White House Censors Alert –bumped–
| Video with Clemons and Leverett. |
Welcome to your Secret United States.
You can\’t talk freely.
You can\’t share information freely.
You can\’t inform the public of what\’s going on in your own government.
Via Steve Clemons
we get an alarming story that should outrage every single citizen.
In an unprecedented case, the White House National Security Council staff
has insinuated itself into a \”secrets-clearing\” process normally
overseen by the CIA
Publications Review Board which screens the written work of former government
officials to make sure that state secrets don\’t find their way into the op-ed
pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, or in other
of the nation\’s leading papers, journals, and books.Flynt Leverett,
a former government official who worked at the Central Intelligence Agency,
the Department of State, and on the National Security Council staff of the
George W. Bush administration, is now a senior fellow and Director of the
Geopolitics of Energy Initiative at the New America Foundation.He has written numerous books, manuscripts, working papers, and many dozens
upon dozens of some of the most important public policy op-ed commentary on
American engagement in the Middle East and has always dutifully submitted
his materials to the CIA\’s review process. Never — not even once — has been
a word or item changed in anything submitted.The White House has now forced the CIA to heavily censor a 1000 word op-ed
draft planned for the New York Times that is based on a much larger
product he produced under the sponsorship of the Century Foundation titled
\”Dealing
with Tehran: Assessing US Diplomatic Options Toward Iran.\” (A pdf
of the article can be downloaded here.)Steve Clemons of The
Washington Note
Juan
Cole has more.
What was Leverett\’s perceived crime? He believed the U.S. should talk to Iran.
Given the recent elections, where Ahmadinejad got his butt beat, you wonder
why that isn\’t a good idea, unless of course it\’s no good because Junior didn\’t
think of it first.
Ironically,
the White House attempt to stop high-level discussion of talking to Iran
comes just as the Iranian public dealt a slap in the face to extremist President
Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who stole the presidential elections in summer of 2005.
Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani appears to have trounced Ahmadinejad\’s
own favorite cleric, Mohammad Taqi Misbah Yazdi, an authoritarian anti-democrat.
So, all you experts out there, don\’t you dare prepare to write an op-ed that
strays off White House mountain, because your words and thoughts are not your
own anymore. This is the era of George W. Bush. If you write it they will come.
Next they\’ll censor you. Democracy interrupted.
This post was bumped from 9:21 a.m. to the current position. Nothing else has been changed.
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