Nancy Youssef

Nancy Youssef is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Before that, she was a longtime national security correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. She also worked at BuzzFeed News and The Daily Beast. She spent much of her career at McClatchy Newspapers where she served as National Security Correspondent and Middle East Bureau Chief based in Cairo covering the Middle East and the Islamic world. Prior to that she was McClatchy's chief Pentagon correspondent, focusing on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She traveled frequently to those two nations to see how the policies crafted in Washington reached Afghans, Iraqis and the troops alike. She is also founder of the Pentagon Press Association. Before covering the Pentagon, she spent four years covering the Iraq war, including a stint as Baghdad bureau chief. Her pieces focused on the everyday Iraqi experience, civilian casualties and how the U.S.'s military strategy was reshaping Iraq's social and political dynamics.