Here it is

My Online Portfolio.

I’m a Marine Corps veteran with experience in translation, intelligence analysis, and technology project management before beginning my journalism career. As a news reporter, I’ve written long-form investigations, enterprise stories, and spot reports. I’ve covered lawmakers at the municipal, state, and federal levels—the Burbank (California) city council, Oregon state legislature, and U.S. Congress.

For over six years, I was a war correspondent and defense reporter at Stars and Stripes, covering stories from conflict zones and elsewhere with a focus on U.S. national security, defense news, military life, military history, and veterans issues, including the intersection of those topics with crime, science, technology, film and pop culture, and more. Most recently, I have been working for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s independent watchdog, the Office of Inspector General. At the OIG, I provided writing and editing support to auditors, evaluators, investigators, attorneys, data scientists, human resources professionals, and others who were responsible for crafting policy documents, standard operating procedures, and various audit, evaluation, investigation, and progress reports for internal audiences or for Congress and the public.

Here are a few of the places I’ve been published:

And below is a small selection of my published work.

Writing and
Editing

This bizarre story of a sword-wielding man in a ninja costume attacking soldiers at Inyokern Airport in Kern County, California, was one of my most-read pieces, which I published after confirming with the Army the details of an apparent incident report posted to Reddit and Instagram. My original reporting (PDF) was cited in NPR and the New York Post.

This story arose from a nugget in town hall video at the Defense Media Activity that was posted on YouTube (and later removed), in which the agency’s acting director said the number of Defense Department websites was unknown, but estimated at between 2,000 and 5,000. My original reporting (PDF) was cited in Task & Purpose, The Verge, and Gizmodo.

A screenshot of the Stars and Stripes website shows the headline "Want to know how many websites the Pentagon runs? So does the Pentagon" over a photo of the Defense Department's official website.
A screenshot shows the headline "Army veteran's Silver Star comes after 11-year fight for recognition" above an image of retired Army Sgt. Adam Holroyd being awarded the Silver Star during a September 2022 ceremony at Fort Drum, N.Y.

I reported this story of Adam Holroyd’s long-delayed Silver Star after reviewing awards materials that the military provided to me in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The Army issued a press release about the awards ceremony when it was finally held, but the documents obtained by FOIA allowed me to get ahead of the story with interviews and other exclusive details (PDF).

I was the first to report that, in a court battle over religious accommodations for sailors at sea who were being forced to shave their beards, the Navy said it would research whether the evidence supported claims about follicular interference with gas mask performance. CNN, Military.com, and the U.S. Naval Institute journal Proceedings cited my reporting (PDF).

A screenshot shows the headline "Navy and Marine Corps to study facial hair's effect on gas masks, lawsuit reveals" above a photo of the mustachioed and stubbled face of Petty Officer 3rd Class Edmund Di Liscia from his GoFundMe website.
A screenshot of the cover of the EPA Office of Inspector General strategic plan for fiscal years 2024-2028. The cover includes a photo of a man standing on a road in the Alaskan wilderness with a range of snowcapped mountains looming in the distance. In the bottom right corner of the cover is the EPA OIG logo.

Using input and feedback from the U.S. EPA Office of Inspector General staff and leadership, I developed this strategic plan (PDF) over the course of several months, designing the overall layout, creating many of the graphical elements, selecting imagery, writing the bulk of the content, and editing the completed report.

photo
and video

I’ve been taking photos since I was a teenager, so it’s hard to choose just a few to highlight, but I’m proud to have this one featured on the header image of the YouTube channel for Stars and Stripes. I shot the photo aboard a C-130 as we flew over Afghanistan, when I noticed the powerful glow from a phone screen on a man’s face as everyone was awash in green light. For more of my photographic work, check out this blog post about some of my favorite Instagram photos.

A screenshot of the YouTube channel for Stars and Stripes shows a header image shot by Chad Garland aboard a C-130 over Afghanistan.
I shot, edited, wrote, scripted, and transmitted this 3.5-minute video news report about a subterranean Islamic State training camp while reporting in the field south of Mosul, Iraq, using an iPhone and a small tripod. As of July 2025, it had over 75,000 views.
I coordinated, shot, edited, scripted, narrated, and transmitted this 4.5-minute video about troops in Afghanistan tasting the long-awaited and much-touted pizza MRE while reporting in Kabul. We had to coordinate with the military to have the MREs delivered over 4,300 miles from Ramstein Air Base. As of July 2025, the video had over 15,000 views.
After men reportedly donning U.S.-style camouflage uniforms launched a complex attack on a military base near Kabul’s airport, I had the idea report on the city’s “Bush Bazaar,” where such uniforms and other U.S.-military cast-offs (such as MREs) were readily available. I shot, edited, scripted, presented, and transmitted this video from the field using my iPhone. As of July 2025, the video had over 1,300 views.
Web
design
A composite image show screenshots of the home page, about page, and contact page for Chad Garland's website.

Web design? You’re looking at it. I designed and built this website on WordPress, using the DIY Themes “Thesis” theme. For the latest iteration, I wanted a clean look, with some chunky big text for the top-level heds and some rich color throughout. The goal was to create a place other than social media where I can share information I obtain via the Freedom of Information Act and anything else I find interesting, while giving me a sandbox to hone my HTML and CSS skills.

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