“On Friday, August 13, 2010, just as St. Martin’s Press was readying its initial shipment of this book, the Department of Defense contacted us to express its concern that our publication of Operation Dark Heart could cause damage to U.S. national security. After consulting with our author, we agreed to incorporate some of the government’s changes into a revised edition of his book while redacting other text he was told was classified. The newly revised book keeps our national interests secure, but this highly qualified warrior’s story is still intact. Shaffer’s assessment of successes and failures in Afghanistan remains dramatic, shocking, and crucial reading for anyone concerned about the outcome of the war.”

I’m not sure what everyone is hopped up about. What’s going right in Afghanistan that need to be protected? I would understand if we had taken down the Taliban and whoever else is involved but that’s obviously not the case.

Do you have a source for that? I’ve read that DOD did, in fact, sign off on this book in January before DIA got wind of it and freaked out.

From the NYT: “Army reviewers suggested various changes and redactions and signed off on the edited book in January, saying they had ‘no objection on legal or operational security grounds,’ and the publisher, St. Martin’s Press, planned for an Aug. 31 release.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/us/10books.html?_r=1

From the Guardian: “The army had cleared the book by Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer, about ‘black ops’ in the Afghan war when he was based at Bagram in 2003, for publication after relatively minor changes.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/13/pentagon-afghanistan-spy-book-pulp

Scott Horton suggests that this effort to silence the book after it had been approved by DOD is the work of JSOC:
http://harpers.org/archive/2010/09/hbc-90007612

I only know what I read in the papers, but I’ve not heard anyone, other than Anon in these comments, suggest that Shaffer did not clear this book with DOD.

In otherwords, we should take the book burners’ word for it.

Actually, with the way our government operates in political theater these days, this smacks more of them trying to give legitimacy to the book. I haven’t read it, but I would do so with the eye of a skeptic rather than thinking this must mean the guy is telling the truth.

On the author’s side, you should always make sure you have a complete, unabridged copy in the hands of everybody who would be happy to say something long before the government even knows you might be saying something. Sure, sell your book, but if the government gets in your way, be ready to pull the switch and make the information available for free. You may not make money, but you’ll still get your story out, and you can make money on the next book.

On the government’s side, publicly buying and pulping books does nothing to hide your secrets. Putting out a redacted copy, making the secrets stand out with a ‘diff’, is even worse. In other dictatorships, you and your family would be tortured and killed if you said anything unpopular. It sure kept people from talking. I hope our government doesn’t get to that point, but if they were really serious about it, that’s what they would be doing.

And for the love of reason, pick and choose your battles! Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to redact otherwise publicly-available information is a waste of time and an embarrassment to all those involved. If they would save the redacting only for the things that really needed to be hidden, maybe we would be a bit more forgiving and let them do it, but if they redact public knowledge and inconsequential details, we’re going to want this redaction nonsense eliminated.

Military intelligence ain’t.

I’ve never understood how a satellite picture of someone’s house, or non-embarrassing footage of some kid’s face, threatens them either.

The most predictable effect of redaction is the attempt to discover redacted content.

I love the hypocrisy … countless hours of fun for the rest of the world.

Does the redacting happen before downloading it … or after?

You can read Shane’s article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/18/us/18book.html

This is why the rest of the D.o.D. photos, supposedly “much worse than those that came from Abu Ghraib”, were not released to the public. It wasn’t because the photos revealed some secret strategy employed by our troops… rather, it was because what we have done is so vile that the world could possibly turn on us and make demands that we aren’t yet willing to meet.

This is all about PR management.