Your browser does not support viewing this document. Click here to download the document.
The CIA book that the agency itself tried to suppress. The book in which Victor Marchetti, former high-ranking CIA official, tells how the agency actually works and how its original purpose has been subverted by its obsession with clandestine operations. The first book the U.S. Government ever went to court to censor before publication. Published with blank spaces indicating the exact location and length
of the 168 deletions demanded by the CIA
of the 168 deletions demanded by the CIA
Victor Marchetti, an intelligence agent who had risen to the level of special assistant to the executive director of the U.S. federal government’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), left after becoming disillusioned with the CIA’s covert actions to destabilize governments considered unfriendly to the United States. When he submitted an article to Esquire magazine, the CIA charged that his manuscript contained classified information and won an injunction to enjoin it from publication. Marchetti appealed, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that the secrecy agreement Marchetti had signed when he was hired by the CIA should be enforced. This agreement required Marchetti—like all CIA agents—to submit his manuscripts to the CIA for approval before publishing them. In Marchetti v. United States (1968), the Court of Appeals thus held that the CIA had the right to prevent publication, and Marchetti became the first writer in U.S. history subjected to such a censorship order. Marchetti appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but it denied certiorari. He later tried to turn his manuscript into a novel, The Rope Dancer. Although the CIA tried to prevent its publication, they finally approved it after Marchetti removed all the portions to which the CIA objected.
Your browser does not support viewing this document. Click here to download the document.