critical of the Bush administration’s mishandling of America’s Iran policy
— in two op-eds published in the New York Times, another published in the
Los Angeles Times, an article published earlier this year in The American
Prospect, and a monograph just published by The Century Foundation, as
well as in numerous public statements, television appearances, and press
interviews.Â
    All of my publications on Iran — and, indeed, on any other policy
matter on which I have written since leaving government — were cleared
beforehand by the CIA’s Publication Review Board to confirm that I would
not be disclosing classified information.
    Until last week, the Publication Review Board had never sought to
remove or change a single word in any of my drafts, including in all of my
publications about the Bush administration’s handling of Iran policy.
However, last week, the White House inserted itself into the
prepublication review process for an op-ed on the administration’s
bungling of the Iran portfolio that I had prepared for the New York Times,
blocking publication of the piece on the grounds that it would reveal
classified information.
    This claim is false and, I have come to believe, fabricated by White
House officials to silence an established critic of the administration’s
foreign policy incompetence at a moment when the White House is working
hard to fend off political pressure to take a different approach to Iran
and the Middle East more generally.
    The op-ed is based on the longer paper I just published with The
Century Foundation — which was cleared by the CIA without modifying a
single word of the draft. Officials with the CIA’s Publication Review
Board have told me that, in their judgment, the draft op-ed does not
contain classified material, but that they must bow to the preferences of
the White House.
    The White House is demanding, before it will consider clearing the
op-ed for publication, that I excise entire paragraphs dealing with
matters that I have written about (and received clearance from the CIA to
do so) in several other pieces, that have been publicly acknowledged by
Secretary Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and former Deputy
Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and that have been extensively
covered in the media.
    These matters include Iran’s dialogue and cooperation with the United
States concerning Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and
Iran’s offer to negotiate a comprehensive “grand bargain” with the United
States in the spring of 2003.
    There is no basis for claiming that these issues are classified and
not already in the public domain.
    For the White House to make this claim, with regard to my op-ed and at
this particular moment, is nothing more than a crass effort to politicize
a prepublication review process — a process that is supposed to be about
the protection of classified information, and nothing else — to limit the
dissemination of views critical of administration policy.”