Moreover, in this case, the release of these documents means that people will die. It is as simple as that. I cannot say how many, but the butcher’s bill from this sorry “disclosure” will have to be met. Personally, I consider this willful release of secret documents to be treason.

I am not a Tea Party fanatic, nor even a Republican. I am proud to be a Democrat and have enjoyed your publication for many years both online and in print. I fear that this relationship will now have to end. I expected better.

— David Stier

A. Quite a few readers are uncomfortable with the idea that a group of editors — unelected editors — can decide to reveal information that the government wants kept secret. Sometimes we’re uncomfortable with that, too. We have as much stake in the war against terror as anyone. Our reporters travel in dangerous places to report on these subjects, and we have had members of the Times family injured, kidnapped and killed in pursuit of the news. So the thought that something we report might increase the dangers faced by the country is daunting and humbling — and not just a matter of theory for us. When we find ourselves in possession of government secrets, we think long and hard about whether to disclose them. Invariably that consideration includes extensive and serious discussions with the government, as it did with the diplomatic cables.

Pause for a second to consider exactly what The Times has done in this case. We have written a series of articles based on what we have learned about various aspects of American foreign policy from this trove of secret cables. We have drawn on our past reporting and the experience of our correspondents to supply context and to cast doubt where information in the cables is questionable. We have also chosen a small selection of the cables — about 100 in all, out of a quarter of a million documents — that we think provide useful source material for the articles we have written. We have edited out any information that could identify confidential sources — including informants, dissidents, academics and human rights activists — or otherwise compromise national security. We did this in consultation with the State Department, and while they strongly disapprove of the publication of classified material at any time, and while we did not agree with all of their requests for omission, we took their views very seriously indeed.

So, two basic questions. Why do we get to decide? And why did we decide to publish these articles and selected cables?

We get to decide because America is cursed with a free press. I’m the first to admit that news organizations, including this one, sometimes get things wrong. We can be overly credulous (as in some of the reporting about Iraq’s purported Weapons of Mass Destruction) or overly cynical about official claims and motives. We may err on the side of keeping secrets (President Kennedy wished, after the fact, that The Times had published what it knew about the planned Bay of Pigs invasion) or on the side of exposing them. We make the best judgments we can. When we get things wrong, we try to correct the record. A free press in a democracy can be messy.

But the alternative is to give the government a veto over what its citizens are allowed to know. Anyone who has worked in countries where the news diet is controlled by the government can sympathize with Thomas Jefferson’s oft-quoted remark that he would rather have newspapers without government than government without newspapers. And Jefferson had plenty of quarrels with the press of his day.