Dana Priest covers the-intelligence-world and national security issues for The Washington Post.

In 2005, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in two categories: in Beat Reporting, for her work covering U.S. intelligence agencies, and in National Reporting, as part of a Post team that abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. In 2004, her book, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace With America's Military, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in General Nonfiction.

Priest has worked at The Post for 19 years. She has written extensively about intelligence lapses before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; about the failure of prewar intelligence in Iraq; Washington's covert war against suspected terrorists; and the CIA's secret detention practices. Before moving to the intelligence beat, she was The Post's Pentagon correspondent and then wrote about the military as an investigative reporter. She has traveled widely with Army Special Forces in Asia, Africa and South America and has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo.

Priest holds a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and two children.