Fueling Rebellion

Silencing The Squeaky Wheels

By Shane Harris, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, April 27, 2006

The CIA has imposed new and tighter restrictions on the books, articles, and opinion pieces published by former employees who are still contractors with the intelligence agency. According to several former CIA officials affected by the new policy, the rules are intended to suppress criticism of the Bush administration and of the CIA. The officials say the restrictions amount to an unprecedented political "appropriateness" test at odds with earlier CIA policies on outside publishing.

The move is a significant departure from the CIA's longtime practice of allowing ex-employees to take critical or contrary positions in public, particularly when they are contractors paid to advise the CIA on important topics and to publish their assessments.

All current and former CIA employees have long been required to submit manuscripts for books, opinion pieces, and even speeches to the agency's Publications Review Board, which ensures that the works don't reveal classified information or intelligence sources and methods. The board has not generally factored political opinions into its decision-making, former CIA officials say. But in recent years, former employees have written memoirs and opinion pieces challenging the CIA and the Bush administration, particularly for its use of prewar intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. The board did not find that any of those pieces revealed secrets, a fact that makes the CIA's new review standards troubling, former officials and intelligence-community analysts said.

Many of those experts believe that public criticism provides an important source of alternative analysis -- something the CIA needs to understand terrorism, global disease, and other emerging threats. But the White House and CIA Director Porter Goss view spies-turned-authors as political liabilities who embarrass an already battered administration, former officials said. The CIA is now aggressively investigating -- using polygraphs in some cases -- employees who are suspected of leaking classified information to journalists, and last week the agency said it fired a senior official, Mary O. McCarthy, reportedly for having unauthorized contact with the news media.

The former CIA officials carefully distinguished leaks of classified information, which they acknowledged can endanger national security, from articles or speeches that challenge policy yet reveal no secrets. But several said that Goss's vigorous pursuit of leakers is philosophically connected to his desire to keep embarrassing comments by former CIA insiders out of the public domain.

"I think the [publications] that are causing the most kickback now are things that look like they're critical of the administration," said one former official who has written about intelligence policies and techniques. "The [career] agency people feel like they are regarded by the White House as the enemy." They "feel like Goss's real job is to decimate the place," said the former official, who, like others contacted for this story, asked for anonymity to avoid reprisal from the CIA.

Full-time agency employees are discouraged from expressing their political opinions, lest they taint the agency as partisan. But contractors traditionally have been free to speak their minds. The new review policy "reflects [Goss's] concern, and his personality, which seems to have minimal tolerance for dissent," said Steven Aftergood, an authority on government secrecy policies with the Federation of American Scientists.

The publications review process "was designed to assure agency personnel that their First Amendment rights would be protected as long as they did not compromise security," Aftergood said. "That relatively enlightened position has now been abandoned."

The CIA acknowledged for the first time last week that the Publications Review Board subjects former officials under contract to a two-part test. "First, material submitted for publication cannot contain classified information," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano wrote in an e-mail. "Second, it cannot impair the individual's ability to do his or her job or the CIA's ability to conduct its mission as a nonpartisan, nonpolicy agency of the executive branch."

That new criterion is at odds with the agency's earlier rules. According to a July 2005 unclassified regulation, signed by Goss, "The [Publications Review Board] will review material ... solely to determine whether it contains any classified information. Permission to publish will not be denied solely because the material may be embarrassing to or critical of the agency."

The Bush Administration: Politicizing the Executive Branch One Agency at a Time.

I'm also hearing around town that there is considerable pushback going on from the career employees.