An Evening With Peter Baker

On Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017, the New York Times' Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker joined Friends of the LBJ Library members as part of their Evening With speaker series. The conversation was moderated by LBJ Foundation Board of Trustee Elizabeth Christian.

About Peter Baker 
Currently covering President Donald J. Trump, Baker has previously covered the presidencies of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. He is also the author of four books, most recently Obama: The Call of History, an illustrated history of the 44th president.

Mr. Baker joined The Times in 2008 after 20 years at The Washington Post. He began writing about Mr. Obama at the inception of his administration, through health care and economic debates, the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the re-election campaign, and decisions over war and peace in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. During his first tour at the White House, Mr. Baker was a co-author of the original story breaking the Monica Lewinsky scandal and served as The Post's lead writer on the impeachment battle. During his next White House assignment, he covered the travails of Mr. Bush's second term, from the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina to Supreme Court nomination fights and the economy.
 
In between stints at the White House, Mr. Baker and his wife, Susan Glasser, spent four years as Moscow bureau chiefs, chronicling the rise of Vladimir Putin, the rollback of Russian democracy, the second Chechen war, and the terrorist attacks on a theater in Moscow and a school in Beslan. Mr. Baker also covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was the first American newspaper journalist to report from rebel-held northern Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001, and he spent the next eight months covering the overthrow of the Taliban and the emergence of a new government. He later spent six months in the Middle East, reporting from inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq and around the region before embedding with the United States Marines as they drove toward Baghdad.