{"id":9365,"date":"2006-12-16T12:20:38","date_gmt":"2006-12-16T17:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9365.html"},"modified":"2006-12-16T12:20:38","modified_gmt":"2006-12-16T17:20:38","slug":"censoring-flynt-leverett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/censoring-flynt-leverett\/","title":{"rendered":"Censoring Flynt Leverett"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m anxious to hear the White House’s explanation for this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Middle East analyst Flynt Leverett, who served under President Bush on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the New America Foundation, revealed today that the White House has been blocking the publication of an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times. The column is critical of the administration’s refusal to engage Iran.<\/p>\n

Leverett’s op-ed has already been cleared by the CIA, where he was a senior analyst. Leverett explained, “I’ve been doing this for three and a half years since leaving government, and I’ve never had to go to the White House to get clearance for something that I was publishing as long as the CIA said, ‘Yeah, you’re not putting classified information.'”<\/p>\n

According to Leverett the op-ed was “all based on stuff that Secretary Powell, Secretary Rice, Deputy Secretary Armitage have talked about publicly. It’s been extensively reported in the media.” Leverett says the incident shows “just how low people like Elliot Abrams at the NSC [National Security Council] will stoop to try and limit the dissemination of arguments critical of the administration’s policy.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s one thing to crack down on people who work for the federal government — there are a quite a few scientists<\/a> on the administration’s payroll who talk about censorship — but Leverett is a private citizen, working for a think tank, who wants to recommend a path for a responsible policy towards Iran. The administration doesn’t like the message, so it’s silencing the messenger.<\/p>\n

Like Maha<\/a>, I think this seems to be a near-textbook definition of government censorship.
\n
\nAnd what, exactly, does Leverett want to say? It sounds pretty straightforward<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Flynt Leverett, a Middle East expert who once worked for Bush’s National Security Council, advocates a “grand bargain,” offering Iran full diplomatic and economic relations and a security guarantee in return for forswearing nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

This was “the best of the available options for American policy,” Leverett, now with the New America Foundation, told a conference hosted by the CATO Institute thinktank. […]<\/p>\n

The Iranians “will not cooperate with us on Iraq or the nuclear issue unless it is part of a broader package” because they want a fundamentally different relationship with the United States, Leverett said.<\/p>\n

This would include a U.S. commitment not to use force to change the government and a lifting of unilateral sanctions, he added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Keep in mind, after Leverett wrote his op-ed, it was cleared — without edits — by the CIA. Not so fast, said the White House, which shut the piece down, apparently because it could.<\/p>\n

The “it’s classified” excuse seems to be the rationale of the day<\/a> for hiding information the Bush gang prefers to keep quiet, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m anxious to hear the White House’s explanation for this. Middle East analyst Flynt Leverett, who served under President Bush on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the New America Foundation, revealed today that the White House has been blocking the publication of an op-ed he wrote for the New York […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}