Zakaria will no longer yell at the president

Tabassum Zakaria, the national security reporter for Reuters, sent out the following email to her colleagues on Tuesday morning:

So I was in the middle of buying a condo four blocks from the office when I decided to leave the company… Today is my last day after almost 25 years and it was not an easy decision.

It has been wonderful working with the finest journalists in the world and I still like my job, but sometimes in life you need to shake things up, and that time has come for me.

I grew up at Reuters. I was in my 20s when Rudi Saks told me I had a strong handshake and hired me as a financial markets reporter in New York – chasing rumors, trying to figure out what was behind market movements (aside from “more sellers than buyers”) and covering the New York Fed.

That was when it took three reporters to cover a Fed or Treasury official – one to hold onto the nearest public phone and fend off any passerby wanting to make a call, and two to run relay in and out of the room with snaps from the speech. There were no mobiles, no televised speeches, no webcasts.

I told Rudi I was taking Spanish lessons because I wanted to go to Miami (sun, beach, palm trees). So he sent me to Dallas – a one-person bureau responsible for Texas north of Austin, and Oklahoma, Arkansas and New Mexico.

Two weeks after arriving I was at a gas station asking for directions to Waco where I stayed for weeks covering the Branch Davidian stand-off with federal agents. (Years later I couldn’t believe I was back in Waco – this time for the summer and Christmas holidays of President Bush.)

Then came Washington where I arrived as a six-month maternity leave fill-in and stayed for two decades.

I covered Congress during the turmoil of Clinton’s impeachment, Gingrich stepping down, then Bob Livingston stepping down.

Writing about spy agencies before and after 9/11 is the beat that has stuck with me the most.

I will remember trips to Afghanistan and Iraq with U.S. officials to see how the wars were progressing – going with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to Iraq just months after the invasion when the U.S. military was setting up work cubicles inside marble palaces and believed it would be over sooner rather than later.

Breaking the story that the American coordinator of the hunt for WMD in Iraq had determined that no such stockpiles existed was a highlight that was mentioned in books by former CIA Director George Tenet, Bob Woodward, and others.

One of the best things about being a White House correspondent was asking the President of the United States questions, whether it was in a formal Rose Garden press conference or shouted at a photo op.

The following Oval Office encounter was chronicled in a pool report: “As the pool was being led out, the president turned to Reuters correspondent Toby Zakaria and the following exchange occurred:

The president: ‘Will you stop yelling at me?’ Zakaria: ‘I never yell at you.’ The president: ‘You yell at me.’ Zakaria: ‘Never.'”

Keep asking those tough questions, sometimes they surprise you with an answer.

It has been so much fun and I will miss you guys, but I’m also excited to discover what is next.