The CIA is revising its procedures for clearing the publication of books or articles by currently employed analysts and case officers in the wake of controversy generated by the best-selling book, "Imperial Hubris: How the West Is Losing the War on Terrorism."
Written by a then-active senior analyst who had headed the Osama bin Laden task force, "Imperial Hubris" criticized Bush administration terrorism policies and became an issue in the presidential campaign when it came out last summer. Although the author was listed as "Anonymous," he was subsequently identified as Michael Scheuer, who retired in November.
Before the book was published, Scheuer, as an employee, cleared it with his bosses at the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), where he was then working, and with the Directorate of Intelligence. The manuscript was not reviewed by the CIA Publications Review Board, a small staff that regularly must approve works of former employees.
The new procedures, which are expected to be completed soon, would require all manuscripts and other materials to be reviewed by the review board's staff, which would work with a current employee's superiors on determining what would be cleared for publication.
Under current regulations that apply both to present and former agency personnel, manuscripts are reviewed to ensure they do not contain classified information. With current employees, regulations also require that the released materials not "have an adverse impact on the writer's job performance or on the agency," a senior intelligence official said yesterday. In addition, officers or analysts cannot profit financially from writing specifically about the job they are doing, the official said.
"When it came to Scheuer as 'Anonymous,' " a former senior administration official said yesterday, "the CTC and DI were unhappy with what he had written, but were fuzzy about enforcing rules that seemed to prevent agency people from expressing opinions."
However, he said, the effect of Anonymous's personal opinions in the book "was that people assumed the comments had received the endorsement of the agency leadership because they let him print it." The result was "the unintended effect of making the agency's job of appearing nonpolitical more difficult."
The change in the procedures, which was underway before CIA Director Porter J. Goss and his management team arrived at the agency, is aimed at "trying to make sure people still working at the agency don't do similar things" as Scheuer, and put out a book with political implications, the former official said.
For past CIA employees, the standard is different when it comes to opinions and information no longer classified. As described several years ago by John Hollister Hedley, then the review board's chairman, "permission to publish cannot be denied solely because information may be embarrassing to CIA or critical of it, or inaccurate. People have a right to their opinions and they have a right to be wrong."
The purpose of the review process -- which has its roots in the contractual secrecy agreement employees sign, as well as federal law and executive orders -- Hedley wrote, "is to help people to publish in a way that will not cause a problem for them, the agency or for the country."
The last time a publication called attention to the work of the review board was in 1997 when a former senior case officer, Duane C. "Dewey" Clarridge, wrote a book about his colorful career. He was permitted to disclose where he actually had been stationed along with invented agents and operational scenarios -- the latter to protect security. It has been followed by a rush of memoirs from former case officers.
The "Clarridge Precedent," famous within the agency, may now be followed by the "Scheuer Regulation," the former official said.
