Dana Priest

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Dana Priest is an author and a 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 February 2006, Ms. Priest was awarded the George Polk Award^[1] for National Reporting for her November 2005 article on alleged secret CIA detention facilities in foreign countries.

The article, published by the Washington Post above the fold on November 2, 2005, asserts the existence of clandestine, extraterritorial, CIA interrogation sites.^[2] This article triggered a world-wide 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 reported that a European Union investigation has not proved the existence of secret CIA prisons in Europe.

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.^[3]. The Washington Post reported on April 21, 2006 that a CIA employee was fired for allegedly leaking classified information to Ms. Priest and other journalists. NBC and The New York Times reported that the CIA employee is Mary O. McCarthy, appointed as Special Assistant to the President during the Clinton Administration by his former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger. The allegation has been disputed by McCarthy.

Priest is the author of a book entitled: "The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace With America's Military".^[4] 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, the NYPL Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.^[5]

On April 17, 2006, Priest won a Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting. The announcement cited "her persistent, painstaking reports on secret 'black site' prisons and other controversial features of the government's counterterrorism campaign."

She lives in Washington, DC and is married to William Goodfellow who is Executive Director of the Center for International Policy.