Atkinson's Dogged Push for Transparency

Atkinson’s Dogged Push for Transparency

Posted: October 1st, 2019

By Walter Pincus

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010. He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.

OPINION — Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson deserves praise along with the Whistleblower for pushing within the law to get President Trump’s highly protected phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before the Congress and the public.

Atkinson’s two week “preliminary review” helped build credibility for the Whistleblower’s August 12 complaint, and his later disagreement with superiors about sharing details with Congress eventually led to the release of not only the White House memo of the Trump/Zelensky conversation, but also of the complaint itself.

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