Investigative journalism and reporting has become much more dangerous. This is especially true for journalists and sources in National Security - but it has been getting pretty bad for beat reporters and small outlets doing local reporting, too.

Even if I didn't have the support that I have, I would still be fighting the same fights, and I would still be the same person that I am today.

Sometimes You Have to Pay a Heavy Price to Live in a Free Society

There are very few distinctions between el bueno and el malo en la prisión militar. Instead of the good and the bad, there is the boring and la repetición - the repetitive. The routine is as endless as it is numbing.

I am merely asking for a first chance to live my life outside the [U.S. Disciplinary Barracks] as the person I was born to be.

I think it's actually kind of sweet how there is a reciprocal effect that our stories can have on each other.

I lived a few miles outside of a tiny town in central Oklahoma. I would often run amok though the fields of wheat, the patches of trees, along the railroad tracks, and on red dirt roads. This had a profound effect on my view of the world - vast, open-ended, full of opportunity, and ready for exploration.