CIA Sues Author in Prepublication Review Dispute
The Central Intelligence Agency has filed a lawsuit against one of its own former employees after he published a book on intelligence without first getting the CIA’s prior approval, the Washington Times reported today.
A book called “The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture” was written by a former CIA clandestine services officer under the pen name Ishmael Jones. It was published earlier this year, the government says, “in defiance of the CIA’s Publications Review Board’s disapproval and instructions not to publish.” See “CIA sues ex-agent for book’s breach of ‘secrecy'” by Bill Gertz, Washington Times, October 19, 2010.
The CIA’s complaint (pdf) against Jones, filed in July, says that he violated the terms of the non-disclosure agreement that he signed as a condition of his employment and that, as a result, he is in breach of contract.
As a first order of business, the CIA sought (pdf) and gained the Court’s approval (pdf) to proceed against Jones using his pseudonym since, the Agency argued, disclosing his real name could compromise national security.
“For CIA officers to effectively and securely collect foreign intelligence and conduct clandestine foreign intelligence activities around the world, they cannot openly admit that they work for the CIA,” the government brief explained.
But “if defendant’s true name and affiliation with the CIA were officially acknowledged, foreign governments, enterprising journalists, and amateur spy-hunters would be able to discover and publicly disclose the cover methods defendant used to conceal his true status as a CIA officer,” the brief said.
The class of persons who constitute “amateur spy-hunters” was not further identified.
FAS is eager to see implementation of metascience to measure what works, promote novel and effective research programs such as the work of the NSF X-Labs program, and create policy that enables the AI-enabled scientific enterprise to reach its full potential, safely.
We won’t solve the cost-of-living crisis without improving the capacity of state public utility commissions to protect customers, find and implement new solutions to meet rising demand, and realign broken utility incentives.
Public service commissions should require utilities to quantify avoided healthcare costs, reduction in pollution exposure, and improvements in population health alongside traditional metrics.
California just took an important step toward making electric trucks more affordable and easier for businesses to buy.