Esper Claims Defense Dept. Is Improperly Blocking Parts of His Memoir
Former Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper on Sunday sued the agency he once led, accusing officials at the Pentagon of improperly blocking significant portions of an upcoming memoir about his tumultuous tenure under President Donald J. Trump. The allegations by Mr. Esper, whom Mr. Trump fired shortly after losing his re-election bid last November, are laid out in a lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C.
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Mr. Esper said in a statement that his goal with the book, titled “A Sacred Oath,” which is expected to be published in May, was to give the public “a full and unvarnished accounting of our nation’s history, especially the more difficult periods.” He added: “I am more than disappointed the current administration is infringing on my First Amendment constitutional rights. And it is with regret that legal recourse is the only path now available for me to tell my full story to the American people.” Mr. Esper is among the most senior former government officials, if not the most senior, to sue for prior restraint related to a book. The lawsuit came a year after a presidential campaign in which President Biden promised to restore the norms that had been tossed aside by his predecessor.
Executive branch employees — ranging from senior officials like the secretary of state and the national security adviser to low-level ones like federal prosecutors and agents — have to submit their manuscripts to the prepublication review process. That process is intended to prevent materials that may damage national security from becoming public while protecting the author’s First Amendment rights. In cases where an agency or a department has an issue with information being revealed, that section of the book is supposed to be removed or edited to obscure the problematic content. The process is not supposed to be used to smother embarrassing or politically damaging information from becoming public. During the Trump administration, officials were accused of using prepublication review to silence John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser who was trying to publish a book on his time working for Mr. Trump that contained many anecdotes that the president wanted to keep private.
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“While I appreciate their efforts, I should not be required to change my views, opinions or descriptions of events simply because they may be too candid at times for normal diplomatic protocol,” Mr. Esper said in the email, adding that the review process was “about protecting classified information and not harming national security — two important standards to which I am fully committed” and that his “constitutional rights should not be abridged because my story or choice of words may prompt uncomfortable discussions in foreign policy circles.”
Also troubling to Mr. Esper, according to the suit, was the fact that some stories in the draft manuscript suddenly began appearing in news articles. “At least one story, which was more than a year old and known to only a small handful of senior D.O.D. officials, had not previously been publicly discussed, and the timing of the appearance appears suspicious,” the suit said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/28/us/politics/mark-esper-memoir-lawsuit.html
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