One of the biggest stories in the news these days is the revelation that a separate, secret branch of government has been emerging in Washington DC since 9/11. An investigative series called Top Secret America, published in the Washington Post, has some startling revelations about a top secret bureaucracy of intelligence agencies, sprouting in the Capitol like poisonous mushrooms after a rainstorm, producing work that is repetitive, counterproductive, and more often than not ignored. Recent intelligence fiascos, the piece goes on to say, were the result of a “lack of focus, not lack of resources.” In other words, we’re spending lots of money (which we don’t have) building an intelligence infrastructure (which we don’t need), and we’re doing it in secret (which we don’t like).
The hero who uncovered this story is Dana Priest, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, who was previously awarded for her work on black site prisons and conditions in Walter Reed Hospital. Her revelations about Top Secret USA could well lead to her third Pulitzer.
Priest comes with local qualifications. She is also a grad of UCSC and the former editor of the school’s City on a Hill Press. She was back in UCSC last October to accept her Distinguished Alumna Award. In an interview with the Press, she admitted that she never took a journalism class there, though she did do plenty of internships, and eventually ended up across the country at the venerable St Petersburg Times. Among the stories she remembers most from that time was the account of a undisciplined woodpecker, who knocked down an electric pole and caused a power failure for 10,000 people.
While that was truly an egregious act, it pales in comparison to black site prisons, the mistreatment of vets, or the discovery of a secret bureaucracy that may be even less efficient than the more public bureaucracy. Dana Priest is making waves in Washington and around the nation. She is a reminder of how important real journalism really is today.
Read the articles and see the data at the Washington Post.
