Sarah Carlson, who spent seven years analyzing the attack plans of Middle Eastern terrorist groups for the CIA, claims that the agency is trying to stop her from writing a book about one aspect of her service. Carlson is planning to file a lawsuit demanding the CIA allows her to work on a book that touches upon her time as an analyst for the CIA’s highly secretive Counterterrorism Center. Her manuscript has already been cleared twice by the bureau within the CIA that ensures former officials don’t publish official secrets, the Publications Review Board, reports The Daily Beast. But then two years after Carlson first submitted her manuscript, the CIA board told her “the entire manuscript reveals classified information,” according to a copy of her imminent lawsuit provided to The Daily Beast. The agency is even trying to stop her from publishing the book title she wants.
Carlson told The Daily Beast that the book does not reveal a scandal or say anything negative about the CIA. “It’s very focused on a specific year and what happened there during a dangerous environment, a crisis and what we did in response,” said to The Daily Beast. All she can say is that it was about a “devolving situation” in North Africa. “I really do want to protect classified information,” Carlson said. She claims she wrote the book “so hopefully we could avoid a repeat of what happened, avoid the risk of war and intervention outside the major war zones.”
Carlson and her lawyer, Mark Zaid, claim the agency has used official secrecy to violate her First Amendment rights. They allege the agency has “improperly classified information that is, in fact, unclassified.”
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