Dartmouth Events

Leaks, Secrecy and the Surveillance State

The Dickey Center welcomes Scott Shane, reporter in the Washington bureau of The New York Times.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014
4:30pm – 6:00pm
Haldeman 41 (Kreindler Conference Hall)
Intended Audience(s): Public
Categories:

Edward Snowden flagrantly violated the law by giving reporters hundreds of thousands of classified documents about the National Security Agency. But his revelations about domestic and global surveillance have deeply split both the public and Congress, with many Americans turning their ire not on Snowden but on the government. Behind the biggest intelligence leak in history is a complex story of dysfunctional government secrecy, an unprecedented string of leak prosecutions, and technology that makes it both easier to leak and easier to catch leakers.

As a national security reporter for the New York Times, Scott Shane spent months examining and writing about Snowden's NSA documents and the confidential diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. He has seen a former CIA officer, accused of sharing classified information with him and another reporter, go to federal prison. He will speak about the crisis  of government secrecy and the challenges of reporting on government secrets in a democracy.

 

Co-sponsored by the Dickey Center for International Understanding and the Institute for Security, Technology, and Society

 

Bio.

Scott Shane is a reporter in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, where he covers national security. He is currently on leave writing a book about the issues raised by the life and death of the late American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. In addition to the debate over targeted killing, he has written on the National Security Agency and Edward Snowden's leaked documents; WikiLeaks and confidential State Department cables; and the Obama’s administration’s prosecution of leaks of classified information, including a lengthy profile of John Kiriakou, the first C.I.A. officer to be imprisoned for leaking. During the Bush administration, he wrote widely on the debate over torture, and his 2007 articles on interrogation, written with several colleagues, were a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

View a recording of this event:

For more information, contact:
Sharon Tribou-St. Martin

Events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.