News Release

Legendary Washington Post journalist Walter Pincus will speak about "National Security and the Media" on Thursday, Feb. 15, as part of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies Press and Public Policy Seminar Series. The talk is scheduled from 4 to 5:30 p.m. in the Sherwood Room, Levering Union, on the university's Homewood campus, 3400 N. Charles St. in Baltimore. The event is free and open to the public. For details, call 410-516-7174.

During his 50-year career in journalism, most of it spent at the Post, Pincus has written about a variety of national news subjects, including nuclear weapons, arms control, political campaigns, the American hostages in Iran, and investigations of Congress and the executive branch. For six years he covered the Iran-contra affair. In 1992, he co-wrote stories on the first Bush administration's review of then Presidential-candidate Bill Clinton's passport files, which led to the appointment of an independent counsel. He also covered the intelligence community and the problems arising out of the case of confessed-spy Aldrich H. Ames.

Pincus has assisted with several major television documentaries, including the CBS News documentary series, "Defense of the United States" (1981); "Watergate: The Secret Story," with Mike Wallace (1992); "The Kennedy Assassination," with Dan Rather (1993); and "Dead Wrong," the 2005 CNN documentary about the Bush administration's handling of Iraq pre-war intelligence.

In 1962 and 1969, Pincus took sabbaticals from journalism to direct investigations for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under its then-chairman, Sen. J. William Fulbright. The first one probed foreign government lobbying. The second focused on U.S. military and security commitments abroad and their effect on U.S. foreign policy. Both investigations led to legislation. The first resulted in a revision of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and the second in a series of limiting amendments on defense appropriations bills that culminated in the Hatfield- McGovern legislation to end the Vietnam War.

In 2002, Pincus was one of six Post reporters who won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. He has also received an Emmy Award (1981), the George Polk Award (1971); and the Page One Award for magazine reporting (1961).