

Pentagon destroys thousands of copies of Army officer's memoir - sp332
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/09/25/books.destroyed/

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sp332
I'm really wondering whether this controversy was manufactured to bring
attention to the book. The situation is a perfect storm of Streisand-effect-
inducing terms: Army, Pentagon, DoD, Afghanistan, 9/11 Commission, redacted,
book-burning, censorship, DIA, CIA, NSA, SOC, bronze-star medal recipient,
black-ops team, Bush administration.

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wccrawford
Oy, again... They bought all the -current- copies because there was sensitive
information in them. The author, publisher and government came to an agreement
that the government would buy all the existing copies and the publisher can
print a new, modified version.

They were not forced into this. They agreed to it because the safety of our
nation, and it's people, are at risk if the information gets out.

It's a compromise that does the best it can with a bad situation.

~~~
sp332
The book did not have sensitive information according to the Army who vetted
the book ahead of time. This isn't a legal action prohibiting anyone from
selling or buying the book. It's still on file with the Library of Congress,
and I'm sure the author, editor, reviewers, publisher etc. all have a bunch of
copies still.

~~~
ENOTTY
Previous articles said that the book contained names of intelligence
operatives whose lives would be in danger if their names were revealed.

Also, he submitted it to his unit, which may not have known the actual names
of intelligence operatives or had previous experience dealing with highly
classified information.

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bobds
Apparently, there was a copy of the book on eBay:

"At least one seller on the online auction site eBay claiming to have a first-
edition printing is selling it for an asking price of nearly $2,000. The
listed retail price for the second printing is $25.99."

I searched on eBay a few minutes ago, there were multiple copies for sale,
possibly 2nd editions pre-orders by opportunists, none at the mentioned $2000
price.

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vaksel
to be fair it probably cost less than having the guy assassinated and staging
a "suicide"

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mmphosis
_Shaffer's publisher, St. Martin's Press, released a second printing of the
book that it said had incorporated some changes the government had sought
"while redacting other text he (Shaffer) was told was classified."

From single words and names to entire paragraphs, blacked out lines appear
throughout the book's 299 pages._

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makmanalp
It's adorable that in this day and age, the DoD still thinks that information
can just be gotten rid of. On the other hand, kudos to them for taking a
rather civil approach.

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ENOTTY
Wikileaks claims they have a copy:
<http://twitter.com/wikileaks/statuses/25607235096>

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TamDenholm
I see one flaw with their plan, eBooks...

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tyng
We shall see the censored text pretty soon on Wikileak - c'mon Pentagon, it's
the age of internet!

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White_N_Nerdy
Whose money are they supposed to use? Whose money do they use to torture
people or to conduct domestic propaganda campaigns?

~~~
sp332
If there was any legal basis for this, you'd think one of the CIA, NSA, DIA,
DoD, or SOC could have found a way to ban or properly confiscate the books.
Or, if people at the Pentagon who were embarrassed had pooled their own money
and bought the books like this, I would have been OK with that. But using
public funds to ineffectively remove the books from circulation seems like an
abuse of power.

~~~
dschobel
So you wonder why they didn't flat out ban or confiscate the book and then you
say that paying for it was an abuse of power?

That's a curious position...

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tw1st3dst33l
The point isn't that their actions are too extreme, only that not only is the
method ineffective, but they're using our money to buy and burn these books.
If they HAD used a ban, it would not be a total waste of money as this is.
Because they are just making people pay attention to this book. Had they not
burned these, it most likely would have been passed off as yet another one of
dozens of books about 9/11. Now that there has been this reaction, people know
that the government is taking it seriously. Therefore, you should take it
seriously too.

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NonEUCitizen
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451>

~~~
almost
In all fairness, this doesn't have more than most superficial relationship to
the ideas in Fahrenheit 451 (which is an awesome book).

~~~
grandalf
Superficial? We've seen with the stuff leaked by Wikileaks that much of what
was classified contained information that would cause the public to question
the war effort and perhaps become quite upset/involved in stopping the war.

