David E. Sanger on Leaks, Secrecy, and the Craft of National Security Reporting

David E. Sanger has spent more than four decades reporting from the nerve center of American power—tracking presidents, intelligence agencies, technological revolutions, and war for The New York Times. His path began with early coverage of Apple and the semiconductor industry in the Cold War era, where Sanger was later drawn into questions of export controls, supply chains, and strategic vulnerability long before those terms became political shorthand. From investigating the Challenger disaster to reporting as a foreign correspondent in Japan on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, his career mirrors the gradual convergence of technology, geopolitics, and security that defines modern conflict.
In this Pathway Blog conversation, Sanger reflects on the questions he wishes he had asked sooner, the enduring legacy of the Pentagon Papers in today’s fights over secrecy and access, and how—and why—major peace plans and sensitive documents inevitably leak. He also offers an unusually candid look at how journalists decide when publishing classified or sensitive information serves the public interest, how the subscription era has reshaped newsroom incentives, and what practical pathways still exist for students hoping to break into national security reporting now that the old newsroom apprenticeship model has vanished.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

The Question He Wishes He’d Asked Earlier
BW: Mr. Sanger, thank you for joining me. You’ve reported on presidents, intelligence agencies, and war for decades. When you reread your early national security reporting today, what question do you wish you had been asking sooner?
​
DS: There are many—and it depends on the point in time—because when I first joined The Times, I wasn’t explicitly doing national security. I came out of college, had been a stringer (a part-time freelancer), and joined as a news clerk in 1982–83. I began writing about technology-related issues: Apple’s first significant personal computer, later the introduction of the Macintosh, and related developments.
That quickly led me to covering an industry—once I became a reporter—including semiconductors. That was my first sustained intersection between national security and business issues. We worried about becoming too dependent on Japan, an ally, obviously. We were worried about what today we’d call supply chains—about where semiconductor work was happening, mostly memory chips then, not the most advanced work you see today in Taiwan. We were still in the Cold War, and export controls mattered.
After that, I worked on the Space Shuttle Challenger investigation, and we won a Pulitzer in 1987. That helped me jump to being a foreign correspondent. I went to Japan on the theory that I’d be covering a lot of this from that side. It wasn’t until Japan that I began writing what today we’d call bread-and-butter national security issues: some of the first pieces on the North Korean nuclear program, Japan’s space program, and the movement of enriched uranium—Japan enriching in Europe and transporting it back—along with the security implications.
At that time, I wish I’d understood more about how the world would unfold. We weren’t looking closely enough—certainly I wasn’t asking enough—about China’s future military capability, because it was such an inward-looking force in that moment.
Later, in space coverage, we focused heavily on commercial space and exploration, and there wasn’t enough early attention to weapons- and space-related issues—except indirectly through Reagan’s Star Wars, which I was somewhat involved in covering.
In The New Cold War, my book from last year, I argue that America tuned out for decades to the military, security, and technology implications of China’s rise—and to the revival of Russian nationalism. I was probably as guilty of that as anybody else.

Press Freedom vs. Secrecy: What’s Changed Since the Pentagon Papers?
BW: Last week, The New York Times sued the Pentagon over access issues, as I’m sure you well know. When you place that alongside New York Times Co. v. United States in 1971, do you see continuity in the struggle between national security and press freedom—or has the nature of secrecy and accountability fundamentally changed since the Pentagon Papers era?

DS: I definitely see parallels and shifts. First: it wasn’t really a suit over records. And it’s not even “access” in the usual sense, though access is the immediate issue.
To retain a Pentagon pass—I’ve never had one, but many of my colleagues do—the current administration wanted reporters to sign a pledge. Not a pledge that they wouldn’t publish classified information—we often do—but a pledge that would prevent them from publishing sensitive but unclassified information—or anything the Pentagon deemed “sensitive,” even if unclassified. They also wanted reporters to agree not to pursue tips with anyone other than Pentagon public affairs staff—often the last group to know something is happening.
We simply can’t allow the government to regulate how we do reporting. That’s the core of the First Amendment. Without a free press, you don’t get free societies.
The Pentagon is spending nearly a trillion dollars a year, employs hundreds of thousands of people, and runs critical missions around the world. There’s no reason I can think of that we should ever need government permission to do news reporting.
If you go back to the Pentagon Papers case: that was about whether the government could bar The Times or The Washington Post or anyone else from publishing information prior to publication—what law calls prior restraint. The Supreme Court concluded there’s essentially no condition under which the government can stop something from being published. If they want to pursue leak investigations afterward, that’s their business. But they can’t stop publication.
So yes—these feel like bookends of the same theme.

When Does Publishing “Serve the Public” vs. Just Feed Curiosity?
BW: And on that same theme, when reporting on sensitive material, how do you decide when publication genuinely serves democratic accountability rather than just satisfying a public curiosity?

DS: Some examples are easy. The Epstein files, for instance—there’s nothing “classified” there in the national security sense. Epstein wasn’t a government official; he couldn’t classify anything. If something is sealed in court, that’s a separate question, but classification isn’t the issue.
The harder cases involve the details of government operations that are classified for real reasons: protecting human lives, not blowing an ongoing military operation, not exposing a sensitive intelligence operation.
But so much is classified to prevent embarrassment. The government doesn’t want you to know about huge cost overruns in Project “X.” Or about taxpayer money being spent in ways they can’t justify publicly.
I’ll give you an example: a program associated with renovating Air Force One. The challenge I put to the government was: tell me why one Air Force One program is in open budgets while another—functionally similar—should be treated as classified. If you can’t explain that, we’re going to publish it. They couldn’t.

The Subscription Era: Are “Legacy” Outlets Incentivized to Chase Outrage?
BW: I spoke to your colleague Bret Stephens earlier this year. We talked about how social media incentivizes outrage—socially and monetarily. Have you noticed a similar trend in “legacy” media—more attention to things that are less important but more clickable?

DS: One major transition is the revenue model shifting away from advertising—which declined as online advertising options exploded—and toward subscriptions.
At The Times, much of our growth has been fueled by subscriptions. We now have roughly 12.5 million paid subscriptions. Some are for the full news report; some for games, cooking, The Athletic, or bundles—but most are for the core news product.
The upside: you’re less beholden to advertisers who may not like your coverage and threaten to pull ads. The harder part: you’re more beholden to readers. You have to keep them engaged, which can mean meeting them where their interests are.
My sense is, and I don’t know what Bret told you, we’re fortunate to be big enough to do both: to offer the lifestyle and service journalism people love—and still deliver the core report that’s the heart and soul of The Times.
I never sit down and think, “Should we write 1,500 words on the details of peace negotiations in the biggest war in Europe since World War II—because it might be too complicated?” It’s The New York Times. You can’t not cover it.
I’m sure those pressures exist in the industry. We’re relatively insulated from them.

Why Major Peace Plans Leak (And Why That Doesn’t Surprise Him)
BW: I was watching you talk about the 28-point Ukraine peace plan—since revised—and it struck me how something that big could just “leak.” How does that even happen? Who receives those leaks and how do they know what to do with it?

DS: Thank God that it did! It doesn’t seem even slightly crazy to me. The chances of it not leaking would have been infinitesimal.
In this case, the original document read like it had been drafted in the Kremlin. Later reporting suggested parts of it had been discussed in the Kremlin. That made it a high-interest document: it looked like the U.S. government was trafficking in something close to Putin’s wish list.
Now, the government would argue: “We’re getting everyone’s demands on paper so we can see what’s compatible and what’s not.” That’s a negotiation tactic—start broad, eliminate what you can, narrow to the hard issues. It puts you more in the role of mediator than ally.
But consider what else is true: a document like that circulates widely—across NATO members, and through European channels. Someone looks at it and thinks: “The fastest way to kill this is to make it public.” They hand it off.
I can’t say that’s exactly what happened—but I’ve been through versions of this hundreds of times. It’s the most likely explanation.

BW: And it wasn’t classified?

DS: If it had been classified even at a low level, you’d likely see markings restricting foreign distribution—“no foreign,” meaning it can’t go to allies. If it wasn’t marked that way, there wasn’t even much of a debate about publishing it. It wasn’t classified.

How Students Break Into Journalism Now That the Old Pipeline Is Gone
BW: Earlier you mentioned starting at The Times basically right out of college—and you hear stories of people starting there even earlier, like Andrew Ross Sorkin while he was still in high school. Does that pathway still exist? How can someone make real steps toward working at a place like The New York Times out of college?

DS: When I joined, newsroom technology was primitive enough that The Times hired 50 or 60 news clerks a year—doing work that would look ridiculous now: physically moving edited copy around, moving paper between reporters and editors, helping with production processes.
More than half would look around and decide newsroom life wasn’t for them. Two, three, four would emerge as reporters or reporter trainees--

BW: —If I may, how did you emerge—what made you stand out?

DS: I stood out because even on nights and weekends, we wrote stories, and we got them published. You made yourself useful. You covered things below the radar of established reporters.
That entry-level world is largely gone—overtaken by technology. Some of the work I did—like page paste-up and checking captions—doesn’t exist now, thankfully.
So what’s the pathway today? Overwhelmingly: new technology. Audio. Video. What we call “Verticals” where you hold up an iPhone and record. Short news analysis segments. Production. Web presentation. Making stories readable on phones, tablets, computers. Getting summaries and distribution right on social platforms.
Those are the modern entry points that didn’t exist when I started.

Setbacks, Perspective, and What Actually Matters
BW: As we close, what’s been the biggest professional setback you’ve faced—and what did it teach you about this kind of reporting?

DS: There are assignments I wish I’d had. I was in Tokyo for six years, came to Washington intending to go abroad again, and illness got in the way for a few years. So I have regrets about opportunities I didn’t get.
But what I’ve learned over time is that titles mean almost nothing—except internally, and even there, people forget. The only thing that counts is what the reader, viewer, or listener gets: the output’s quality, its clarity, and whether the writing can sing a little.
Don’t get revved up about the title. Worry about doing the job well—and the clarity that comes from that.
I feel lucky to have gone into journalism—even as the industry is going through a brutal period, especially with local news being eviscerated. It’s hard to find a job in journalism now, and it can be hard even for very talented people to hold one for reasons unrelated to talent.
But one thing is still true: you wake up each day not really certain what your day will bring. Many other jobs are variations on a theme. Journalism is not.

A Book Recommendation
BW: Last question—as is customary with the blog—if there’s one piece of literature you’d recommend to someone interested in a pathway like yours, what would it be?

DS: If you want a really fun book about journalism—a parody that captures the inanity of pursuing news all day—read Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. It was written about 100 years ago. Hilariously funny, and it helps you understand how journalists think.

BW: Mr. Sanger, it’s been an honor and a privilege. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me.

DS: Great to see you. Bye-bye.