Pulitzers and patriotism

It’s hard to know where to begin a response to Max Boot’s column vilifying the Pulitzer Prize Board for giving its awards to reporters who outed the CIA’s secret European gulags and the president’s illegal wiretapping program (Opinion, April 26).

Boot suggests that somehow these reports aided terrorists (whom he labels as evil) and damaged the efforts of the current administration (which he labels as good). I am not sure how a secret network of illegal gulags or the president’s almost complete disregard for the Constitution qualify as good.

These Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters are true American heroes for their commitment to a free press and the rule of law -- two virtues that distinguish the U.S. from those we struggle against. True evil lies with those like Boot who would encourage the U.S. to become the very thing we are fighting against.

IAN M. DUCKLES

Indiana, Penn.

*

I applaud Boot’s column on this year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters and the harm being done to our nation. The harm lies in giving aid to our enemies during wartime through the efforts of these “journalists.” I disagree with Boot’s statement that these writers “feel more bound by their duty to their profession than to their country.” Their behavior suggests they are more bound on selling their leftist political ideology and making a buck than reporting honorably and with concern for our country.

As soon as the Democrats get back into office, the war will resume from the conservative side, and our nation will be the lesser for it all.

ANGELO P. CALFO

Thousand Oaks

*

Boot’s unreflective eagerness to give the government carte blanche to wiretap an apparently unlimited number of phone calls and operate secret torture prisons makes me wonder: If someone were to win a Pulitzer Prize for learning from a government leaker that death squads were conducting a dirty war in the United States, would that bug him?

BEN DICKINSON

New York