Huffington Post Compares Censored Operation Dark Heart to Original

Marcus Baram based his story of Pentagon censorship on a Federation of American Scientists report by Steven Aftergood:

The most common redaction in the entire book is Shaffer's cover name, "Christopher Stryker," and other popular redactions are references to the National Security Agency, the abbreviation SIGINT (signals intelligence) and comments like "Guys on phones were always great sources of intel," notes Aftergood.

He also reports that only about 10% of the redacted passages, such as the identity of the CIA station chief in Kabul and a physical description of that station, have "some conceivable security sensitivity."

Among the more unnecessary redactions: the name of "Deliverance" star Ned Beatty -- "which is not properly classified in any known universe" -- but is blacked out on page 15 of the book. Overall, the national security classification exemplified in the new book "does not exactly command respect," writes Aftergood.

Here's a link to the FAS website's article:http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2010/09/dark-contrast.pdf.