Since Scott Pelley was named a correspondent for 60 MINUTES II in June 1999, he has reported on children who lost their parents in the terrorist attack against the World Trade Center; the painstaking clean-up process after Sept. 11; five siblings who are all attending Juilliard; the 55-year-old mystery of Lake Toplitz, an Austrian lake suspected of housing evidence of Nazi crimes and the brutal murder of Albanians in Kosovo and at forced child-labor camps in India (which prompted the U.S. Customs Service to ban the import of the products being made).  He also conducted the first interview with President George W. Bush after the controversial 2000 election. 

Pelley was CBS News' chief White House correspondent (1997-99), where he covered the investigation of President Clinton, breaking many original stories in the process.  He also reported a wide array of domestic and foreign stories from the White House and covered Clinton Administration trips to South America, Africa, China and Europe.

Pelley had previously been a correspondent based in Dallas (1990-97), having joined CBS News a year earlier as a reporter in New York.  During that period, he covered many of the biggest domestic stories, including the Oklahoma City bombing and the trial of Timothy McVeigh, the bombing of the World Trade Center, the Los Angeles Northridge earthquake, the Branch Davidian raid near Waco, Texas, Hurricanes Andrew and Hugo and NASA's shuttle missions.  He also served as a political correspondent assigned to the 1992 presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.

In addition to his domestic assignments, Pelley has reported from many hot spots around the globe.  In 1990, he was assigned for a year to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, during the Persian Gulf crisis.  He covered Baghdad and later broadcast live reports during Iraqi missile attacks on Saudi Arabia.  He joined the troops of the 18th Airborne Corps for combat coverage of the invasion of Iraq and the liberation of Kuwait.

Pelley received a 2002 American Women in Radio and Television Gracie Allen Award for his report on the children who lost parents in the World Trade Center tragedy and a 2001 Emmy Award for his report on deaf children in Nicaragua who created their own sign language.  He was also honored with a 1999 Investigative Reporting and Editing Award for his report on the use of child labor in India, a 1996 Emmy Award for his work on the TWA Flight 800 disaster and a 1994 Emmy for his reporting on the Branch Davidian siege. Pelley was honored with the Society of Professional Journalists Excellence in Journalism Award for his reports on a midair jumbo-jet collision near Delhi, India.

Before joining CBS News, Pelley was a producer/reporter for WFAA-TV Dallas (1982-89), KXAS-TV Dallas (1978-81) and KSEL-TV Lubbock, Texas (1975-78).  He began his journalism career at the age of 15 as a copyboy at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal newspaper.

Pelley was born July 28, 1957 in San Antonio, Texas, and attended journalism school at Texas Tech University.  He and his wife, Jane Boone Pelley, have a son and a daughter.