The twenty-two-month clearance
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Asked whether he needed his former employer's authorisation to publish his first book, John Kiriakou gave three numbers.

The arithmetic

"It took me nine months to write the book," he said, "and 22 months to get it cleared, and they ended up rejecting 120 pages." The review therefore took roughly two and a half times as long as the writing, and removed a substantial block of manuscript.

His summary of the experience was short: "So, yeah, it was hard."

A permanent obligation

Kiriakou was clear that this was not a one-time condition attaching to a single book. "Everything I write I have to send to them for clearance," he said. The requirement follows from the secrecy agreement signed on entry to the CIA and does not lapse on departure, conviction or the passage of time.

Why it got easier

What has changed, on his account, is not the rule but the people applying it. "As the years have passed since my arrest," he said, "and my detractors have either died or retired, it's gotten much, much easier."

The observation is a pointed one and Kiriakou lets it stand without elaboration. It implies that the volume of material withheld from a given manuscript is not a fixed function of its classification but varies with who is reading it, that the 120 pages cut from the first book reflected, at least in part, the particular officers reviewing an author they had reason to dislike.

Context

The answer came in a passing exchange between two longer segments of a broadcast, prompted by a viewer question rather than by any dispute. Kiriakou did not name the reviewing office, describe an appeal, or say what the 120 rejected pages contained.

His account of the prepublication review system in general, its legal basis and the wider pattern of its application to former officers, is treated separately.

See also

- Prepublication review
- Central Intelligence Agency
- John Kiriakou
