CNN's Jake Tapper Not My Job to 'Automatically Believe What the US Government Says'

On Hugh Hewitt’s Friday radio program, CNN’s Jake Tapper sounded off on his relationship as a journalist with the federal government.

Partial transcript as follows:

HEWITT: We don’t have to know this for sure — you and I can’t, we don’t have the clearances, but isn’t it a rational conclusion that what [Snowden] gave away greatly injured the national security interest of the United States?

TAPPER: I know that is what the U.S. government says. I choose to make it my job to not automatically believe what the U.S. government says.

HEWITT: But that is also said by a lot of people outside of the government who are familiar with, perhaps have practiced in the past with the intelligence community, it’s not just the United States government, pretty much everybody who has had a security clearance that I know of isn’t it?

TAPPER: Hugh, my job is to be skeptical. Skeptical of people like Edward Snowden and skeptical of the U.S. government. My job is to not take for granted when somebody says, ‘Oh, this is all just a made-up, phony scandal’ or, ‘What this person did put the U.S. government at risk and the American people at risk.’