Shane Harris

Shane Harris is an award-winning journalist who is currently a senior correspondent at The Washington Post where he covers national security, intelligence, and cyber security. Harris is a key member of The Washington Post’s team of reporters covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent war, with a particular focus on intelligence agencies in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Europe; Russia’s use of disinformation and propaganda; and the transformation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from comedian to president to global icon. He broke the story that U.S. intelligence agencies had determined in late 2021 that Russia was massing forces on the border of Ukraine in preparation for an invasion. The story led to a cascade of revelations that exposed Russia’s plans.

Shane Harris also covers many aspects of intelligence and espionage, including the search for the source of “Havana Syndrome,” a mysterious set of symptoms plaguing intelligence officers and other U.S. personnel who have served overseas. In 2019, Harris was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize along with his colleagues at The Washington Post for coverage of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. He broke the story that the CIA had determined that Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman had likely ordered Khashoggi’s killing. His reporting was featured in the acclaimed documentary “The Dissident.” In 2020, Harris was part of a team at the Post that won the George Polk Award for their coverage of the events leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and its aftermath.

Harris’s book @War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex explores the frontlines of America’s new cyber war. In his critically-acclaimed previous book The Watchers he tells the story of five men who played central roles in some of the most important and controversial national security programs of the past quarter century. The Watchers won the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the Economist named it one of the best books of 2010.

Shane Harris is the winner of the 2010 Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,  Slate, TheAtlantic.com, National Journal, The Washington Post, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings. He has provided analysis and commentary for CNN, NPR, the BBC, The History Channel, National Geographic, several foreign media organizations and many local public radio stations.

Many of Harris’s stories are about the inner workings of the U.S. intelligence community, and particularly those individuals who’ve spent their careers on the front lines of national security. He has broken several important stories, including the transfer of the controversial Total Information Awareness program into a secret intelligence agency; foreign penetration of computer networks that control parts of the U.S. electrical grid; cyber espionage directed at American business executives and government officials; classified ties between private security companies and U.S. law enforcement; and key elements of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program.

In the course of his journalism career, Shane Harris has written about a range of other topics, including diplomacy, technology, government contracting, and the U.S. reconstruction program in Iraq. Prior to joining Washingtonian, in 2010, Harris was a staff correspondent for National Journal for five years. Before that post, he was the technology editor and a staff correspondent at Government Executive magazine, the premiere publication covering management in the federal government.

Shane Harris also was the managing editor for Movieline magazine in Los Angeles, for which he covered the film industry and oversaw the work of the publication’s editorial staff and its website. Harris began his journalism career in 1999, as the research coordinator and a writer for Governing magazine in Washington, where he covered issues and trends affecting state and local government officials nationwide.

Shane Harris graduated from Wake Forest University with a B.A. in Politics in 1998. He is also a fiction writer. While living in Los Angeles, he helped found and served as the artistic director of a sketch comedy troupe. Shane is a Sundance Film Festival screenwriting finalist. For his work on Chinese cyber espionage, Harris received an honorable mention from the judges of the Edgar A. Poe Award, given by the White House Correspondents’ Association for excellence in coverage of news of national or regional significance.

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