Joseph R. Chenelly

Joseph R. Chenelly (born 1976) was the first U.S. Marine combat correspondent to step into enemy territory after September 11, 2001, documenting American military action and providing it for broadcast throughout the international media.
Chenelly was named one of the 100 "most influential journalists covering armed violence" in October 2013.
Chenelly gained prominence within the military journalism community by being at the forefront of several of the more significant events concerning the U.S. military post-9/11. he headed back to field reporting, corresponding live from the Louisiana Superdome and flooded streets of New Orleans as a civilian reporter in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
As part of the first conventional U.S. ground force to enter Afghanistan, he was the first to provide combat footage of Operation Enduring Freedom, the first to report that the other American prisoners of war had been rescued, and he was the first to report FEMA and the National Guard had pulled out of the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.
Chenelly is now assistant national director of communications for the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) in Washington, D.C. On November 6, 2012, he was elected to a four-year term on the Calvert County Board of Education (District 1).
Chenelly was named Calvert County (MD) Man of the Year by the county's Republican Central Committee in May 2013.
Military career
Chenelly, who was born in 1976 in Rochester, NY, joined the United States Marine Corps at the age of 21.
Operation Enduring Freedom
Forward deployed during 9/11 as a member of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable), Chenelly was in Darwin, Australia, when the infamous terrorist attacks rocked the United States.
After a brief stop in East Timor to provide humanitarian relief, Chenelly and the 15th MEU(SOC) steamed north toward Pakistan, arriving off the Pakistani coast days before Operation Enduring Freedom began.
Early October 7, 2001, Chenelly was on one of the first helicopter lifts from the into Pakistan’s Pasni Airfield. Camp Rhino was the United States' first base in Afghanistan and was used to launch several follow-on operations, including route interdictions outside of Kandahar.
Chenelly documented the initial seizing of Camp Rhino, which was a desert outpost believed to have been built for use as a drug distribution hub. In the first hour of dawn the morning Camp Rhino was secured, a platoon of Marines raised an American flag in a fashion reminiscent of the famous World War II flag rasing at Iwo Jima. The Marines raising the flag were with the 1st Platoon of 1st Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. Photograph and video taken by then-Sgt. Chenelly were sent to media outlets and broadcast worldwide soon after.
After spending Christmas and New Year’s at the airport, during which Chenelly was highlighted in a nationally televised “Christmas with the Troops” piece, the 15th MEU(SOC) turned the airport over to the 26th MEU(SOC) and the incoming U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division.
Chenelly was among the first units to drive into Iraq, through a then-abandoned UN checkpoint that had controlled the tense lines between Iraq and Kuwait after the first Gulf War. Chenelly moved northward as part of the IMEF’s forward headquarters, establishing different camps several times in the first week of the war. His work was credited with sparking intense media interest in these Milblogs and eventually led to the U.S. Army’s regulations governing soldiers blogging while on active duty.
Hurricane Katrina
In September 2005, as a staff reporter for Army Times, Chenelly reported from New Orleans in the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. His dispatches from the Louisiana Superdome hours after the storm passed through were standard, a number of National Guardsmen were on hand to provide general security. But as the hours passed, the levees broke and the articles posted to the weekly newspaper’s Web site showed the rapid decline in the security and living conditions, eventually slipping all the way to a state of near anarchy where the guardsmen were being shot at and the Federal Emergency Management Agency evacuated its staff.
Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, then the commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s joint task force, was quoted by Chenelly as saying "combat operations" were about to start in New Orleans and that the operation was going to make the city look like "Little Somalia," referring to the African nation American forces deployed to in the 1990s to try to quell serious unrest. The quotes caused a firestorm among non-traditional news outlets, such as blogs, and with the Louisiana's governor's office.
Chenelly also reported eye-witness accounts and quotes from soldiers saying the National Guardsmen and some rescue helicopters had taken fire from civilians running the streets of the flooded, lawless city. The reports were widely criticized by conspiracy-theorists who believed the government was fabricating such reports.
Published Articles
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Personal
Chenelly is married to Dawn M. (Whitt) with five children (four boys, one girl) and lives in Lusby, Md.

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