Major Garrett

Major Garrett (born August 24, 1962 in San Diego, California) is the senior White House correspondent for the Fox News Channel. He has extensively covered the 2004 presidential election, the War on Terror, and he recently covered the 2008 presidential election where he covered the Democratic primaries and later Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee. Garrett wrote for U.S. News & World Report and the Washington Times in the 1990s before joining CNN’s White House team in early 2000, and later moving to Fox in 2002 as a general assignment reporter. There, he covered the 2004 election, and served as the network's congressional correspondent. He has also been a White House correspondent for CNN, a senior editor and Congressional correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, a Congressional reporter for the Washington Times, and an award-winning reporter across the country for Houston Post, Los Vegas Review Journal, and Amarillo Globe-News. His articles have appeared in such magazines as The Weekly Standard,Washington Monthly, and Mother Jones. He currently lives with his family in Washington D.C.

Garrett has been covering Barack Obama's presidential campaign. On November 3, 2008, Garrett e-mailed some Fox staffers after learning that "Fox & Friends" was preparing a segment on the Democratic candidate ignoring the network, which he didn't think was accurate. According to the Huffington Post, Garrett pointed out that Senator Obama had been interviewed by Fox eight times. This is the second time a Fox on-air personality has criticized the show's treatment of Obama this cycle.

On January 13th 2009 Garrett became the senior White House correspondent for the Fox News Channel.

On January 20th 2009 Garrett committed the journalistic error by repeating the unsubstantiated claims that outgoing Clinton staff removed "W"s from keyboards and committed other vandalism even though this was debunked in April 2001 after an investigation by the FBI and General Services Administration which was prompted after Ari Fleisher made the false accusations on January 21, 2001.

The General Services Administration found nothing unusual about the condition of White House offices after Clinton officials left, and President Bush's staff said it had no records that indicated damage or subsequent repair work, the accounting office manager said.

During the first days of the Bush administration, Republican officials -- often quoted anonymously in news accounts -- accused Clinton's staff of numerous acts of vandalism, from littering the floor to overturning desks, stealing glassware and scrawling lewd graffiti on the walls.

On Jan. 25, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer had declined to detail the nature of any vandalism but criticized such behavior indirectly by asserting that the new administration would lead Americans toward greater civility.

At the time, Clinton offered to pay the cost of any vandalism but requested a detailed account of what, if anything, was amiss.

No such records exist, said Ungar, who questioned members of Bush's staff as well as workers who refurbished about 400 offices in the West Wing, the East Wing and the Old Executive Office Building.

Speaking for the Bush administration in an April 18 (2001) letter, Phillip Larsen, the director of the White House Office of Administration, told the GAO that it could not document any damage or repairs.

Major Garrett has yet to explain why he repeated these unsubstantiated claims, correct or apologize for his error.

Education

Garrett earned a Bachelor's in Journalism and Political Science from the University of Missouri in 1984. He is a member of The Fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta http://www.phigam.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=377

Bibliography

• The Fifteen Biggest Lies in Politics (St. Martin's Griffin, 2000, ISBN 978-0312254599)
• The Enduring Revolution: The Inside Story of the Republican Ascendancy and Why It Will Continue (Three Rivers Press, 2006, ISBN 978-1400054671)
• The Enduring Revolution: How the Contract with America Continues to Shape the Nation (Crown Forum, 2005, ISBN 978-1400054664)
• Common Cents (Little, Brown, 1995, ISBN 0-316-69912-8)

External links

• Fox News bio
• Garrett's blog