Bret Baier

Baier began his television career with a local station in Rockford, Illinois, before joining WRAL-TV, then CBS now NBC affiliate (As of February 29, 2016) in Raleigh, North Carolina. He sent an audition tape to Fox News in 1998, and was hired as the network's Atlanta bureau chief. On September 11, 2001, he drove from Georgia to Arlington, Virginia, to cover the attack on the Pentagon. He never returned to the Atlanta bureau and was instead tapped as the network's Pentagon correspondent, remaining at the post for five years and taking 11 trips to Afghanistan and 13 trips to Iraq.

A Freedom of Information Act request filed to investigate anti-Fox News bias in the Barack Obama administration revealed an internal email written by Deputy White House Communications Director, Jen Psaki, dated October 23, 2009, that referred to Baier as a "lunatic." Psaki, who sent the email, later apologized to Baier.

On December 23, 2008, Brit Hume anchored his final show and announced Baier would replace him as anchor of Special Report. He hosted his first show as permanent anchor on January 5, 2009.

Baier and his wife Amy have two sons, Daniel and Paul. One of their sons was born with cardiac problems and before the child's open-heart surgery in 2008, President George W. Bush invited Baier and his wife and son to the Oval Office for a visit and had the White House physician update him on Paul's progress. In 2009, Baier was named a "Significant Sig" by the Sigma Chi Fraternity.

He was named Fox News's White House correspondent in 2007, covering the administration of George W. Bush. In the fall of 2007, he began substituting for Brit Hume, then the anchor of Special Report, on Fridays.

Baier was born in Rumson, New Jersey. Raised Catholic, he attended Marist School, a private Roman Catholic high school in Atlanta, Georgia, graduating in 1988. Baier then attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, graduating in 1992 with a BA degree in political science and English. At DePauw, he became a member of the Xi Chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity.

William Bret Baier (born August 4, 1970) is the host of Special Report with Bret Baier on the Fox News Channel and the chief political anchor for Fox. He previously worked as the network's Chief White House Correspondent and Pentagon correspondent.