excerpts from live discussion with Dana Priest

today at WashingtonPost.com Baton Rouge, La.: Given the new information we've learned via the EU about the (lack of) secret prisons, shouldn't the Pulitzer (and the monetary prize accompanying it) be returned, or at least held in escrow, until the truth is finally determined?

Dana Priest: You've grossly misread the stories. I suggest going to the newspapers today, which carried stories about the status of the investigations. But I would also say that I will be very surprised if the EU commissions find evidence of the prisons. The governments in Europe are not cooperating in the investigations--no surprise--so they will have to develop their own sources, which is not likely.

~ Indianapolis, Ind.: Bill Bennett told Wolf Blitzer the other day that you should be arrested for your story about secret prisons. ...How do you respond to people that are saying you should be arrested? Dana Priest: Well, first, Bennett either doesn't understand the law or is purposefully distorting it. He keeps saying that it is illegal to publish secrets. It is not. There is a category of secrets that is illegal to publish -- names of covert operatives, certain signal intelligence and nuclear secrets -- but even with these, prosecution is possible only under certain circumstances. Beyond that though, he seems to be of the camp that the government and only the government should decide what the public should know in the area of national security. In this sense, his views run contrary to the framers of the Constitution who believed a free press was essential to maintaining not just a democracy, but a strong, vibrant democracy in which major policy is questions are debated in the open. ~ Annapolis, Md.: I am a very right wing type. I salute you for improving the security of our great nation by not allowing stupidity to hide behind a classified label.

Dana Priest: From the great state of Maryland...

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Wilmington, N.C.: Are you allowed to share the admin's stated rationale for the secrecy of the prisons you wrote about? I just can't figure the difference between secret and overt facilities as far as the effect of the enemy's knowledge of their existence. I can understand the desire to avoid the revulsion of American (and location country) citizens and their resulting opposition, but, in a democracy, should we not expect information on what is done in our names?

Dana Priest: Sure, and we did so in the original article. The administration asked us not to name the countries for two reasons: first, those countries might be subject to terrorist retaliation. Second, that those countries might decide to cease cooperating with the US on other counterterrorist operations. Len Downie, the executive editor, then decided not to name any countries but to give a regional description (Eastern Europe) and include the fact that they are democracies (important because, as countries trying to live under the rule of law, these black site are illegal under their own laws).

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Tallahassee, Fla.: Isn't the real reason to have secret prisons to hide the identity of the PRISONERS? What is being written about the illegal detention of European citizens?

Dana Priest: In part. But they were also set up to allow the CIA total control over the interrogation of these particular prisoners. As for the detention of European citizens, there are several active investigations under way. The most advanced is that of Khalid al Masri a naturalized German citizen. The CIA is using the State Secrets Act to avoid answering any questions at all about the case, even though his claims of being abducted by the CIA and wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan are being confirmed by German investigators, apologized for in private by Secretary of State Rice, and confirmed by my sources in a long story I wrote about it last year.