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Tom Clancy: Nonsense. You guys have your job to do and it’s an important job. I sometimes wish you did it better—but then a lot of people wish I did my job better.
That seems to be what you’re saying in your book.
No. I’m telling a story; I’m not making a political statement.
Are you suggesting that information-gathering agencies like the CIA and NSA—
I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just telling a story.
There are critiques of the press throughout the book—one of your heroes even compares it to “women trading gossip.”
Really? Well whoever said that wasn’t me. The press has a very important function. You may be the principal guardians of our freedom. You guys have a vital function to our country. But unfortunately, I don’t think you always take the job seriously enough.
So you advocate a press that does act as a check, even though you were just complaining about too many checks and balances in government.
Unfortunately, in the last 20 years, the press has kind of put its own spin on things, and that’s not what you guys are paid to do.
With the homeland security alert bouncing from yellow to orange and back again, has the government done clumsy job of keeping the public calm and informed?
Yeah, I think that’s pretty stupid. And the trouble with you guys in the media is that someone does something stupid and you [attack] him. Why don’t you just say, “this is stupid” and just go on? Or better yet, don’t even talk about it. One of the problems I have with the news media is that you’d rather have a bad story than a good one. What you should ask is, “How do you fix it,” not, “Who got it wrong.” The first thing that people asked when the planes crashed into the twin towers was, “whose fault is this.” Well, it’s the fault of the idiots flying the airplanes for starters. But you can’t blame the intelligence community for not doing its job properly if you don’t give it proper support, and when was the last time the media supported the CIA? If you treat ‘em like dogs they’re going to urinate on the fire hydrant rather than get the burglar.

You’ve said that you’re proud to be American. Do you ever worry about patriotism or national pride being mistaken abroad for hubris?
[Laughs] The people with the most hubris in America work at the New York Times and the Washington Post. The New York Times really thinks their pages are holy. They’re a newspaper—it’s not holy; they make mistakes. We all make mistakes. But hubris? That’s a Greek word from a long time ago. That’s really a disease of kings and princes.