It's very hard to stand up to the government which is saying that publication will threaten national security. People don't seem to realize that reporters and editors know something about national security and care deeply about it.

Everybody who talks to a newspaper has a motive. That's just a given. And good reporters always, repeat always, probe to find out what that motive is.

Sometimes I am convinced there is nothing wrong with this country that couldn't be cured by the magical implantation of ethical standards on us all - leaders and followers. Until that becomes doable, the Center for Public Integrity is just about the best thing we have going for us.

National security is a really big problem for journalists, because no journalist worth his salt wants to endanger the national security, but the law talks about anyone who endangers the security of the United States is going to go to jail. So, here you are, especially in the Pentagon. Some guy tells you something. He says that's a national security matter. Well, you're supposed to tremble and get scared and it never, almost never means the security of the national government. More likely to mean the security or the personal happiness of the guy who is telling you something.

I think he had a strange, passionate devotion to the truth and a horror at what he saw going on.

Maybe some of today's papers have too many 'feel-good' features, but there is a lot of good news out there.

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.