Before his retirement in 1989, Bremer worked for 23 years in the State Department, serving in US diplomatic missions in Afghanistan, Malawi, the Netherlands and Norway. He was appointed the head of the department's counter-terrorism unit, a role he reprised in 1999 when he was named co-chair on the National Commission on Terrorism.

Garner is not the only official to have been recalled by Washington. Other senior US officials who have been pulled out of the ORHA in Iraq since the beginning of May include Barbara Bodine, who was in charge of the Baghdad region, and Margaret Tutwiler, who despite being in charge of communications was criticised in some quarters for declining to meet the foreign press.

There have also been casualties among Iraqi appointees to the ORHA. Ali Shnan al-Janabi was removed from his new position as Health Minister after local doctors protested about his former ties to the Baath party.