CIA blocking memoir of outed agent?
Valerie Plame, the former counter-terrorism CIA agent who was famously outed by someone/everyone in the Bush administration as political retaliation, is suing her ex-bosses for allegedly blocking the publication of Fair Game, her account of the whole sordid affair. At issue are the dates of Plame’s federal service, which had already been published (with the agency’s approval) in an unclassified document, but which it now claims are still classified.
A press release from Simon & Schuster, the book’s publisher, states:
“The CIA’s effort to classify public domain information is an unreasonable attempt at prior restraint of publication, and a violation of our First Amendment rights. We have filed our suit in the belief that the CIA’s actions have implications that are much broader than this particular case, and that could have a chilling effect on the nature of public discourse in a free society.”
More at ThinkProgress.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the CIA tried to block the publication of Valerie Plame’s book. In the past, the CIA tried — with varying degrees of success — to prevent former CIA officials such as Frank Snepp and Victor Marchetti as well as former U.S. State Department official John D. Marks from publishing accounts of their clandestine careers. All in the name of national security, of course.