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Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

If the safety of our nation, and it's people, are at risk if the truth gets out, then we have a lot more to worry about than some guys's book.

Spoken like someone who has never worked in intelligence or the military. Don't get me wrong, I'm very critical of the US military-intelligence machine, but your comment implies that no secrets are worth keeping if they're true, which is just patently false. There's a huge body of strategic, operational, and tactical information that should definitely be classified. I'm not saying the handling of this particular incident made sense (as I don't know all the facts; do you?) just that the world is more complex than you imagine.

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No, punting out that the author is not someone trying to spread secret info, but someone who wrote things that are embarrassing. If he'd had really classified Info in the book, he'd be facing charges.

This is all about embarrassment.

Are you sure that he's not going to be facing charges? Do you know what info was in the book and what impact it would have or not have on national security issues? It sounds like what happened was that he put information in the book that could be considered classified or at least sensitive, the Army Reserve Command approved it, but then after publication, other branches of the government saw things they would not have approved. My guess is that pressing charges would be difficult, since he got approval prior to publication, but that doesn't mean that no classified info slipped through.

Again, my point is not at all that this situation was handled well, just that the point that withholding the truth from the public isn't necessarily the terrible injustice that it sounds like.

And by announcing the destruction of the current print of books, now those that care can diff the new and old to see who the operatives are.

If they had said nothing, it would have just been a "3rd printing" with no fanfare.

And the book is still in the LoC.

This is a common misunderstanding. Yes, if someone purposely tries to release classified information they will face charges. That isn't what happened in this case.

In the defense industry, an author can write a book (or a scientific paper, or really anything else) and s/he gets it the content reviewed for release. The release reviewers are responsible for ensuring there is no classified content in the written work. It is not within the capabilities of any single person to vett a manuscript completely. Inadvertently including information that is classified is understandable. Hell, in some cases individual pieces of information are not classified but the aggregate is. Hence the need for the release review process. This is standard practice in the defense industry.

In this case, the release review was done incorrectly. The people on the hook here are the ones who reviewed his manuscript, not the author himself. Your claim that the author would be facing charges if there was classified information in the book is incorrect.

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