Following up on an item from Saturday, we learned late last week that Middle East analyst [tag]Flynt Leverett[/tag], who served under Bush on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the New America Foundation, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times criticizing the Bush administration’s policy towards [tag]Iran[/tag] and recommending a better approach. Leverett submitted the piece to the CIA for review, and it was cleared, without edits.
Then the [tag]White House[/tag] intervened, blocking publication of the op-ed, claiming the piece included classified information. Leverett noted that the “controversial” elements of the opinion piece are already in the public domain and have all been talked about publicly by administration officials, including Condi Rice and Dick Armitage. It didn’t matter — the Bush gang didn’t like the message, so they silenced the messenger. It was a near-textbook definition of government [tag]censorship[/tag].
To their credit, Leverett, the NYT, and former Foreign Service officer Hillary Mann figured out a way around the White House’s attempts to silence them.
Here is the redacted version of a draft Op-Ed article we wrote for The Times, as blacked out by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in the normal prepublication review process and demanded substantial deletions. Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.
Indeed, the deleted portions of the original draft reveal no classified material…. These aspects have been extensively reported in the news media, and one of us, Mr. Leverett, has written about them in The Times and other publications with the explicit permission of the review board. We provided the following citations to the board to demonstrate that all of the material the White House objected to is already in the public domain. Unfortunately, to make sense of much of our Op-Ed article, readers will have to read the citations for themselves.
The result was a clever bit of publishing — the Times ran a redacted op-ed piece, with citations to the unclassified censored content, allowing readers to learn what the White House refuses to let them see.
And what is this radical policy proposal that the White House is so anxious to stifle? [tag]Leverett[/tag] believes the U.S. should offer Iran full diplomatic and economic relations and a security guarantee in return for forswearing nuclear weapons.
Iran will only cooperate with the United States, whether in Iraq or on the nuclear issue, as part of a broader rapprochement addressing its core security concerns. This requires extension of a United States security guarantee — effectively, an American commitment not to use force to change the borders or form of government of the Islamic Republic — bolstered by the prospect of lifting United States unilateral sanctions and normalizing bilateral relations. This is something no United States administration has ever offered, and that the Bush administration has explicitly refused to consider.
Indeed, no administration would be able to provide a security guarantee unless United States concerns about Iran’s nuclear activities, regional role and support for terrorist organizations were definitively addressed. That is why, at this juncture, resolving any of the significant bilateral differences between the United States and Iran inevitably requires resolving all of them. Implementing the reciprocal commitments entailed in a “grand bargain” would almost certainly play out over time and in phases, but all of the commitments would be agreed up front as a package, so that both sides would know what they were getting.
This is hardly a radical, dangerous approach. Indeed, it seems to offer the president a roadmap towards an effective foreign policy, which would certainly be an improvement on the status quo.
In retrospect, the Bush gang not only appears petty for having tried to stifle the opinion peice, with bogus arguments about classified material that are already in the public domain, it also appears to have backfired. By trying to keep Leverett’s perspective from public view, the White House inadvertently created a “forbidden fruit” dynamic — everyone wanted to see whatever it was they weren’t supposed to see. Ironically, interest in Leverett’s op-ed grew dramatically after the White House intervened.
Nice job, guys.
Post Script: One last tidbit on the Leverett story. Earlier this week, asked about efforts to stifle the piece on Iran, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow initially said, “I don’t know anything about it.” A few seconds later, Snow added, “The White House is not blocking his writings.” How would he know if he doesn’t know anything about it?