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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.
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.
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.