Suing Over the CIA's Red Pen

by

in

Washington Post:

“I just told him I’m preceding. I wasn’t going to back down,” Berntsen said in an interview last week. “It was very awkward.”

Berntsen resigned, wrote his book and, as required, submitted “Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda: A Personnel Account by the CIA’s Key Field Commander” to the CIA’s Publications Review Board, which redacted about five pages of the 400-plus-page manuscript. “They were very efficient and thoughtful,” he said last week.

Then the board sent it to the Directorate of Operations, where Berntsen had worked, as is the practice. There, Berntsen contends, “Mr. Foggo made good on his word” and 70 pages were blacked out.

Berntsen’s lawsuit, filed earlier this year in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asserts that the CIA violated his First Amendment rights in redacting as much as it did.

Here.