Welcome to The High Side

A new outlet for national security investigative journalism with Sean D. Naylor and Jack Murphy

We're a national security news outlet founded by longtime national security journalists Sean D. Naylor and Jack Murphy. The High Side takes its moniker from the nickname for the U.S. government's classified email system, but the intent here is to publish long-form investigative journalism focused on the intelligence community, special operations and other national security issues.

Sean has been reporting on national security for more than three decades, including 23 years at Army Times, stints at Foreign Policy and Yahoo News, and contract and freelance work for The New York Times, NBC News, Newsweek and Intelligence Online. As an embedded reporter he has covered U.S. military operations in Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, and is the author of two New York Times bestsellers: Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda and Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command.

Before leaving the military in 2010 and finding his way into the world of national security journalism, Jack served in the 75th Ranger Regiment and Special Forces and deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. He has reported from Iraq, Syria, the Philippines, Switzerland, and South Korea. He has broken stories about CIA covert operations, JSOC missions from Libya to Syria, and drone strikes gone horribly wrong. Jack has also reported on issues that have plagued the military community such as soldier suicides, domestic violence, and sub-standard base housing issues. He is the author of a memoir titled Murphy’s Law.

The High Side had its genesis in a conversation Sean and Jack had over dinner about their current projects and those that they both had sitting on the back burner. The High Side is the natural outgrowth of that conversation and aims to bring many of those stories to life. The High Side is an independent outlet which is completely supported by its readers.