Chatter: Reporting from the Front Lines with Nancy Youssef
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 16 April 2023
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nancy Youssef has reported on war and conflict around the world and from Washington. As a young journalist, she went to Iraq and sensed early on that a war most presumed would be over quickly was only just beginning. Her career has taken her to Afghanistan, Egypt, and into the center of power at the Pentagon. Nancy is now a national security correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.
In her conversation with Shane Harris, Nancy talks about her Journal colleague, Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested last month in Russia and accused of spying, charges that his family, his employer, and the U.S. government vociferously deny. Like Nancy, Evan is the child of immigrants. She says she admired his reporting for giving voice to the Russian people at a time of war. Nancy has seen other colleagues taken prisoner amid conflict and shared her thoughts about the risks that journalists face both in war zones and from states that see information as a weapon.
Shane and Nancy are old friends and worked together at The Daily Beast, where they covered U.S. national security and foreign policy.
Nancy’s work at The Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/news/author/nancy-a-youssef
Nancy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nancyayoussef
A recent profile on Evan Gershkovich from The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/08/evan-gershkovich-russia-wsj-journalist-arrested-profile/
More on Austin Tice, a friend of Nancy’s who went missing in Syria: https://www.austinticefamily.com/
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:32.6 | I'm Avery Schmitz with an episode of chatter for April 16, 2023. |
| 0:41.3 | For today's episode, the LawFair team decided to cross post this week's episode of chatter, |
| 0:46.4 | a podcast from David Priests and Shane Harris, featuring in-depth discussions with fascinating |
| 0:52.0 | people at the creative edges of national security. |
| 0:56.4 | Today's chatter episode is entitled Reporting from the Frontlines with Nancy Yusif. |
| 1:02.6 | In the episode, Harris sat down with Yusif to discuss her career reporting on national |
| 1:07.8 | security issues, the recent attention of Yusif's Wall Street Journal colleague Evan Gerskovic, |
| 1:14.8 | and the risks journalists face from violent actors and authoritarian governments worldwide. |
| 1:21.5 | This is chatter. |
| 1:31.2 | This is chatter. |
| 1:32.2 | I'm Shane Harris. |
| 1:33.9 | This week, journalist Nancy Yusif on reporting from the Frontlines. |
| 1:41.4 | You know, you'd go in every time and sort of ask yourself, am I going to come out with |
| 1:45.0 | 10 fingers and 10 toes? |
| 1:46.8 | If you knew, you might not make it. |
| 1:49.4 | Look, when I started in 2003, if you said journalists, it was like waving their white flag. |
| 1:57.9 | And now we see states that really treat information, the distribution of information as warfare. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Lawfare Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Lawfare Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

