Redactions to Ali Soufan's New Book

The New York Times is reporting that the CIA has demanded "extensive cuts from the memoir of a former F.B.I. agent who spent years near the center of the battle against Al Qaeda." Ali Soufan has been a vocal critic of the agency's harsh interrogation practices, and the book is apparently his latest argument that they were counterproductive. The redactions, at least as described by the New York Times, do seem a bit odd:

Among them, according to the people who have seen the correspondence, is a phrase from Mr. Soufan’s 2009 testimony at a Senate hearing, freely available both as video and transcript on the Web. Also chopped are references to the word “station” to describe the C.I.A.’s overseas offices, common parlance for decades. The agency removed the pronouns “I” and “me” from a chapter in which Mr. Soufan describes his widely reported role in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, an important terrorist facilitator and training camp boss. And agency officials took out references to the fact that a passport photo of one of the 9/11 hijackers who later lived in San Diego, Khalid al-Midhar, had been sent to the C.I.A. in January 2000—an episode described both in the 9/11 commission report and Mr. Tenet’s book.

The CIA in the story emphatically rejects the notion that it is trying to impede publication of a book that will cast it in a bad light. And, indeed, removing the word "station" is hardly likely to do that. But I can't see why Soufan should be blocked from publishing facts that have already been in Tenet's book or the 9/11 Commission report, both of which were cleared for publication. And, of course, there's nothing like forcing extensive redactions to a book to draw attention to it--particularly if the redactions turn out not to be justifiable on actual security grounds.