John William Kifner (born 1942) is a former senior foreign correspondent for The New York Times. Kifner, who was born in 1942 in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York served as an editor on his Williams College student newspaper, The Williams Record. He joined The New York Times as a copy boy in 1963 and sought reporting assignments, becoming a metropolitan reporter with the Times in October 1988. After serving as bureau chief in Cairo from October 1985, he continued to cover both national and foreign stories. In 2003, he reported the initial attacks of the war in Iraq with the Marines and in 2004 he covered the conflict from Falluja. Kifner also was in the first Gulf War in 1991 with the 101st Airborne Division. Kifner has reported on the wars and conflict in Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Bosn