings of detainees and to develop and conduct enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. Elmer had previously been identified by a pseudonym in the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.
Kaj also helped develop the Vanguard journalism series, which received an Emmy Award. He has made his reports from Yemen, Cambodia, Colombia, and Haiti and also reported on arms trafficking in Mogadishu, Somalia.
He was also the senior correspondent and host of Current TV’s The Current Election and has consulted on Aaron Sorkin‘s HBO fictional news program The Newsroom.
Kaj Larsen CNN
He joined CNN as a correspondent for the Special Investigations and Documentary Unit in 2010. There, he covered the drug war in Mexico, the floods in Pakistan, and WikiLeaks.
Kaj Larsen Vice
He began working as a bureau chief for VICE News in 2014. 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria the same year. He then traveled to Nigeria to embed with the Nigerian military and report on Boko Haram’s effect on the region. He documented the conflict between the Nigerian Army and Boko Haram by observing firefights and interviewing victims as well as combatants on both sides in a series of reports for VICE and VICE HBO. Larsen left Vice News in 2016.
Kaj Larsen Salary
Larsen is believed to receive a good amount as his annual salary though the exact amount is not yet disclosed.
