Anne Longworth Garrels (July 2, 1951 – September 7, 2022) was an American broadcast journalist who worked as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, as well as for ABC and NBC, and other media.
Garrels was active in journalism-related organizations, and global affairs causes, and wrote two noted books—one about the Soviet Union, and one about the Iraq war and its aftermath, both recounting her own experiences, as well as providing detailed historical coverage of those places in that time.
[1][3][4] In 1975, Garrels worked for the ABC television network in several positions for ten years, including as producer—one of the few women broadcast journalists at the time.
[7][8] However, Garrels' workload at National Public Radio (particularly as State Department correspondent), and a family illness, forced her to withdraw from the program that November.
[9] Garrels joined NPR in 1988 and reported on conflicts in Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, the West Bank, and Iraq.
"[18] Shortly after her return from Iraq, she published Naked in Baghdad (2003, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), a memoir of her time covering the events surrounding the invasion.
In 2007 Garrels was criticized by FAIR for using confessions by prisoners who had been tortured, during a story about an Iraqi Shiite militia (broadcast on NPR's Morning Edition).
[25][26] After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Garrels, then 70 years old and undergoing treatment for cancer, approached NPR about coming out of retirement to cover the conflict.
[28] In 1986, Garrels married J. Vinton Lawrence,[2][3] one of two CIA paramilitary officers from the Special Activities Division stationed in Laos in the early 1960s, who worked with Hmong tribesmen and the CIA-owned airline Air America.