Snowden revelations earn Pulitzer for The Washington Post and The Guardian

NEW YORK The Washington Post and The Guardian won the Pulitzer Prize in public service Monday for revealing the U.S. government's sweeping surveillance efforts in a blockbuster series of stories based on secret documents supplied by NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

The prize for national reporting went to David Philipps of The Gazette in Colorado Springs for an investigation that found that the Army has discharged escalating numbers of traumatized combat veterans who commit crimes at home.

Two of the nation's biggest and most distinguished newspapers, The Washington Post and The New York Times, won two Pulitzers each, while the other awards were scattered among a variety of publications large and small.

The stories about the National Security Agency's spy programs revealed that the government systematically has collected information about millions of Americans' phone calls and e-mails.

The disclosures set off a furious debate in the United States over privacy versus security and led President Barack Obama to impose limits on the surveillance.

The NSA stories were written by Barton Gellman at The Washington Post and Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewan MacAskill, whose work was published by The Guardian US, the British newspaper's American operation, based in New York.

"I think this is amazing news," Poitras said. "It's a testament to Snowden's courage, a vindication of his courage and his desire to let the public know what the government is doing."

Snowden, a former contract employee at the NSA, has been charged with espionage and other offenses in the U.S. and could get 30 years in prison if convicted. In a statement issued by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Snowden saluted "the brave reporters and their colleagues who kept working in the face of extraordinary intimidation, including the forced destruction of journalistic materials, the inappropriate use of terrorism laws, and so many other means of pressure to get them to stop."

Snowden's critics have branded him a traitor. "To be rewarding illegal conduct, to be enabling a traitor like Snowden, to me is not something that should be rewarded with a Pulitzer Prize," said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. "Snowden has violated his oath. He has put American lives at risk."

The Post's Gelman said the stories were the product of the "most exhilarating and frightening year of reporting."

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Snowden revelations earn Pulitzer for The Washington Post and The Guardian