Anne Garrels was a foreign correspondent for NPR who reported from the front lines of numerous conflicts.
- Died: Wednesday, September 7, 2022. (Who else died on September 7?)
- Details of death: Died from lung cancer at the age of 71.
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Correspondent on the front lines
Anne Garrels received a degree in Russian from Harvard University. She was hired as a researcher at ABC News, and she was assigned to the Moscow bureau since she spoke Russian and was soon promoted to Moscow bureau chief. After Russia, she covered conflicts for ABC News in El Salvador and Nicaragua. She was a state department reporter for NBC and joined NPR in 1988. At NPR, she covered conflicts all over the world including Chechnya, Bosnia, and Israel. She is best known for her brave reporting during the Iraq War. She was one of the few correspondents not embedded with U.S. troops that stayed to cover the war. She reported from Baghdad using a satellite phone to help her stay concealed, one time she rolled herself into a carpet to ride in the back seat of a car while driving through a rough area of Baghdad to do a report. She retired in 2010 but when the war in Ukraine started, she tried to get a position with NPR to cover the conflict while being treated for cancer. Unable to do that, she started a non-profit called Assist-Ukraine which raised funds for supplies.
Notable Quote
“And then I decided it would be very smart if I broadcast naked, so if that, god forbid, the secret police were coming through the rooms, that would give me maybe five minutes to answer the phone, pretend I’d been asleep and sort of go ‘I don’t have any clothes on!’ And maybe it would maybe give me five seconds to hide the phone.” – She told Susan Stamberg in a 2003 NPR interview about being in Baghdad during the Iraq War
Tributes to Anne Garrels
Full Obituary: New York Times
