Excerpts:
Winnipeg, Canada: Congratulations on your Pulitzer. You reporting is the kind that is vital for a thriving democracy. How do you respond to people who have said you should be tried for treason instead?
Dana Priest: Well, calmly most of the time. Just because something is classified does not make it automatically something that the world shouldn't know about. We take the issue of national security damage very seriously and, in particular, in the secret prison stories, Len Downie, the executive editor, held back on naming the countries.
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Boston, Mass.: Kudos to you, Dana. I can imagine it is not always comfortable or easy doing the kind of investigative reporting you do where the pressure is most likely to drop it than pursue it, at least from representatives of the government, perhaps some of your sources and, heaven forbid, The Post editorial/publisher side itself.
Readers like myself, however, greatly appreciate the intellect, meticulous sourcing and follow through that you do. Where would a free press be without great journalists. The Pulitzer folks knew what they were doing!
I do have a question--let's say that the dust settles on the present administration and that the Congress is more of a brake on certain activities (like using foreign bases to do to prisoners what we cannot do here). Has the national security apparatus and the international alliances been shifted enough that a change in U.S. administrations is unlikely to change, truly, how we now do business? Or could a differently principled President or Congress actually put an end to the current shenanigans?
Dana Priest: I certainly think any change will bring a reassessment of the what I think of as some of the more controversial elements of the CIA"s war on terrorism. Not the fact that they've successfully established deeper intel relationships with countries around the world to hunt/disrupt terrorists and their support networks, but certainly on the issue of secret prisons and interrogation techniques.
If nothing else, I would think the new prez would want to assess the effectiveness of such things on actually gaining any new and valuable information and also the cost, in terms of the US strategic aims, of a decline in the standing of the US around the world--which has certainly occurred in the last several years, in part because of some of these methods.
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Arlington, Va.: No doubt about it, a free media is critical in a democratic system. However, it is not the media's job to determine whether or not information is classified. There are legal processes for declassifying documents. And Congress, as the overseer of the intelligence community (residing in the executive branch), has the responsibility to deal with issues of excessive government secrecy, or not enough secrecy. When the media decides for itself whether or not documents should be declassified, they are breaking the law and should be prosecuted.
Dana Priest: Well, actually, the media is not breaking the law by publishing classified information. That's still a safeguard we have in the law. The person/s who turn it over are breaking the law, technically. But the courts and the body politic have always looked at this as the cost of democracy and that is one huge reason why reporters have not be pursued previously. It's the trade off for having a free press. The alternative is prior censorship and government control of the media, a la Israel, China, Iran, etc.
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