Information security

The CIA Cleared Her Book Twice. Then It Took It Back. Why? It’s a Secret.

Sarah Carlson spent seven years analyzing the attack plans of Middle Eastern terrorist groups for the CIA. Now the agency is trying to stop Carlson from writing a book about one tumultuous aspect of her service.

Carlson is set to file a lawsuit demanding the agency permit her to go forward with a book that touches upon her time as an analyst for the CIA’s highly secretive Counterterrorism Center. The bureau within the CIA that ensures former officials don’t publish official secrets, the Publications Review Board, already cleared her manuscript twice.

But in November, two years after Carlson first submitted her manuscript, the CIA board told her that “the entire manuscript reveals classified information,” according to a copy of her imminent lawsuit provided to The Daily Beast. It’s even trying to stop Carlson from publishing her intended book title.

The book, Carlson told The Daily Beast, doesn’t reveal a scandal. She doesn’t “say anything negative about the CIA,” she said. “It’s very focused on a specific year and what happened there during a dangerous environment, a crisis and what we did in response.”