Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Pentagon to McChrystal: Put a sock in it

The Pentagon security clearance office has forced General McChrystal to delay publication of his memoir, which was supposed to come out next month. No word on how long the delay will be. Word is that McChrystal wrote about a lot of special operations actions. This wasn’t a problem until No Easy Day came out and ...

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The Pentagon security clearance office has forced General McChrystal to delay publication of his memoir, which was supposed to come out next month. No word on how long the delay will be.

The Pentagon security clearance office has forced General McChrystal to delay publication of his memoir, which was supposed to come out next month. No word on how long the delay will be.

Word is that McChrystal wrote about a lot of special operations actions. This wasn’t a problem until No Easy Day came out and freaked out everybody in officialdom.

I e-mailed McChrystal to ask about this and got one of those cryptic Special Ops responses: "Thanks. Passing this to my publisher." They didn’t have any immediate comment but said one is forthcoming. 

Apparently no one has mentioned the delay to Amazon — they still have the book coming out Nov. 12. That’s just over a month from now, which makes me think that the publisher probably already has printed the first batch.

UPDATE:  At 10 am, I received this statement from Will Weisser, marketing director for Portfolio publishers:

"We have decided to delay the publication date of General McChrystal’s book, My Share of the Task, as the book continues to undergo a security review by the Department of Defense. The new publication date has not been confirmed yet.

General McChrystal has spent 22 months working closely with military officials to make sure he follows all the rules for writing about the armed forces, including special operations. The clearance process has been detailed and time consuming. General McChrystal was extremely careful not to include information that would endanger any military personnel or their mission, and he’s confident the book does not do so. Even so, he remains committed to securing official clearance from DOD.

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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