Book Prompts CIA to Look at Rules

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON -- The CIA is drafting new rules for agency employees who want to become authors following publication of a controversial critique of the war on terror by a counterterrorism official who headed the unit tracking Osama bin Laden.

A CIA spokesman said the new procedures, still in draft form, are not intended to change the standards for publication, but to ensure that the rules on the books are enforced in a uniform way.
Yet the changes, first disclosed by former agency officials, have raised concerns among some intelligence veterans that the CIA may try to further censor the already-limited speech of agency employees.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the agency spokesman said the new regulations have been in the works since July, shortly after former CIA Director George Tenet resigned.

That same month, Mike Scheuer, the former head of the bin Laden unit -- then writing under the pen name "Anonymous" -- published the best seller "Imperial Hubris: How the West is Losing the War on Terrorism." Scheuer's 309-page book on the U.S. government's Middle East policy is widely believed to have angered senior White House officials during the election year.
...
The draft rules would require all current personnel to submit manuscripts to a Publications Review Board for approval -- the same panel that now must clear the works of former agency officials. The staff of four, overseen by a CIA attorney, reviewed 30,000 pages last year.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-cia-publications,0,7049676.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines