Rosen, James, 1968-

Dates

• Existence: 1968    

Biography

Born on September 2, 1968, James Rosen grew up on Staten Island, New York. As an adolescent, he quickly became known for his sense of humor and talent for drawing caricatures. In fact, Rosen became a published artist by age sixteen, when one of his drawings was used as the cover image for David Hubler’s The Politicians’ Health, Diet and Sex Guide. To this day, he continues to publish illustrations in The American Interest under the pseudonym Simon Monroe. In addition to being an artist and a comedian, he was deeply interested in history and politics. He worked for his school newspaper as early as middle school and never shied away from soliciting interviews with big names, including state representatives and Dan Rather, the man who would later become his mentor and close friend. In high school, Rosen developed an interest in learning about President Richard M. Nixon, Attorney General John M. Mitchell, and the Watergate scandal of the 1970s—a passion that would remain constant throughout his life.

In 1986, Rosen joined The Johns Hopkins University freshman class, eventually graduating in 1990 with a Bachelor’s degree in political science. In the summer of 1987, Rosen’s interest in Nixon’s presidency led to a summer internship at the National Archives processing materials for the Nixon Project at age 19. By 1992, Rosen was working as a researcher for Dan Rather, with the goal of “creat[ing] a complete VHS collection of Dan’s work on Watergate covering the period June 17, 1972 to August 8, 1974.” Around the same time, articles, essays, and book reviews by Rosen began to be published by major outlets, such National Review, Harper’s, and The Washington Post. In 1995, Rosen entered the graduate program at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Upon graduation, Rosen spent time working in various capacities in Rockford, Illinois, and New York. In February 1999, Rosen moved to Fox News Channel, where he remains today. As of March 2014, Rosen is Fox News’s chief Washington correspondent. His time in the traveling White House Press Corps is reflected in the collection, which contains several press schedules and materials from Rosen’s on the road. Of particular note is a ten-day trip to the Middle East with Vice President Dick Cheney in March of 2002.

Throughout his tenure at Fox News, Rosen has covered a number of significant events, including the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, presidential inaugurations, and the 2012 attack in Benghazi. At this point, however, his name has become recognizable in connection with North Korea. In 2009, Rosen wrote an article for Fox News about a potential response by North Korea to a U.N. security resolution; the article contained classified information provided to him by an American source within the notoriously closed-off North Korea. The source, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, was charged under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information. As a result of the ordeal, the Department of Justice obtained warrants to trace Rosen’s phone calls, track his visits to the State Department, and read his personal emails by naming him as a “co-conspirator.” News of the Department of Justice’s actions broke in May 2013 and has led to severe criticism of the DOJ’s apparent tampering with journalists’ First Amendment rights.

Among Rosen’s many skills that have led to his success as a journalist is a laser-like focus that has been pervasive throughout his entire life and career; Watergate, Nixon, and John Mitchell are subjects that would be at the forefront of Rosen’s mind for more than twenty years. In his early twenties, Rosen set out to write the first biography of John Mitchell, Nixon’s Attorney General and spent the next seventeen years conducting exhaustive research and interviews with almost everybody involved in Mitchell’s life, save Nixon and Mitchell himself. The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate was published to much critical acclaim in 2008. Aside from his interest in the Watergate era, Rosen is also, in his words, “Beatles-obsessed;” a book about the Fab Four is in progress.

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