White House Forces Censorship of New York Times

VE3OGG writes "It would seem that scientists are not the only ones facing censorship from the White House. According to several news sources the New York Times originally had intended to run an article co-authored by a former employee of the National Security Council, critical of the current administration's policies toward Iran. The article had passed the CIA's publication review board, but was later redacted on orders from the White House. Article authors Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann were former advisers to the White House, and thus all of their publications are scrutinized by a board before they can be published. Of the numerous documents this pair has published since leaving their positions, they say this was the first that was actively censored.

Comments

Nothing unusual or unconstitutional here

[Salvance]

I would have been really surprised if the government would have allowed a critical article co-written by a government official to be published. There is nothing sinister going on here ... if the NYT is upset, they should have just interviewed the National Security Council employee instead of using that individual as a co-author.

Co-authoring any article with a government employee (or even a corporate employee) is always a risk. While the NYT is free to publish almost anything they want, the co-author (by nature of his/her employment) is not, which was the problem in this situation.

Re:Nothing unusual or unconstitutional here

[IdleTime]

* sigh *

It said the article had passed the review board so it could not have included anything secret.

USA has become a 1st world economy with a 3rd world society.

Re:Nothing unusual or unconstitutional here

[Anonymous McCartneyf]

There were two review boards, though only one appears to be formal. The one run by the CIA said there was nothing there that couldn't be printed. The less formal board from the White House claimed that there was classified info that had to be redacted. I would think that the CIA would be a better judge of this, but oh well...

Re:Nothing unusual or unconstitutional here

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw this guy talk about the issue on C-SPAN. As far as I know all of the following are true:

1. He does *NOT* work for the government anymore.

2. All information in his article is public knowledge combined from a variety of sources who have made public statements to the same effect.

3. The CIA reviewed the document and declared that it contained no sensitive information.

4. This isn't this characters first time doing this.. He's cleared some 30 different articles with the CIA and has not once including and until now had any issues.

Re:Nothing unusual or unconstitutional here

[pla]

But the author would be found shot dead in his car a few months later.

You mean kinda like Cliff Baxter, the Enron guy who agreed to talk not only about Lay and Skilling, but also about the private "consultations" between Enron and Dick Cheney?

Funny how someone can commit "suicide" by shooting themself in the head from "two to three feet away". That takes some serious talent.


But hey, we've forgotten all about that little blemish. Why squabble over illegal manipulation of the energy market when we have a WAR on TERRORISM to fight, in a completely unrelated country formerly run by a secular semi-democratically-elected leader, that coincidentally happens to contain the second largest oil reserves on the planet.

Next time, RTFA

[ArcSecond]

Because if you *had* RTFA, you would know that every single redaction consisted of information already publicized, in several cases by members of the White House administration. The discussion of the article even links to citations where that VERY SAME INFORMATION is available, non-redact-stylee.

So really, what is the end effect of this censorship? To draw attention to both the attitude of Bush & Co., while simultaneously providing the curious with the information that they weren't supposed to know.

This administration must have lead in their water. I have never seen such ham-handed, short-sighted, and just plain dumb policy. Kind of like a class of Special Ed students who have read Machiavelli and think they know how to run the world.