The politics of censorship

Posted by Mary Mancini on December 19, 2006 under Uncategorized |

According to New America Foundation Middle East and Energy Policy expert and former government official Flynt Leverett, the white house has “forced the CIA to heavily censor a 1000 word op-ed” he planned for the New York Times titled “Dealing with Tehran: Assessing US Diplomatic Options Toward Iran.”

Leverett asserts that the White House is now politicizing the “secrets review” process - “a process that is supposed to be about the protection of classified information, and nothing else” - and is “rewarding those who support Bush’s policies and punishing those don’t.”

He has cheerfully submitted everything’s he’s written before to the review board and not a word has ever been censored. Until now.

Much of what was in his piece was also in a piece written by administration supporter, Kenneth Pollack, another former CIA employee, cleared by the review board, and published.

“It would seem that,” Leverett writes, ” if one is expounding views congenial to the White House, it does not intervene in prepublication censorship, but, if one is a critic, White House officials will use fraudulent charges of revealing classified information to keep critical views from being heard.”