On Sunday, the veteran interviewer Charlie Rose announced he had secured possibly the most sought-after interview of the year, when he revealed he would be airing a discussion with the president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, on his television show on Monday.

In a preview of the interview, which will air on The Charlie Rose Show on PBS Monday night, Assad denied involvement in August's chemical-weapons attack.

It is Rose's second major scoop of the summer. In June, he interviewed Barack Obama as the president defended the record of the National Security Agency, following revelations in The Guardian regarding the mass surveillance of US and foreign citizens. Obama also spoke about Syria and the US's "legitimate need to be engaged and to be involved".

Rose started his career at PBS in 1974. He has hosted The Charlie Rose Show since 1993, and has been co-anchor of CBS's This Morning since 2012. In 1976, an interview with president Jimmy Carter won a Peabody Award; in 1987 he won an Emmy for an interview with the cult leader Charles Manson. He has gone on to interview a range of global figures, from presidents George W Bush and Bill Clinton to the Dalai Lama and Bill Gates.

Rose's ad-free PBS show has become the first stop for people in the news who wish to discuss big issues in depth.

Earlier this year, in an Ask Me Anything interview with Reddit, Rose said his favorite guests of all time included Bill Clinton ("because he's engaged by a whole range of subject matter"), the sculptor Richard Serra ("personifies an artist for me"), and the Nobel prize-winning neuropsychiatrist Eric Kandel.