Washington Post intelligence reporter Dana Priest was online Thursday, August 4, at 2 p.m. ET to discuss the latest developments in national security and intelligence.

Dana Priest covers intelligence and wrote " The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace With America's Military " (W.W. Norton). The book chronicles the increasing frequency with which the military is called upon to solve political and economic problems.

The transcript follows.

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Dana Priest: Hi everyone. I'm here.

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Reston, Va.: In the next hour there will be an announcement by the prosecutors looking into the AIPAC spy scandal, can you let us know the scoop when that info comes in?

Pretty please?

Dana Priest: Here's what the chatter is talking about: I would imagine The Post will have an online story about it soon after it's unsealed.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Two former employees of a pro-Israel lobbying organization were charged Thursday in connection with an investigation into the disclosure of classified U.S. defense information, a federal law enforcement official said.

Indictments were to be unsealed Thursday naming Steven Rosen, formerly the policy director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and Keith Weissman, the organization's former senior Iran analyst.

Prosecutors also were bringing additional charges against Pentagon analyst Lawrence A. Franklin, already under indictment on charges he leaked classified military information to an Israeli official and the employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the official said on condition of anonymity because the charges were to be made public later Thursday.

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Manassas, Va.: In your story yesterday about the Scorpions, what were the motivations of the officials who compromised the secrecy of this classified program? On those rare occasions when The Post uses anonymous sources, aren't you supposed to give us some insight into why anonymous sources are speaking to you?

Dana Priest: In most stories like this, it's an issue of trying to help me get it right, with some proper context, rather than wrong in some way. Both those stories took a very long time to put together....you are right about unattributed sources but only if they have some particular motive. In this case, I don't see an obvious one other than the one I just stated.

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Washington, D.C.: Great article on the "Scorpions" yesterday. What are the legal implications for anyone involved in the CIA who turned over prisoners to a paramilitary group with the knowledge or expectation that they would then be tortured? What about the people higher up in the CIA who approved of the policy?

Dana Priest: I couldn't say it was a "policy" per say. It happened in this case, and we have interviews from that case saying it seemed to the soldiers that there was a three-tiered system for interrogations. The CIA is looking into, or has finished looking into, the case of "Brian," the CIA officer in charge of that particular Scorpion unit. But since the CIA wouldn't answer questions about the unit, it's hard to tell what they--or the Congressional oversight committees--might be doing about them, if anything. They know all about this unit now.

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Washington, D.C.: Hello, I have a question regarding the situation of CIA vis-a-vis ODNI. It seems that ODNI (Ambassador Negroponte and his staff) have been working very aggressively to establish its position within the intelligence community, which is very clear in the recent testimony of General Hayden in the House last week. This situation possibly means that the status of CIA has been declining in turn. The question is how this situation would affect the morale and performance of CIA. Some say that status decline would cause morale decline within CIA as well, which might have negative impact on its info-gathering performance. Others say in contrary that CIA now can get released from tedious community management job and would be able to concentrate on info-gathering job, which would have positive impact on their performance. Which do you think would be the case?

Dana Priest: Both are possible and, in fact, are occurring. The general feeling at the CIA--if one can generalize--is demoralized and uncertain. Director Goss has not made a good impression at all and is not giving people a sense of where he wants to take the place. So, if there's a silver-lining in cutting the CIA back to its core spying mission, it's not yet being felt. As best I can determine and I generally ask this question of everyone in the intel community I talk to. I'm looking for some positive thing Goss has done, sort of red-teaming all the other comments I'm hearing. If something like that exists, call (202-334-4490) or write (priestd@washpost.com). Confidences guaranteed.

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Manassas, Va.: Dana, thanks for taking the question on motives, but isn't there usually something going on more than some source being nice enough to help you get it right? Couldn't the motivations range from everything to a sincere interest in stopping the kind of abuse said to be committed by the Scorpions to outright opposition to the war effort? And don't you agree that conveying that kind of information will help us evaluate the situation?

Dana Priest: In some cases yes. But I won't apply it to this case.

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Portland, Ore.: There was just a new threat video by al Qaeda's number two, al-Zawahri.

Is current thinking in the intelligence community that he and bin Laden are in Pakistan or Afghanistan?

Do you think we'll ever get those guys?

Dana Priest: Yes, the current thinking still is that they are in the tribal areas on the border. I would bet we do get them someday, but that it will not have a very big impact on terrorist activities. Those two remain the sort of inspirational directors, not the operational directors of radical Islamic terrorism.

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Maryland: How do we separate truth from fiction if as they say Al Qaeda has specific instructions for its prisoners to lie about abuse and gain sympathy with world opinion?

Dana Priest: You can't really, except with other clues that detainees might give you or his lawyer--and the fact that we know for certain that the military has abused detainees in its custody in Afghanistan and Iraq; and that the CIA was allowed to take extreme measures, including waterboarding detainees, as part of its new authorities after 9-11. Also, reporters who interview these detainees are supposed to be vetting their stories with, say, government officials who, in some cases, have been investigating the allegations themselves. Or with the detainee himself, if possible.

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Houston, Tex.: Hello, I have read that the military has abandoned trying to disrupt the roadside bombs and is instead searching for the bombmakers. That seems like a shocking and critical defeat for the U.S. Is there no scientist or engineer in the Pentagon who has a solution for these roadside bombs??!

Dana Priest: Not true. They are still working hard on both things: finding the bombmakers and disabling the bombs before they go off (or exploding them before they are supposed to go off)

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Harlingen, Tex.: With regard to the Italian kidnapping story:

Is it really as bad as it sounds? The latest details about how the kidnap team apparently didn't understand how European cell phones work and left a trail of electronic breadcrumbs behind them boggles my mind. And I have a pretty cynical mind.

Are there some mitigating facts that are being overlooked?

Dana Priest: Nope. It was pretty much amateur hour.

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San Francisco, Calif.: Is there any evidence that the explosives being used in these IED's are the same explosives that were stolen from Iraqi storage depots during the first few days of the war? I'm referring to the explosives the administration insisted were secured until local TV crews seemed to confirm their disappearance after U.S. troops visited and left the area.

Dana Priest: One of the substances used in a number of IEDs are the artillery shells--155s--that the military suspects were part of some of these caches, along with the mortars and RPGs that were laying around after the initial phase of the war.

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Harlingen, Tex.: Speaking of bombs and bombmakers, there doesn't seem to be any shortage of explosives for IEDs. Does anyone know where the explosives are coming from and how they get to the bombmakers?

Dana Priest: There's enough explosive material and delivery mechanisms in Iraq to last them forever. The thought on the know-how is that it's coming from Al Qaeda training manual, Hezbollah groups and, possibly, from Iranian and Syrian extremist networks. None of this is hard to get a hold off. It's all on the Internet now.

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Beaverton, Ore.: Are there any American connections to the British rail bombers?

Also, the rail bombers seem to have come from families that we would think of as assimilated into the society.

Does that mean intelligence experts are generating new "profiles" of potential terrorists? And those profiles would include citizenship, therefore intelligence seems to me to be moving directly into law enforcement's territory by potentially monitoring citizens activities.

I'm concerned about that as an invasion of our liberty.

Dana Priest: Well, you got that right. Especially in Europe with its huge Muslim immigrant communities. Yes, new profiles are being written and much of it blasts the old thinking about poverty being the breeding ground for terrorism. There was a good column on that today by David Brooks at the "OP," as we call it, the "Other Paper," a.k.a. The New York Times. Let's see if our webmaster is bold enough to post it here ( there may be some copyright issue I'm blissful unaware of)

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washingtonpost.com: Trading Cricket for Jihad ( New York Times, August 4, 2005 )

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Philadelphia, Pa.: Have you read Rep. Curt Weldon's book? If so, do you believe his source "Ali" appears credible? He claims the CIA is not paying attention to Ali's warnings. I can't believe the CIA would dismiss these warnings, especially when passed along from a Republican Armed Services Committee vice chairman, or if they are ignoring these warnings, then there must be some difficulty they know of with the source. Do you have any observations?

Dana Priest: Yes. Since I wrote an article about this, I do have some background on it. I think the CIA investigated this and do not think he's credible. Ali has also given some interviews in which he says he is getting his information second-hand. See Laura Rosen's work.

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Juneau, Alaska: Hi Dana- Yesterday's piece on the innovatively interrogated -can we say tortured/can you? -Iraqi general was really depressing. I have the impression that you've (The Post) known the basics of this story for a while, if so how long? and what was required to go to print with this story? Were you requested to "hold" on this?

Dana Priest: My point in saying that the stories took a while is to explain that most times stories that deal with things the government is trying to keep secret (for whatever reason) take a long time to put together. No one is handing out the information, as is sometimes the assumption in all this current discussions on leaks. We put them in the newspaper just as soon as we're satisfied we've got an accurate version of events.

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Minneapolis, Minn.: Any update on the allegedly active FBI investigation into who forged the documents about a Niger-Iraq uranium deal, who put them into circulation, and why? Your response on this a couple of weeks ago, by the way, left out what appears to be an important dimension of the story of their origins - the role of the Italian intelligence agency SISMI, which seems to have been involved with Rocco Martino on this.

Dana Priest: I don't remember leaving that out. In fact, I thought that's what I said. Martino used to be with Sismi, the Italian intelligence service.

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Washington, D.C.: Have Iraqi citizens been more cooperative in providing intelligence info to us regarding insurgent activities?

Dana Priest: I think that was true in the beginning but is now getting hard for many citizens because the insurgents are clearly in the position to intimidate the population (through suicide bombs, targeting police and other Iraqis working with the Americans)

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Tampa, Fla.: Has the CIA, FBI, and DOD made any headway in recruiting and training Arabic translators? The al-Arian trial here in Tampa revolves around translations of Arabic documents, and the prosecution seems to be having some trouble establishing they've done it correctly. It's hard to imagine a more pressing personnel matter for our counter-terrorism efforts. DOD won't allow gays, even if they're fluent in every Arabic dialect. Does the CIA also follow this policy?

Dana Priest: I don't think so. The CIA doesn't care if someone is gay, as long as they disclose it (the opposite of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy). If you don't tell at CIA, you probably won't pass the polygraph and, the security guys there say, you can be subject to blackmail.

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Vienna, Va.: Whomever is involved in the Plame leak will probably end up employing the "Rafael Palmeiro Defense" -- i.e. "I did it but it was inadvertent"

Unlike Palmeiro, it might even be believable. What do you think?

Dana Priest: That's a definite, even likely, possibility.

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Washington, D.C.: Good Afternoon, I have a question regarding the idea of creating the National Security Service (NSS) with in FBI, which President Bush announced in June. It is said that DNI would have some degree of supervision power over NSS. Don't you think that people within the FBI would be unhappy with this idea because they possibly lose their independence and autonomy? How much degree do you expect this would change (or not change) the traditional FBI culture, and would improve (or deteriorate) their performance?

Dana Priest: The whole point of having the DNI involved is to make sure the culture changes, to take away some of their autonomy (because it wasn't getting the FBI where it needed to be)-- all with the goal of improving their performance. And it's the last chance the bureau has to keep the mission within the FBI. If this fails, then I would expected the MI-5 notion to come up again.

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Daytona Beach, Fla.: Just wanted to say thank you for updating me last week on the military's latest permanent base building plans in Iraq.

Dana Priest: Your welcome. I'll pass it on to Brad Graham, who wrote the article (mainly because so many chatters like you wanted to know more about this issue).

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Washington, D.C.: Just out of curiosity, who are you're favorite American writers of fictional spy thrillers? Past and present.

Dana Priest: Well, I've got two-seconds, enough to say that I'm reading Ben Weiser's "A Secret Life," from last year. It's really good. I highly recommend.

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Gwangju, South Korea: What does the new National Intelligence Estimate about Iranian WMD represent as far as a more conservative outlook in the Intelligence Community?

Is it just straight and objective analysis, or is it an attempt by the bureaucracies to rein in an aggressive administration?

Thanks

Dana Priest: I really don't believe the intel community sees it as its role to reign in the administration. I would call it straight and as objective as you can get without having perfect access to the country involved.

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Colorado Springs, Colo.: Saw your article on the Paris-Langley connection dated July 13, 2005 but have been unable to find it in The Post archives. Would like to get an e-copy. Could you help me out here? Last, I have admired your reports for some time and think of you as the one - the only one - source for honest, crisp, and authoritative reports on intelligence and national security. Have your book and recommend to all I meet.

Dana Priest: Well, thanks much. I'll get the link posted here. It might take a couple of minutes because my webmaster is now working two chats at once:

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washingtonpost.com: Help From France Key In Covert Operations.

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British Columbia, Canada: Good afternoon. I remember not long after the American invaded Iraq, and were having to deal with civilians, a reporter heard an American soldier state "we aren't social workers", and I was struck by that as "too bad, cause you're gonna have to be". Perhaps that's just my Canadianism showing, since it was Canada that started the U.N. peace keeping force and where all soldiers are trained in handling the indigenous population with respect, and knowledge of customs and laws in the area. These skills come in very handy helping to settle local disputes and to establish cooperation. I feel sorry for the American military as they were sent over thinking they would be liberators, but are now seen as occupiers. My question is, now that your president has set forth the grand scheme of "democrasizing" the world, is there going to be training for the military to learn skills (ok, like a social worker) that would make it easier to deal with indigenous folk?

Dana Priest: When and if things slow down, I'm sure the Defense Department will include this kind of training for new units rotating into Iraq, as they did for soldiers going to Bosnia, Kosovo and eventually Afghanistan. But such training only goes so far, as I have observed being with troops who are trying their hand at peacekeeping. This is, in fact, the theme of my book, The Mission. In it I advocate the creation of a new corps of well-trained civilians to do peacekeeping. It would be impossible to use them in many places in Iraq because of the level of violence, but not everywhere. The problem is, we still don't have such an organization.

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Dana Priest: To "An Evolving Ethicist wondering:" I do have a personal opinion on that issue and am debating whether sharing it publicly crosses some line we journalists must maintain. Will give it some thought over my vacation. To all the rest of you: thanks for joining me and for all your insightful, difficult questions.

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