Dana Priest

Dana Priest (born 1959) is an author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Priest has worked almost twenty years for The Washington Post. As one of the Washington Post's specialists on National Security she has written many articles on the United States' "War on terror". In 2006 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting for her reporting on black site prisons and in 2008 The Washington Post was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the reporting of Priest and Anne Hull and photographer Michel du Cille at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.^[1]

In February 2006, Priest was awarded the George Polk Award for National Reporting for her November 2005 article on secret CIA detention facilities in foreign countries ^[2]. Priest also revealed the existence of the Counterterrorist Intelligence Centers (CTIC) on a 17 November 2005 front page article, which are counter-terrorist operations centers run jointly by the CIA and foreign intelligence services ^[3]. The Alliance Base in Paris, involving the DGSE and other foreign intelligence agencies, is one of the most important CTIC.

"Black sites"

Titled "CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons", the article, published by the The Washington Post above the fold on November 2, 2005, asserts the existence of clandestine, extraterritorial, CIA interrogation sites ^[4]. This article triggered a worldwide debate on these "black sites". Priest's article states that in addition to the 750 Guantanamo Bay detainees in military custody, the CIA held approximately 30 senior members of the al Qaeda and Taliban leadership and approximately 100 foot soldiers in their own facilities around the world. She wrote that several former Soviet Bloc countries had allowed the CIA to run interrogation facilities on their territory. On April 21, 2006, The New York Times claimed that a European Union investigation, under the direction of Swiss senator Dick Marty, has not proved the existence of secret CIA prisons in Europe ^[5]. However, Dick Marty's report, published in June 2006, showed that 14 European countries had participated in the CIA's extraordinary renditions, using various airports and military bases (i.e. Ramstein Air Base in Germany, Lajes Field in the Azores, etc.) ^[6]. US President George W. Bush later acknowledged the existence of secret prisons operated by the CIA during a speech on September 6, 2006.^[7]

In an interview, Priest confirmed that the CIA had referred her story to the Justice Department, and that various Congressmembers have called for an inquiry, to determine whether she or her sources had broken any laws ^[8]. The Washington Post reported on April 21, 2006 that a CIA employee, Mary O. Mc Carthy, was fired for allegedly leaking classified information to Ms. Priest and other journalists. The allegation has been disputed by McCarthy and then by The Washington Post.^[9]

In an extended interview with FRONTLINE, Priest responded to criticism that her Post reporting could have damaged national security by saying, "There's no floodgate of information out there in the realm of intelligence; there just isn't. That defies looking at the newspapers every day. People who say that, they're just taking the word of the government. I think we did do a very responsible job at what we did. We tried to figure out a way to get as much as information to the public as we could without damaging national security." Replying to a follow-up question about the possibility of damaging U.S. interests by publicizing or alluding to various intelligence capabilities, sources and methods, Priest said, "Does that make sense to you? Letting the bad guys know that we can eavesdrop on them, they don't know that? I think one of the revealing facts about the NSA [wiretapping] case, if you take the government on the face value, is the extent to which they are underestimating the enemy, which is not a good thing if you want to defeat the enemy."^[10]

Walter Reed conditions

On February 18, 2007 Priest and Anne Hull exposed degrading conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for outpatient Iraq War veterans. The story caused an uproar across the United States and resulted in the resignation of Secretary of the Army, Mr. Francis J. Harvey.^[11]

The story exposed the existence of mold, mice and rust in outpatient facilities and showed the presence of the deteriorating conditions for wounded soldiers and veterans. This resulted in severe investigations by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), who chaired the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the House and by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), on the Senate side, who chaired the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services.

Republicans and Democrats joined hands in criticizing the respective parties responsible for the conditions there. This prompted President George W. Bush to appoint former Senate Majority Leader and 1996 Presidential Candidate Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) and former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala to oversee the process of healthcare for wounded soldiers. The stories also won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service.

Others

Priest is the author of a book entitled: The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace With America's Military ^[12]. She was a guest scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace. She was a recipient of the MacArthur grant, the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the National Defense in 2001, and the 2004 New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.^{[citation needed]}

Priest regularly engages in detailed on-line chats with readers on national security subjects on the Post website.^[13]

An alumna of UC Santa Cruz ^[14], and former editor of City on a Hill Press ^[15], she lives in Washington, DC, has two children, and is married to William Goodfellow who is Executive Director of the Center for International Policy.

References

External links

• Washington Post biography
• Biography from Washington Week in Review, PBS
• Dana Priest at the Internet Movie Database