Matthew Lee is the Diplomatic Writer for The Associated Press, covering the State Department and U.S. foreign policy since 1999. He has traveled with every secretary of state since Madeleine Albright, reporting from more than 120 countries on America’s evolving international interests and priorities. Lee joined the AP in 2007 after 12 years with the French news agency AFP where he covered the State Department, served as the Kenya-based deputy bureau chief for East Africa and bureau chief in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

A native of Buffalo, New York, he graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 1989 and began his journalism career as a news aide/copy boy at The Washington Post and as a reporter covering local politics at the Daily Progress in Charlottesville, Va.