David Priess sat down with Sarah Churchwell to discuss Gone with the Wind, how it reflects a mythologized "Lost Cause" version of the Old South, and its connection with today's increasing political violence.
to finally go down and get these documents? that s a much more appropriate question than, well, are they really classified or not? that s not the right one. steve? you know, i think the point is really on target. we do have to know what s in there and i think the collector, stuff david and i used to do, we look less at, is it confidential, secret, top secret? what we re concerned about is what lives are being put at risk? that s just for the human intelligence side. if you re looking from the signals intelligence side, the question becomes which of these documents that were in a basement someplace in a hotel, which of these documents compromise a technical collection capability, which is critical? at the end of the day it s about the systems and people providing the u.s. government intelligence and intelligence that protects our national security. that s really the bottom line here. david, and i know you know you say this is not exactly the most important question, whether it was
intelligence officer david priess. david, i just want to start with you because your life was this, was classified documents. right. for so long. what is it we need to know about all of this? we re spending a lot of time parsing out confidential versus secret versus top secret and within top secret, what are the compartments of information. the important thing is it s all classified information. this is all information judged to be important to the security of the united states. this is not the kind of thing steve and i could take home and work on at night. that s not how it works even at the confidential level. the difference at the confidential level t might reveal information that s important to national security but it doesn t compromise sources and methods of gaining future intelligence. once you get up through secret and top secret, you re getting to the kind of information that not only is jeopardized in and of itself, but if you release