Mike Emanuel has served as a White House Correspondent for Fox News Channel since the spring of 2007. In the first year of the Obama administration, Emanuel traveled extensively on White House trips domestically. Emanuel was on Air Force One when President Obama traveled to Fort Hood to attend a Memorial Service for 13 soldiers killed in an attack there. For a period of 2010, Emanuel has been filling in at the Pentagon, and traveled with Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE in March. The trip included a one-on-one with Gates, and an opportunity to fly by helicopter to some of the hot spots in southern Afghanistan. In the final days of the Bush administration, Emanuel secured the final cable news interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney before he left office in January 2009. Emanuel also traveled aboard Air Force One on President Bush's trip to Asia and Seoul, South Korea in 2008. Additionally, he conducted an exclusive interview with President Bush on July 4, 2008. Emanuel also covered President Bush's trip to the 2007 G-8 Summit in Heiligendamm, Germany. Throughout the President's six-country trip, Emanuel was the only broadcast journalist in Rome to attend President Bush's first meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican. Prior to being assigned at the White House, Emanuel served as National Security Correspondent at the Pentagon when U.S. troops in Iraq killed Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. He also provided extensive coverage on the execution of former dictator Saddam Hussein. In his time at FNC, Emanuel has reported on a variety of stories including the legal troubles of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and the Iraq elections while embedded with 10th Mountain Division soldiers in Western Baghdad. On the second anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States, he secured a rare interview with then Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge. During 2003's Operation Iraqi Freedom, Emanuel spent a month reporting from Kuwait City, and later he provided numerous reports on national security, including stories filed from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Emanuel joined FNC in 1997 as a Los Angeles-based correspondent and later served as a Dallas-based correspondent. Before joining FOX News, Emanuel worked for KCAL-TV in Los Angeles covering breaking news in Southern California. Prior to that, he reported extensively from Texas where he worked for the ABC, NBC and FOX Affiliates in Midland, Waco and Austin. While in Texas, Emanuel covered local and state politics, including the 1994 gubernatorial race. Emanuel earned his bachelor's degree in communications from Rutgers University where he worked as a play-by-play radio announcer for Rutgers athletics on WRSU-FM radio.