Post-"Pre-Publication Review" by DIA censored words "SIGINT" and "Ned Beatty"

Razer rayzer at riseup.net
Fri Jan 15 09:16:00 PST 2016


Not JUST FOIAs.

Fixing Pre-Publication Review: What Should Be Done?
By Steven Aftergood
Friday, January 15, 2016 at 9:15 AM

Jack Goldsmith and Oona Hathaway called attention in several recent
columns to the pre-publication review process (here, here, here, and
here) that many current and former national security officials and other
government employees must submit to before their work can be published.
The process, they argued, has become dysfunctional, overstepping
legitimate national security boundaries and infringing on freedom of
speech as well as the public’s right to know.

Their case is strong.

Among many pertinent examples, the experience of former Army Reserve
officer Anthony Shaffer is particularly instructive. After he wrote a
memoir of his Afghan war experience, Shaffer submitted his manuscript to
the Army for review, as required, and the approved text was printed. But
then the Defense Intelligence Agency intervened and objected that in its
estimation the cleared volume still contained classified information.
Publication was halted, and the Department of Defense was obliged to
purchase and pulp thousands of copies of the book, although numerous
publicity copies had already been released. A new version of the book
with the objectionable words and passages blacked out was finally
published for sale. (Shaffer presented his version of events in a First
Amendment lawsuit he brought in 2010, with very limited success.)

What makes the Shaffer case valuable in this context is that both the
pre- and post-publication review versions of his text entered public
circulation, permitting external scrutiny of the deletions required by
the official reviewers. In nearly every case, the redacted words and
passages seem to be devoid of national security sensitivity, as the Army
itself had originally concluded.

The most frequent redaction is the cover name that the author used while
serving in Afghanistan, “Christopher Stryker.” Also commonly deleted are
references to the National Security Agency, its headquarters location in
Fort Meade, Maryland, and the use of the term “SIGINT” (signals
intelligence). Somewhat more plausibly, the identity of the former CIA
chief of station in Kabul was replaced with a pseudonym. But rather less
plausibly, a passing mention of the name of character actor Ned Beatty
was deleted.

The point, in other words, is that there is an empirical foundation for
the belief that pre-publication review has gone off the rails. As it is
conducted today, the review process too often arbitrarily impedes the
freedom of many US government employees to participate in public discourse.

In full with links at JUst Security:
https://www.justsecurity.org/28827/fixing-pre-publication-review-done/

-- 
RR
"You might want to ask an expert about that - I just fiddled around with
mine until it worked..."

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