I quit the CIA in a fit of anguish and published a memoir, “Decent Interval,” about botched intelligence and the abandonment of our Vietnamese allies. Prosecutors in the Carter Justice Department hauled me in for allegedly violating CIA secrecy agreements and an invisible “trust” by publishing my book without agency approval.
They did not accuse me of revealing any secrets, classified or otherwise. No secrets, period. My offense, as they saw it, was procedural: I’d deprived the agency of the chance to sort out whether my writings might expose secrets before the damage was done.
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[The Supreme Court] decreed that I be gagged for life – required to submit to agency screeners anything I might write about what I’d learned “as a result of” my government service
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Some journalists decried this penalizing of nonclassified disclosures in the absence of proven harm, and warned of serious damage to the First Amendment.
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The cigarette manufacturer Brown & Williamson learned that a former employee, Jeffrey Wigand, was about to expose what he claimed was a company cover-up of the true hazards of nicotine. Invoking the Snepp ruling and other case law, the firm’s lawyers threatened to sue CBS if it aired a Wigand interview, which they said would violate a nondisclosure agreement he’d signed on the job. CBS buckled and canceled his appearance.
The author of that piece, ex-CIA agent Frank Snepp, also has a very revealing interview about how the CIA would plant stories in the most influential newspapers, to manipulate the American public:
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 18.7 ms ] threadThey did not accuse me of revealing any secrets, classified or otherwise. No secrets, period. My offense, as they saw it, was procedural: I’d deprived the agency of the chance to sort out whether my writings might expose secrets before the damage was done.
[..]
[The Supreme Court] decreed that I be gagged for life – required to submit to agency screeners anything I might write about what I’d learned “as a result of” my government service
[..]
Some journalists decried this penalizing of nonclassified disclosures in the absence of proven harm, and warned of serious damage to the First Amendment.
[..]
The cigarette manufacturer Brown & Williamson learned that a former employee, Jeffrey Wigand, was about to expose what he claimed was a company cover-up of the true hazards of nicotine. Invoking the Snepp ruling and other case law, the firm’s lawyers threatened to sue CBS if it aired a Wigand interview, which they said would violate a nondisclosure agreement he’d signed on the job. CBS buckled and canceled his appearance.
The author of that piece, ex-CIA agent Frank Snepp, also has a very revealing interview about how the CIA would plant stories in the most influential newspapers, to manipulate the American public:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwerBZG83YM