How the Washington Post's Craig Whitlock unearthed the Afghanistan Papers

Reliable Sources

CNN

News

3.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2019

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Craig Whitlock led the Washington Post's years-long effort to obtain hundreds of secret interviews about the Afghan war. The result: A week-long series and a database of the Afghanistan Papers. Whitlock speaks with Brian Stelter about the Post's legal battles, his main findings, and the information he is still seeking. Through this treasure trove of documents, "we've finally broken through with the truth about the war," he says. He also discusses comparisons to the Pentagon Papers.To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week's questions on the Reliable Sources Podcast, how did the Washington Post obtain the
0:07.7	Afghanistan Papers?
0:09.4	What can we all learn from these secret interviews about the war. What do we all need to know about
0:16.0	what's happened in our name? I'm your host Brian Selter and as you know this
0:21.6	weekly podcast is our chance to go in depth with media
0:24.8	leaders and newsmakers talking about how the news is made how the media
0:29.0	works and this week we've seen an incredible example of the news media at its best.
0:35.0	A project three years in the making from the Washington Post
0:38.0	by investigative reporter Craig Whitlock and a team of dozens of people who helped on earth these secret interviews
0:46.7	about the Afghan war.
0:48.5	A major investigation by the Washington Post, major revelations about the nearly two decade long war in
0:54.5	Afghanistan. Top US officials repeatedly misled the American public to
0:59.2	conceal doubts about the likelihood of success in Afghanistan.
1:04.0	This is deeply, deeply disturbing and alarming.
1:06.8	It should be for the American people, a campaign of lies.
1:10.0	The Afghanistan Papers Project was published by the Post on Monday morning.
1:14.2	Now it's Friday morning and I'm thrilled to be joined by Craig Whitlock who led this project.
1:19.2	Craig, thank you so much for joining me.
1:20.9	Thanks for having me.
1:22.3	You've been working on this in secret for a very long time.
1:24.7	Take me back to the beginning when you started to think that there was something the public
1:29.3	needed to see that was being kept secret. So at first we didn't know in the beginning it was August of 2016
	...

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