11 Facts About Dana Priest

Dana Louise Priest is an American journalist, writer and teacher.

Dana Priest has worked for nearly 30 years for the Washington Post and became the third John S and James L Knight Chair in Public Affairs Journalism at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism in 2014.

In February 2006, Dana Priest was awarded the George Polk Award for National Reporting for her November 2005 article on secret CIA detention facilities in foreign countries.

Dana Priest revealed the existence of the Counterterrorist Intelligence Centers in a November 17,2005, front page article, which are counter-terrorist operations centers run jointly by the CIA and foreign intelligence services.

Dana Priest wrote that several former Soviet Bloc countries had allowed the CIA to run interrogation facilities on their territory.

Dana Priest said that President Bush, former vice president Cheney and other National Security Council members personally tried to persuade the Post not to publish the story in a White House meeting, but that executive editor Leonard Downie made the decision to proceed.

Dana Priest founded Press Uncuffed, a campaign to help free imprisoned journalists throughout the world by selling bracelets bearing their names, along with students at the University of Maryland and in collaboration with the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Dana Priest is the author of a book entitled: The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace With America's Military.

Dana Priest was a guest scholar at the US Institute of Peace.

Dana Priest was a recipient of the MacArthur grant, the Gerald R Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the National Defense in 2001, and the 2004 New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.

When she was a national security reporter, Dana Priest regularly engaged in detailed on-line chats with readers regarding those subjects on the Post website.