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Pentagon Aims To Buy Up Book
jamie writes "Operation Dark Heart, a book about the adventures and frustrations of an Army officer who served in Afghanistan, has ruffled some feathers at the Pentagon. From the article: 'The Defense Department is attempting to buy the entire first printing — 10,000 copies — of a memoir by a controversial former Defense Intelligence Agency officer so that the book can be destroyed, according to military and other sources."
The blurb is intentionally misleading here. The govt gave the OK for the book but then upon a later review they were worried about some names released and a 2nd printing has already been agreed upon by both parties. They are just deciding what to do with 10k books that were already printed. Obviously the publisher spent money to already print them so they aren't going to just destroy them.
I realize you're just posting to spam your link, however if you look at the article it answers your question.
It was initially cleared for printing by the military. A different military organization later took a look at the book and had some objections. The author appears to have edited newer editions of his book to comply with what the military wanted (changing names I think) however the first 10,000 books were already printed.
The military now wants to buy the first edition out so that people will only be able to buy the newer, revised editions.
I think our government should just abolish the first amendment. They clearly don't believe in it. This just makes me so sick. Where is wikileaks when you need them?
The author is a vet and had the military review the book. After publishing someone thought something had erroneously been left in. The author and publisher are cooperating, a new version is already being printed without the part in question. Buying the first printing of books may be the simplest way to deal with them. The military reviewers goofed not the publisher so the publisher should not suffer any loss. Given that the author and publisher do not want to reveal anything sensitive and are cooperating with the government I don't see censorship. Censorship is when someone wants to publish and is prohibited, not when someones says is all this ok with you ... no ... ok lets edit.
The government cannot censor material before it is printed by regular people. But if you worked for the government and write about intelligence you learned while there, then the government can review it and "suggest" redactions before it is printed.
That's what happened here, it's just they printed 10,000 copies that were insufficiently redacted, so those will be destroyed, the company compensated and then more copies with the proper redactions printed. As to the jokers making comments about digital copies, those would be destroyed and no one compensated, because the "buying up books" here isn't to get them off the market, they won't be going to market anyway. It's just to compensate for expenses of printing books they cannot now put on shelves as-is.
This is censorship, because it is the government restricting speech. But is is a special case of info from a government employee, and that is allowed under the law, whether you agree with it or not. It has been this way for some time, I used to have a paperback from the early 70s that advertised the government went to court to stop its publication because the author worked for the CIA before. That book was eventually published with some redactions as this one will too.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
But when the first printing sells out, the publisher is only going to print more.
Did you even RTFA? Let me sum up since you seem to be too lazy:
The first run was printed after the author received permission from the Army Reserve. The Pentagon got wind of it after the first printing and discovered that there was a lot of material that shouldn't have been printed in the first place. The publisher and author then worked with the Pentagon to redact the questionable material, but that left the publisher with 10000 books sitting in a warehouse that can't be sold.
Since the Army Reserve is really the unit that screwed up in this case by not sending the manuscript up the chain for higher level review, the responsibility for paying for all those books rests with the DoD in general. It's actually the honourable thing to do in this case - along with firing whoever signed off on it in the Reserve component.
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
For all the people say "LOL they'll just print more" or "OMG censorship is bad!" here are the relevant parts of the story:
"[T]he Defense Intelligence Agency objected to the use of the names of American intelligence officers, among other issues." and "A new print run, without the disputed passages, is being prepared by the publisher."
This compromise is reasonable and legal. We still get the story but the intelligence officers names won't be published.
Yes, it is called "voluntary" censorship, and worked very well for many years in the Soviet Union where famous authors would hide or modify their manuscripts for publishing.
It was derided and criticized by the West all along, and many books that were "unpublishable" in the USSR in their "unabridged" format were moved to the West and printed there.
Something I think many forget, or never know is that part of a security clearance is a non-disclosure agreement. You agree not to disclose classified material. It is as binding as any other NDA, and in fact has criminal penalties behind it. Now that doesn't mean you can never talk about anything. Things get declassified, after long enough passes this tends to happen by default (50 years usually).
However it does mean that you have to be careful what you disclose. In general, the government works with people in this regard. You want to write a book about something that is legal for you to disclose, they'll review it to make sure nothing goes in there that shouldn't. In this case, it sounds like the events can be talked about, but not the names. Makes sense.
What happened here is that it got missed somehow. They noticed they missed it, but to until after the printing run was done. So "mea cupla," they ask the author to change it, and teh publisher to do another run. However the first run is still done, the money spent. So they buy it up. Now everyone is happy.