Brent Dones & Mike Boettcher met while working on The Hornet’s Nest. The documentary feature follows Mike and his son Carlos as they embed for a year with the United States Army, Marines, & Medivacs; going on and filming their missions in Afghanistan. They spent a year hosting screenings for Universities & Veteran related charities to raise millions for Veterans and Gold Star Families. THN had a 500+ screen theatrical release and is a permanent exhibit at the National Infantry Museum.
Following the success of THN, Mike & Brent teamed up to create Standing Bear Entertainment. They sold and are Executive Producers of a four part docuseries, Keeper of the Ashes: The Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders, to ABC News Studios who produced it for Hulu. ABC News Studios was pleased with the results and greenlit a Primetime 20/20: Girl Scout Murders which aired nationally on 11/4/22 and is available on Hulu.
Following The Hornet's Nest, Brent was the lead producer of No Greater Love, a documentary about the experience for soldiers coming home and reintegrating into society. NGL screened at the White House in 2018 and is officially classified as resiliency training for the United States Army. He was the only Story Producer for the first 8 films on Netflix's original documentary anthology series Untold, Executive Produced by the Way Brothers.....
Following The Hornet's Nest, Brent was the lead producer of No Greater Love, a documentary about the experience for soldiers coming home and reintegrating into society. NGL screened at the White House in 2018 and is officially classified as resiliency training for the United States Army. He was the only Story Producer for the first 8 films on Netflix's original documentary anthology series Untold, Executive Produced by the Way Brothers. Each of the films individually made Netflix’s Top Ten.
Previously, as an Associate Producer he won a Sports Emmy in 2012 for Outstanding New Approaches Short Format for ESPN Sport Science. He is also a Producer on the upcoming Vietnam documentary, 27 Minutes at Son Tay. Over the last 15 years, he has produced hundreds of hours of elevated content for every major platform like Netflix, Hulu, Disney, ESPN and others.
Veteran network news correspondent, Mike Boettcher, has been recognized with journalism’s top awards for his coverage of events that shaped the world since 1980. He also helped launch the era of 24-hour live news coverage when on June 1, 1980, he performed the first live satellite report for a fledgling network called CNN. In a four- decade network career Boettcher received national recognition in all facets of broadcast journalism.......
Veteran network news correspondent, Mike Boettcher, has been recognized with journalism’s top awards for his coverage of events that shaped the world since 1980. He also helped launch the era of 24-hour live news coverage when on June 1, 1980, he performed the first live satellite report for a fledgling network called CNN. In a four- decade network career Boettcher received national recognition in all facets of broadcast journalism – breaking news, feature, war coverage and investigative reporting. He was also recognized for his investigations of the world’s most dangerous terrorist groups. As the chief correspondent for CNN’s terrorism investigation unit, a team he created in the summer of 2000, Boettcher was awarded a Peabody and his third of six National Emmys.
Boettcher is frequently asked to lecture on the subject of terrorism and journalism at some of the world’s top institutions and corporations, including London’s Royal United Services Institute, Sweden’s National Defense College, Scotland’s St. Andrews University, West Point’s Senior Leaders Conference, U.S. Army Europe, U.S. Army War College, The Naval Post Graduate School and Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
In three decades of assignments covering world conflict for NBC News, CNN and ABC News, he has witnessed, investigated and been a victim of terrorism himself. He was kidnapped and threatened with execution in El Salvador in 1985. Twenty years later, he survived a suicide bomber attack and a roadside bombing in Baghdad. Boettcher covered the emergence of modern terrorist tactics in the early 1980’s when he reported on events that led to the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Marines. He covered the Pan AM 103 tragedy in Lockerbie and was assigned to investigate it. Boettcher led NBC’s investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing and was one of a handful journalists allowed to speak to Timothy McVeigh in prison. Since 1998, when the U.S. embassies in Africa were bombed, he has been assigned to investigate investigate every major Al Qaeda attack against American targets.
Boettcher, who was one of a small group of reporters embedded with U.S. Special Forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom, has reported extensively from Iraq and Afghanistan. His experience covering Iraq dates back to August 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait and Operation Desert Storm in 1991 when he was embedded with U.S. Marines. That same year he won an Emmy for his coverage of the Kurdish refugee crisis in Iraq.
Boettcher is recognized as one of the worlds most experienced foreign correspondents, covering wars and revolutions in every part of the globe. He left NBC News in 2008 to pursue a project that embedded him and his son full-time with U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2009, Boettcher partnered with ABC News to continue reporting from the front lines in Afghanistan. As part of the project, he lectured weekly, via satellite, from Iraq and Afghanistan to the University of Oklahoma’s groundbreaking War and Media class. He is currently Correspondent In Residence at the Gaylord College of Journalism at the University of Oklahoma. Boettcher also serves as a Senior Fellow at the OU Center For Intelligence And National Security (CINS.)
In October 2013, Boettcher received the recognition of his peers when he won two more Emmys for his work in Afghanistan. His stories from the front lines became the basis for the critically acclaimed 2014 film, The Hornets Nest that Boettcher and his son, Carlos, produced.
In 2010, the 101st Airborne’s Rakkasan Brigade awarded Boettcher the Combat Order of the Spur for his actions in combat. A year later, the 101st Airborne’s legendary 506th Infantry Regiment, known widely as “The Band Of Brothers”, made Boettcher an honorary member. In 2018 he was inducted as an honored member of the 101st Airborne’s 327th Infantry Regiment known as the No Slack Battalion.
Boettcher, who was inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame in 2009, currently serves on the emeritus board of directors for the charity, Easter Seals International, where he spearheads Easter Seals’ initiatives to help disabled veterans.
In 2000, Mike was a producer on the documentary feature, Killing Pablo. Since The Hornet’s Nest, he has focused on re-opening the investigations on unsolved stories that he covered.
In 2007, Sands was inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame. He was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by Oklahoma’s Professional Chapter of SPJ in 2006. As President of the Oklahoma Associated Press Broadcasters he served as Chairman of a special committee that wrote and guided through the legislative process a new Oklahoma Open Records law.....
He was Manager of Network News at OETA until his retirement in 2019. He began his career in 1972 at KAFGFM in Oklahoma City. In the 1970’s he also worked in Tulsa at KAKC AM-FM, at WHNN-FM Bay City Michigan, KTOK & the Oklahoma News Network, and was News Director at KEIN-AM in Great Falls Montana.
In 1980 he moved back to Oklahoma City and worked at several radio and T.V stations: WKY, KEBC-FM, KKNG-FM and was News Director at KOMA-AM. He was an investigative producer on several stories for KFOR and KWTV. In the 1990’s Sands was an investigative producer for NBC Nightly News on the Oklahoma City bombing and worked as a stringer for the Associated Press, Reuters, ABC News Primetime, CNN and NBC Dateline.
Sands has won numerous awards for Government, Enterprise and Investigative Journalism. In 1991 Sands was awarded the Sigma Delta Chi Award and the Bronze Medallion by the Society of Professional Journalists for Investigative reporting in Radio.
In 2007, Sands was inducted into the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame. He was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by Oklahoma’s Professional Chapter of SPJ in 2006. As President of the Oklahoma Associated Press Broadcasters he served as Chairman of a special committee that wrote and guided through the legislative process a new Oklahoma Open Records law. He is also a past President of the Oklahoma City News Broadcasters Association.
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