Pentagon Plan: Buying Books to Keep Secrets

[boston bean]

WASHINGTON — Defense Department officials are negotiating to buy and destroy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of an Afghan war memoir they say contains intelligence secrets, according to two people familiar with the dispute.

The publication of “Operation Dark Heart,” by Anthony A. Shaffer, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, has divided military security reviewers and highlighted the uncertainty about what information poses a genuine threat to security.

Disputes between the government and former intelligence officials over whether their books reveal too much have become commonplace. But veterans of the publishing industry and intelligence agencies could not recall another case in which an agency sought to dispose of a book that had already been printed.

Army reviewers suggested various changes and redactions and signed off on the edited book in January, saying they had “no objection on legal or operational security grounds,” and the publisher, St. Martin’s Press, planned for an Aug. 31 release.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/us/10books.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

They might as well burn them..... big difference between a local religious freak protesting islam by burning qurans and our government trying to keep people from reading a book.

[Luminous Animal]

1. "They might as well burn them"

Good point.

K&R

[Mimosa]

2. Interesting. n/t

[tnlefty]

3. K&$

Transparency at it's finest. :puke:

[izzybeans]

4. If the publisher had any wits about them, this thing would see reprints infinitely.

Keep printing that fucking thing, until they go broke or give up. You'll be rich.

[Stevenmarc]

5. I guess the Defense Department never heard of E Books