"Here is the redacted version of a draft Op-Ed article [3] we wrote for The [New York] Times, as blacked out by the Central Intelligence Agency [4]'s Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in the normal prepublication review process," write Flynt Leverett [5] and Hillary Mann. Leverett, a former CIA analyst and National Security Council [6] official, has accused the White House [7] of using the CIA vetting process "to silence an established critic of the administration's foreign policy incompetence." The column accompanying the redacted op-ed includes citations of previous news articles, "to demonstrate that all of the material the White House objected to is already in the public domain. Unfortunately, to make sense of much of our Op-Ed article [3], readers will have to read the citations for themselves." Leverett and Mann vow to "continue to press for the release of the article without the material deleted," adding that "national security must be above politics."