State Department Mulls Book Burning

The U.S. Department of State is under growing pressure from the Central Intelligence Agency to destroy its inventory of an official history of U.S. relations with Greece during the 1960s and to replace it with a new, sanitized version. The book, titled "Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1964-1968, volume XVI," has already been printed but has drawn last-minute objections from the CIA because it includes a handful of documents that allude to CIA intervention in the electoral process in Greece some 35 years ago. A CIA proposal to dispose of the existing inventory and reprint the volume without the offending documents "has been bruited for weeks," according to one government historian familiar with the situation. "Every time the subject is raised in my presence, I mention those dread words 'cover up.' Or at least they should be dread words. It seems to me that the existence of the volumes is too well known. Destroying them would be a huge public relations disaster for the U.S. government," the historian said. "Book burning is definitely not a politically correct thing to do."