Accuracy in Media is calling on the Washington Post and New York Times to return the Pulitzer Prizes they recently won for stories about the war on terrorism. AIM is also urging that Post Pulitzer winner Dana Priest resign from the paper for misleading the public about her “sources.”

Priest’s main source for her prize-winning story on CIA “secret prisons” has been exposed as a John Kerry supporter in the agency and former Clinton aide who contributed financially to the Kerry presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee. That source, CIA officer Mary O. McCarthy, was fired after she acknowledged illegally leaking classified information to Priest and other journalists.

As noted by AIM editor Cliff Kincaid in his column on the scandal, posted on the AIM website, Priest had publicly denied that her sources for the story included critics of the Bush Administration from within the CIA.

What’s more, the Priest story has never been confirmed and the evidence indicates that the main essence of her story ? that the CIA operated “secret prisons” abroad ? is false.

Kincaid says the Pulitzer Prize given to the New York Times for the story about the NSA monitoring the international communications of al-Qaeda operatives here and abroad should be returned as well. He says the story was twisted in such a way as to suggest that ordinary Americans were at risk because of an illegal “domestic spying” program. There is absolutely no evidence that this is the case, he notes. The story, Kincaid suspects, was also based on CIA and other sources that were determined to undermine the foreign policy of the Bush Administration.

Accuracy In Media (AIM) is a non-profit, grassroots citizens watchdog of the news media that critiques botched and bungled news stories and sets the record straight on important issues that have received slanted coverage.

To schedule an interview with AIM Editor Cliff Kincaid, contact Carisa Bergen at (202) 364-4401 ext. 110.

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