Monday, September 27, 2010

I wonder where is the ACLU et all on this...

The fact Army Reserve Command approved it and then spent the money (we're talking over 100K) to buy every issue to then burn tells me someone screwed up real bad...and I want a copy to see what this LTC is really saying

Pentagon destroys thousands of copies of Army officer's memoir - CNN.com

Operation Dark Heart' describes Lt. Col Anthony Shaffer's time in Afghanistan leading a black-ops team


Washington (CNN) -- The Department of Defense recently purchased and destroyed thousands of copies of an Army Reserve officer's memoir in an effort to safeguard state secrets, a spokeswoman said Saturday.


"DoD decided to purchase copies of the first printing because they contained information which could cause damage to national security," Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. April Cunningham said.


In a statement to CNN, Cunningham said defense officials observed the September 20 destruction of about 9,500 copies of Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer's new memoir "Operation Dark Heart."
Damage to national security...probabaly Secret stuff.  But if he got it approved and they screwed up I still see a law suit coming up...and no publicity is bad publicity. 
"The whole premise smacks of retaliation," Shaffer told CNN on Saturday. "Someone buying 10,000 books to suppress a story in this digital age is ludicrous."


Shaffer's publisher, St. Martin's Press, released a second printing of the book that it said had incorporated some changes the government had sought "while redacting other text he (Shaffer) was told was classified." 
From single words and names to entire paragraphs, blacked out lines appear throughout the book's 299 pages.
...The Pentagon contacted St. Martin's Press in early August to convey its concerns over the release of the book. According to the publisher, at that time the first printings were just about to be shipped from its warehouse. Shaffer said he and the publisher worked hard "to make sure nothing in the book would be detrimental to national security."


"When you look at what they took out (in the 2nd edition), it's lunacy," Shaffer said.


The Pentagon says Shaffer should have sought wider clearance for the memoir.


"He did clear it with Army Reserve but not with the larger Army and with Department of Defense," Department of Defense spokesman Col. David Lapan said earlier this month. "So he did not meet the requirements under Department of Defense regulations for security review."


One of the book's first lines reads, "Here I was in Afghanistan (redaction) My job: to run the Defense Intelligence Agency's operations out of (redaction) the hub for U.S. operations in country."


In chapter 15, titled "Tipping Point," 21 lines within the first two pages are blacked out.
Kinda reminds me of when Climetgate broke...media sources were putting up stories on who  broke the story, not the fact the fact global warming.  a hoax.  Gee, I wonder why we haven't heard about this from CNN, et all...Again I wonder what was blacked out... but I cannot afford 2 grand the original.

2 comments:

  1. He got it approved by the army but not by the intel guys.

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  2. Brought back a memory of a Command Post Exercise in 2000 we had with a British Army reserve logistics unit. We would need the 3rd Army SITREP which was published around 0400hrs and we would get it...it had on top SECRET-REL UK. But we would be attached to an email saying "do not share with the British until approved"...we would have to wait until normally past 700...now we had to brief the command group by 0800...the Brits had to jump through their asses big time...all because someone in Atlanta couldn't make a freaking decision...

    Some things don't change.

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