Shane Harris

Shane Harris writes feature and investigative stories about intelligence, homeland security, and counterterrorism. He is a staff correspondent for National Journal, and he speaks to the public and the news media. In 2007, he was named a finalist for the prestigious Livingston Awards for Young Journalists, which honor the best journalists in America under the age of 35. Harris focuses on the inner workings of the war on terror, and how this affects Americans' day-to-day lives. He has broken several important stories, including the transfer of the controversial Total Information Awareness program into a secret intelligence agency; 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, Harris has written about a range of topics, including diplomacy, technology, government contracting, and the U.S. reconstruction program in Iraq. He has written profiles of prominent figures of past and present, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former National Security Adviser John Poindexter, and Pennsylvania congressman Curt Weldon. Harris has written for other national publications including Slate, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The Washington Post, Adbusters and the U.S. Naval Institute�s Proceedings. He is a frequent guest on national radio and television programs, and his work has been cited by other media organizations and journalists, including The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, and Ted Koppel at the Discovery Channel. Prior to joining National Journal, in 2005, Harris was the technology editor and a staff correspondent at Government Executive magazine, the premiere publication covering management in the federal government. He spent five years at the magazine, and continues to write a regular column on the intelligence community. 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 Web site. 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. 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. Harris is a Sundance Film Festival screenwriting finalist, and also is the winner of the inaugural Atlantic Media Chairman's Award for Force of Language, a writing honor that recognized a year's worth of stories that appeared in Government Executive.