Prepublication review
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Prepublication review is the clearance the CIA requires of everything a former officer writes, and which John Kiriakou says he is "pretty good at" complying with, "you're always going to be CIA people in the eyes of the CIA." His account of what happened to his eighth book is offered as the illustration of how the process actually works.

The sister agency

Having submitted the manuscript, he was emailed that the agency needed extra time "because a sister agency wanted to take a look at it. I knew that was nonsense." His objection was contractual: "I said I didn't sign a secrecy agreement with any sister agency. I did what I was supposed to do by submitting it to the CIA."

What followed he flags as itself anomalous. "Much to my surprise, they called me on the phone, which they never do, because they like everything to be in writing so they can use it against you later." Told that the FBI did not get a chop on his book, the officer corrected him: "it's not the FBI. It's NSA." Kiriakou's reply, "well, what's NSA care about what I write about surveillance and surveillance detection?", got "Well, I don't know, he said. We just need two weeks."

Five weeks and six pages

"Well, they took five weeks. And then when I got the book back, of course, I had missed my publisher's deadline. And they had redacted six pages." His response was to name the source of the redacted material.

> "You redacted six pages and you say that it's classified. I want you to know that I got the information off of your website. You declassified this information 10 years ago."

The answer was a procedure rather than a reversal: he could appeal, but he would have to print the information off the agency's own website and send it back to them, and the appeal would take a further ninety days. His reading of it is that the delay was the point, "look, they're doing this on purpose. I don't know why. I must have angered them somehow."

The publisher declined to wait. "You know what we're going to do? We're going to publish it with the pages blacked out. And on the cover of the book, we're going to put a starburst. And we're going to say, the book the CIA doesn't want you to read." Kiriakou's answer: "OK, let's play their own game."

Where he draws the line

He does not treat the requirement as unlimited. "There are some things that I think the CIA shouldn't have a vote on whether or not I get to publish. And so there are some things that I feel strongly about that I don't bother to send." When the agency objected once, "I had my attorney write them a nasty letter back and they dropped it."

Interviews he does not submit at all, and the reason is practical rather than defiant: "my argument is I don't know what you're going to ask me. I don't know in what direction the conversation is going to flow. And so there's nothing that I can submit for clearance."

See also

- Central Intelligence Agency
- John Kiriakou
- The Oath To The Constitution
- Espionage Act
