Book Prompts CIA to Look at Rules

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON -- The CIA is drafting new rules for agency employees who want to become authors following publication of a controversial critique of the war on terror by a counterterrorism official who headed the unit tracking Osama bin Laden.

A CIA spokesman said the new procedures, still in draft form, are not intended to change the standards for publication, but to ensure that the rules on the books are enforced in a uniform way.
Yet the changes, first disclosed by former agency officials, have raised concerns among some intelligence veterans that the CIA may try to further censor the already-limited speech of agency employees.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the agency spokesman said the new regulations have been in the works since July, shortly after former CIA Director George Tenet resigned.

That same month, Mike Scheuer, the former head of the bin Laden unit -- then writing under the pen name "Anonymous" -- published the best seller "Imperial Hubris: How the West is Losing the War on Terrorism." Scheuer's 309-page book on the U.S. government's Middle East policy is widely believed to have angered senior White House officials during the election year.
...
The draft rules would require all current personnel to submit manuscripts to a Publications Review Board for approval -- the same panel that now must clear the works of former agency officials. The staff of four, overseen by a CIA attorney, reviewed 30,000 pages last year.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-cia-publications,0,7049676.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[KurtNYC]

1. This has been a 30 year debate

Marchetti & Marks published a book in 1974 that ruffled more than few feathers.

The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence
The CIA went to court prior to publication of this book, claiming that it would harm national security. The court disagreed, but the publisher had to submit the manuscript to the CIA for prior review.

They asked for 339 deletions, most of which were refused by the court. Along with Philip Agee's "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," this was one of the most important works on the CIA to appear in the 1970s. While Agee's book is a detailed look at one officer's activities in several Latin American countries, Marchetti and Marks give an overview of the CIA's administrative structure and operational history. (An appendix reprints the detailed notes from a secret four-hour 1968 Council on Foreign Relations meeting that discussed intelligence issues. Richard Bissell gave the talk while nineteen other luminaries, such as Allen Dulles, listened and offered comments. It's clear from gems like this that the ruling class knows who they are, even if most of their subjects don't.)

Victor Marchetti spent 14 years in the CIA, where he became an executive assistant to the deputy director, and John Marks spent five years in the State Department, where he worked as an analyst and as staff assistant to the intelligence director. Currently Marchetti lives in Vienna, Virginia while Marks lives in Washington, D.C.

http://www.namebase.org/sources/AK.html