Because relatives are visiting from New York this week, the cellulose-based legacy media is finding its way into my house. I spotted this interesting introduction to an Op-Ed piece by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann in today’s New York Times:
HERE is the redacted version of a draft Op-Ed article we wrote for The Times, as blacked out by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in the normal prepublication review process and demanded substantial deletions. Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.
Indeed, the deleted portions of the original draft reveal no classified material. These passages go into aspects of American-Iranian relations during the Bush administration’s first term that have been publicly discussed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; a former State Department policy planning director, Richard Haass; and a former special envoy to Afghanistan, James Dobbins.
These aspects have been extensively reported in the news media, and one of us, Mr. Leverett, has written about them in The Times and other publications with the explicit permission of the review board. We provided the following citations to the board to demonstrate that all of the material the White House objected to is already in the public domain. Unfortunately, to make sense of much of our Op-Ed article, readers will have to read the citations for themselves.
The term redacted is, of course, a euphemism for censored. The Times printed the Op-Ed with the censored sections of text blacked out.
Why the White House feels so threatened by a series of facts contained in the original draft—all drawn from public sources— that they would engage in such gratuitous censorship is beyond me.
I suppose it could be because the article documents how Bush double-crossed Iran after a period of fruitful cooperation in the early years of the war in Afghanistan. I suppose the White House was a little miffed by being exposed as squandering opportunities to get Iran’s help in fixing the Iraq civil war quagmire. But neither of these reasons justifies government censorship of the press or the free speech rights of the authors. It is clear from numerous sources—the censored Op-Ed, the authors’ statement, the statement of CIA Publication Review Board, and the cited sources—that the Op-Ed contained no classified information or information that compromised national security.
Simply put, the only rationale the White House had for censoring this article was to save the Administration a little embarrassment. And that is outrageous. Every American, regardless of political persuasion, should be alarmed by the realization that the White House even bothers to intervene in newspaper Op-Ed pieces, not to mention that they gratuitously censor embarrassing material.
You’re supposed to be grateful they aren’t executing electronic journalists –yet. Liberals must arm!
Y’know, I don’t know why they bother. We don’t have to read op-eds to know Bush fucked up — we can assume it. This is a lameduck administration. Their only function in the next two years will be answering congressional subpoenaes. All the shit will come out. Everyone who worked for the Bush regime will turn state’s evidence to save his own skin. Meanwhile, the GPO is working all three shifts to print the pardons.
Leverett (and occasionally his wife, Mann) has been all over CSpan with this. He quit working for the administration out of integrity alone and he’s smart, articulate and very pleasant even with contrarians. Explains himself well.
I think he also said that this was the first time something that was already approved by the CIA was later disapproved. The Republicans should embrace people like him instead of dissing him.
He fled Bush after the first term over policy disagreements and went to work for Kerry. You gotta love it.
Simply put, the only rationale the White House had for censoring this article was to save the Administration a little embarrassment.
There is one other possible explanation that is perhaps almost as likely: incompetence. Whoever was assigned to review the op-ed didn’t know what he/she was doing and redacted portions he/she thought were classified, even though they were not.
I agree that butt-covering is most likely, as it is consistent with the facts of this case and with previous Bush White House behavior, but incompetence can never be completely ruled out with this crew.
I’m traveling today, so I won’t be able to follow-up. Good post, Darryl, and happy holidays and Merry Festivus to all.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of malfeasance and incompetence on a massive scale (the screwups with Iran just being one example) the “gang of 500” in the beltway just can’t seem to get their cocktail-weenie poisoned little brains around the fact that we have one sick fuck running this country.
Meanwhile they clutch their pearls and whine about “those rude bloggers”
Why couldn’t they have given the same level of scrutiny to Joe Wilson’s July 2003 op-ed piece in the New York Times about his CIA-sponsored visit to Niger? Certainly, Wilson would have been in no position to complain about being redacted, since his wife was working as an undercover agent at the CIA. And such redactions could have been justified under any number of rationales, including the need to protect his wife’s cover.
But who says the Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann piece doesn’t contain classified material? They do! The CIA review board feels otherwise. And looking at things, the CIA review board rarely ever redacts material before publication. After all, they didn’t redact Joe Wilson’s op-ed piece one iota — and that was far more embarrassing to the Bush administration.
It is really easy to publish an op-ed piece with numerous redactions, and then claim that the redacted material was harmless. Obviously, if the material really was classified and potentially damaging the national security, the CIA review board isn’t exactly going to release it for public inspection and critical review.
I listened to an interview this morning with one of the folks involved.
The folks who intervened per the instructions of the White House KNEW that nothing classified was involved. And they knew that the White House ALSO KNEW this.
So it’s just buttinsky for the sake of avoiding whatever the White House doesn’t like.
Richard Pope asked:
Well, the NYT also claims that it didn’t contain classified material, and to back up that claim, they published another op-ed piece with links to public-domain sources for the same information that was redacted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12.....ecede.html
Yes, we do have to take them at their word that the redacted information was the same information contained in the original op-ed, but that seems a pretty safe bet, because if it isn’t, the whole story will eventually come out, and the NYT will be thoroughly discredited.
Oh, for the wingnuts. Save the peanut-gallery comments that the NYT is already discredited. We already know that you folks consider Faux News to be a liberal mouthpiece, and anything to the left of the
PhalangistCybercast News Service to be biased.Just because something happens to be published, this doesn’t mean that classified secrets should somehow become unclassified.
Let’s suppose, for example, that the U.S. is holding secret talks with Iran. And there is a lot of speculation in the media about whether such talks are happening and other relevant details. Odds are that some published media source is going to come pretty close to the truth simply by speculating on things and putting that in their article.
On the other hand, a CIA official could be working on these secret talks, and happen to know the actual truth. If that CIA official writes a news article or op-ed piece, then they will be seen as speaking the truth, and the details about the talks will no longer be a secret.
Obviously, chances are that some published media source (especially with the multiplicity of things appearing on the internet these days), happened to chance on the truth or something pretty close to it. This coincidence does not justify the former CIA official to break secrecy and print the actual truth about this classified topic.
Here’s the “unredacted” version, Poop (from Raw Story).
Stop MEWLING.
http://www.rawstory.com/printstory.php?story=4127
Richard Pope said:
Agreed, but the citations are not from some blogger or gossip sheet. Sources include folks like Richard Armitage, Donald Rumsfeld, James Dobbins (U.S. representative to a major UN conference of Afghan leaders immediately following the fall of Kabul) and official State Department briefings.
Now, if some small portions were redacted, say a few words or a line or two, this would probably have gone unnoticed, but with the extensive redactions, along with the claim (with references) made by the NYT that this was public information, I would have to say that it appears that someone is just trying to avoid embarrassment.
I would also say that they failed miserably, and someone needs to tell the Bush administration that they lost the last election, and that the New York Times didn’t respond well to bullying even before then.
Could it be that the administration is circling the wagons and going into damage-control mode?
Rujax – give Mr. Pope a break. He’s arguing reasonably and politely. Beside that, the RAW STORY article does not claim to be the unredacted piece. It’s just their guess at what the original article said, and they do not even try to claim that they are an unbiased source of information.
Unlike the far-right wingnuts around here, Mr. Pope usually tries to argue politely from facts and reason. Any time our arguments cannot stand up to that kind of assault, we need to re-think our arguments.
Moonbat engineering test: Who can identify what’s wrong in this paragraph:
“PSE has replaced about 750 of the can-shaped transformers, which convert electricity in overhead lines into lower wattages that can be used in homes.”
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....ole23.html
MTR – IT SHOULD BE “VOLTAGES”.
PAY YOUR FUCKING GAMBLING DEBT, YOU POS.
LEVERETT IS A DEEP THINKER FROM THE “REALIST” SCHOOL OF FOREIGN POLICY. THE GUY HAS A PHD FROM PRINCETON IN “POLITICS” OF ALL THINGS! HE’S WORKED AT CIA, THE STATE DEPARTMENT AND THE SHRUBYA NSC. HE CURRENTLY WORKS OUT OF THE “RADICAL CENTRIST” THINK TANK, THE NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION.
IIRC, HE IS A REPUBLICAN WHO NOW ADVISES DEMOCRATS. YEAH, YOU GOTTA LOVE THAT. WE COULD USE SOME “REALISM” IN FOREIGN POLICY NOW THAT THE NEO-CON WONDERLAND HAS TURNED OUT TO BE SUCH A DISASTROUS FAILURE.
For my Socialist Friends your time is coming up next year when the transition of power takes place in DC. Now you all have a Happy Holliday and don’t forget to register for the DRAFT. Now ladies you don’t need to bother with that part you are excluded from that proccess. How sweet cherry picking by the Lib’s, but don’t want the whole enchilada.
http://www.dailymotion.com/vis.....g-bush-rap
THE NEO-CON WONDERLAND, SO BELOVED OF THE (UN)SP CROWD:
A TWO-TRILLION DOLLAR FAILURE!!!
Richard Pope wrote:
“Why couldn’t they have given the same level of scrutiny to Joe Wilson’s July 2003 op-ed piece in the New York Times about his CIA-sponsored visit to Niger?”
They may well have scrutinized it and found that Wilson’s piece did not contain any classified information.
“After all, they didn’t redact Joe Wilson’s op-ed piece one iota — and that was far more embarrassing to the Bush administration.”
Several differences:
“And such redactions could have been justified under any number of rationales, including the need to protect his wife’s cover.”
Irrelevant. Wilson’s piece was about unclassified work that he did, not work his wife did. In fact, Valerie Wilson was working in a substantively different areas then what Joe Wilson wrote about.
“But who says the Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann piece doesn’t contain classified material? They do! The CIA review board feels otherwise.”
Actually, the CIA Publication Review Board said that the Op-Ed article contained no classified material.
As Another TJ points out, the White House’s censoring could also be the result of incompetence by White House staff. Few would be surprised if that were the case.
KLAKE THE FLAKE: YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS HERE. NOBODY CLICKS ON YOUR BRAINDEAD LINKS. I CERTAINLY DON’T.
ARE WE WINNING YET?
IT’S BEEN OVER FIVE YEARS. GOT OSAMA?
IS THE INSURGENCY IN ITS “LAST THROES”?
HOW MANY PEOPLE WE HAVE TO FEED THROUGH THE MEAT GRINDER OVER THERE BEFORE A “DEMOCRACY” MAGICALLY APPEARS?
YOU LIB BRO says:
KLAKE THE FLAKE: YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS HERE. NOBODY CLICKS ON YOUR BRAINDEAD LINKS. I CERTAINLY DON’T.
ARE WE WINNING YET?
You tell me brother, it appears you have all the right answers. Tell me what price do you pay if you speed in Fallujah and the Marines are the policeman?
http://www.dailymotion.com/vis.....lujah-iraq
Darryl,
Here are the CIA Publication Review Board regulations:
http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/prb2005.pdf
Please note the REDACTIONS in the regulations, for crying out loud! They came from a document filed in a federal court case.
Please note that the regulations have an appeal process as well. They also allow up to 30 days for the initial review. The CIA apparently did this initial review in far less than 30 days, and Leverett & Mann still have not utilized the appeal process.
There is a right, of course, to federal court review of a CIA decision. (Pages 9-10) I am sure that you can’t ask the federal judge to look at the matter, if you haven’t filed an appeal to the CIA Executive Director. And probably if that appeal isn’t filed within 30 days, the initial decision is final.
Looking at these regulations, classified information is not the only thing which needs to be redacted from proposed publications. There is also the need to protect the national security and foreign relations of the United States.
In addition, the CIA retains the right to disallow open source information and citations, if the publication of such information by a CIA employee or source would tend to confirm classified information.
6 Richard Pope says:
Why couldn’t they have given the same level of scrutiny to Joe Wilson’s July 2003 op-ed piece in the New York Times about his CIA-sponsored visit to Niger? Certainly, Wilson would have been in no position to complain about being redacted, since his wife was working as an undercover agent at the CIA. And such redactions could have been justified under any number of rationales, including the need to protect his wife’s cover.
Your usual brilliant analysis, Richard; but you didn’t really expect the stupidos in the White House to think of something as subtle as censorship in a timely fashion, did you?
10 Let’s suppose, for example, that the U.S. is holding secret talks with Iran. And there is a lot of speculation in the media about whether such talks are happening and other relevant details. Odds are that some published media source is going to come pretty close to the truth simply by speculating on things and putting that in their article.
Let’s see if I can take a run at this: The U.S. has secretly agreed to supply weapons to Iran in exchange for Iran secretly supplying weapons to _________________ (fill in name of rightwing dictator).
21 What the Marines do in Fallujah (and elsewhere) became kind of predictable once Rummy’s Pentagon began granting thousands of “morality waivers” and allowing criminals to enlist in order to fill the ranks without a draft. Ya think?!!
YOU LIB BRO says:
HOW MANY PEOPLE WE HAVE TO FEED THROUGH THE MEAT GRINDER OVER THERE BEFORE A “DEMOCRACY” MAGICALLY APPEARS?
You Lib Bro you tell me for you have all the brains. Does it take two to engage in a conflict and those folks on the other side are completely defenseless. No? Yes? Let’s start with your name what makes you a liberal brother, or is it a coward, or your shaking with fear? You like a sniper hide in the back ground and snipe with your obscurity. Your momma or daddy did give you a real name or are you ashamed of it ethnic originality Osama bin? Democracy did not take place instantaneously when this country was from after the revolution in 1776. We also had wars after the revolution to settle our differences of option and that was the Civil War. Osama you can see that progress does take time, a lot of pain, greave, and yes lost of lives. Osama Lib Bro you can play a part in that transaction by supporting those folks who are willing to take risks to make that process take place even though you do not understand that process. Your friends have plenty of time to make their input, but nobody bought their plan. Yes most of the Democrats and Republicans voted for the war and now it is the military and the rest of us to win this conflict. Playing like a terrorist sniping defenseless women, children, and terrorism Liberals into surrendering will not win this conflict. So You Lib Bro (Osama) go down to your basement and harvest some of that dry weed and try to get a different look of the world around you. Now don’t Bogart that joint, now share with your friend Roger. Brother you don’t have to shout we can hear you plain and clear. (THE CAPS ARE NOT NESSARY TO MAKE YOUR POINT WE ALL LIKE TO READ YOUR POINT OF VIEW OSAMA)
http://www.dailymotion.com/vis.....9bb_sniper
Roger Rabbit says:
21 What the Marines do in Fallujah (and elsewhere) became kind of predictable once Rummy’s Pentagon began granting thousands of “morality waivers” and allowing criminals to enlist in order to fill the ranks without a draft. Ya think?!!
12/23/2006 at 12:14 pm
Roger they (military) gave up that plan when judges tried to clear their prisons and put them in the Army. Now we don’t really need the DRAFT today until the ladies start registry for the Party. On the second hand the USAF has a six to eight month waiting line to get into their organization. Next year they will be discharging about 14000 troops to fit their new Air Force, so things are not what you visualize them to be. Now as for Rummy’s Pentagon he is no longer there, and those who violate Uniform Code of Military Justice will face the court marshals. Now Roger let’s talk about morality waivers that your friends gave Stalin, Linn, Moa, Pol Plot, LBJ, JC and let’s not forget Kerry.
THOU SHALL NOT SIDE WITH TERRORISTS AND ENEMIES….OOPS! TOO DAMNED LATE FOR THAT, ASSHOLES.
23 Dec 2006
Give Credit Where Credit’s Due
Democrats, Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, 2006 Elections, Nancy Pelosi
Ayman al-Zawahiri, in his latest taped address, takes credit for the results of the November election.
SITE Institute transcript: http://siteinstitute.org/bin/a.....category=0
“To the Democrats in America, Zawahiri states that they did not win and the Republicans did not lose; rather, it is the Mujahideen who have won, and the American forces and their allies those who lost.“
Do you suppose Speaker Pelosi will invite him to her 4-day celebration?
***
Al Qaeda picks its party
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thebl.....ends_.html
“You’re welcome, Democrats.”
That was maybe the most amazing thing I’ve ever read in the newspaper! I’m at my folks house for Christmas and they said that when they lived in Indonesia that many news stories, even in U.S. papers and magazines were like that, but that Indonesia under Suharto may not be the best example to follow.
…The Times, as blacked out by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in the normal prepublication review process and demanded substantial deletions. Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.
Pope, what part of that don’t you get? Or are you calling Leverett and Mann outright liers?
sorry, make that liars
Skagit @ 30
Why don’t you read the CIA Publication Review Board guidelines which I linked earlier in 22?
http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/prb2005.pdf
Material does not have to be “classified” in order to be censored. It simply has to be related to what the individual obtained from the CIA and something which is judged to be injurious to national security or foreign relations.
Why is this redaction so outrageous? It is nothing different than the attorney-client privilege that lawyers have to agree to in any situation where they are being employed by a client. Things their client gives them have to be kept secret by the lawyer, unless the client consents.
These people were given the privilege of working for the government — and presumably some pretty good salaries for doing it. They signed a contract not to write about matters they worked on, unless it was approved by the government. The government has decided not to approve this — just like a client who might decide not to approve their prior attorney from talking about the case.
Hey Richard @6 @7 @10 @22 @32:
The CIA had previously fully approved the Leverett piece. It was the White House that overruled the CIA. It was a CYA play, pure and simple. Now I know your lizard brain, enmeshed as it is in the minutiae of the federal code and all, just can’t see the real picture. Who in the hell are you trying to convince here? Your posts look like desperate attempts to rationilze a crumbling regime-is that why there are so many of them?
So, you are hypothesizing that the disapproved information would be harmful to national security or foreign relations? Don’t you think that is a stretch?
Injurious to the present administration is more likely, don’t you think?
Kevin J @ 33
If the CIA Publications Review Board had actually approved the Leverett/Mann piece, then it should have been published without any redactions. There are NO provisions in the CIA regulations to revoke approval once it has been granted:
http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/prb2005.pdf
Leverett & Mann have provided absolutely no documentation whatsoever from the CIA regarding what happened in their approval process. All we have is their word on it.
Skagit @ 34
If the redacted information is really available from public sources, then anyone and their brother would be free to write their own article. Just start with the unredacted portions of the Leverett/Mann article and fill in the blanks. Presumably, your final product could even be far more critical of the Bush administration than the unredacted version of the Leverett/Mann article.
So I don’t see this as an attempt to shield the Bush administration from unfavorable publicity. There must have been a legitimate reason for the redactions — either classified information, confirming the truth of classified information, injury to national security, or injury to foreign relations.
ANTI-LIBERAL AND FLAKEY KLAKE: SENIOR FELLOWS AT THE STINK TANK CALLED THE STUPID FOUNDATION.
Richard Pope said:
and
No, Mr. Pope, I’m not willing to assume that there was a legitimate reason to redact unclassified information from an op-ed piece other than to avoid embarrassment.
And there is a significant difference between a private individual preventing his or her attorney from writing an embarrassing article and the government preventing former employees from discussing the unclassified portions of their jobs.
We, as citizens, have a right to know what is happening within our government. Some information must be classified in order to prevent loss of life or problems in international relations, but even there, the government is tasked with minimizing that classification and removing it when the original reasons for classifying the information no longer apply.
Unlike in some other countries, our country is founded on the concept that the citizens are in charge, not the government.
So, no. If the information is not properly classified, then the government has no right to prevent its publication, other than the agreements that Mr. Leverett and Ms. Mann signed, and if there is no properly classified material involved, the penalties for telling the government to go pack sand are essentially that the government can withhold security clearances and prevent Mr. Leverett and Ms. Mann from working in any government-related area.
Essentially, they can force Mr. Leverett and Ms. Mann to remain silent by resorting to a form of extortion.
It would not surprise me in the least if the people involved here considered simply telling the government to go pack sand, but since the apparent reason for the redaction was to avoid embarrassment, this solution seems far more elegant.
The information is there, easily available. The government’s edict has been obeyed, and taking additional action against Mr. Leverett and Ms. Mann would be seen as a sign of weakness and futility.
And, rather than avoid embarrassment, this has done exactly the opposite. They would have been better off just letting the op-ed run.
My concern here is that this could weaken the Presidency so much that he cannot even function as a figurehead. I will have to consider carefully whether the benefit of further weakening what I consider the worst administration within my lifetime is worth the long-term damage.
But, they did it to themselves. They really would have been better off just letting the thing run.