and jack straw is a politician.s then you believe that in a free society you have a free press and it follows that the editor must be free to make decisions. some will fundamentally take a different view. in a frank discussion of the fallout from your decision—making, you quote a fellow editor who was briefly editor of the independent, chris blackhurst, he said that "if the security services insist that something is contrary to the public interest and might harm their operations, who am i as a journalist to disbelieve them"? i think that goes to the heart of the independence of the journalism. if, when richard nixon told the washington post and the new york times not to publish daniel ellsberg and the pentagon papers, they had taken that attitude and said it is not for us to query the president of the united states, then we would never have known about the pentagon papers and probably never have known about philby and burgess and the british spies because that's what governments always say. they always say listen to

there is a powerful word used by a former home secretary, jack straw, when he was commenting on whatyou took, he said ‘arrogant‘. he said that your decision making showed an extraordinary naivete and arrogance, implying that you were in a position, whether to judge whether or not secrets were fit to be published when many others deemed they were likely to damage the national interest. do you understand that feeling? ido, and jack straw‘s a politician. but if you believe in a free press, then you believe that in a free society you have a free press, and it follows that editors must be free to make those decisions. some editors will fundamentally take a different view. in a frank discussion of the fallout from your decision—making, you quote a fellow editor, who was briefly editor of the independent, chris blackhurst, he said that "if the security services insist that something is contrary to the public interest and might harm their operations, who am i as a journalist to disbelieve them"? —— who am i as a journalist to disbelieve them?" i think that goes to the heart of the independen