Welcome to Dead Drop

This is Dead Drop, a new blog about national security and Washington. If you’re here for this inaugural post, you might already be familiar with my work. But if not, allow me a brief introduction. 

I’m the senior writer for The Washingtonian magazine, where I write about intelligence, security, and national defense. I joined the staff in 2010, and I’ve been working this beat for more than a decade at various publications. You can read more about my work here, and check out a few of my Washingtonian stories as well. 
You’re going to find a mix of stories at Dead Drop. There will be original, enterprise reporting and analysis, much of it on the news of the day. But I’ll also write about the ways national security permeates the culture of Washington, DC–as a city and a center of national and world power. Expect book and movie reviews (I worked for a time in Los Angeles); interviews with newsmakers, government officials, and policy experts; and an assortment of stories about spooks and skullduggery, of which Washington is full. 
I’ve spent most of my journalism career writing about these subjects for magazines; a few years ago I wrote a book. Long-form storytelling is a passion, and at this magazine, it is thriving. But as any feature writer will tell you, much of what you learn in the course of your reporting goes untold, and sometimes unused. I hope this blog will be an outlet for the stories I wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to share. 
Lastly, you might be wondering, what’s a dead drop? In the tradecraft of espionage, it’s a way of sharing information between two people without meeting face-to-face. It seemed like a decent description for a blog. But I hope this won’t be an anonymous exchange. Leave comments. Find me on Twitter [at]DeadDropBlog or shanewharris. And hopefully, I’ll see you around town. 

More: