CIA, KGB, same thing..

Pretty unbelievable story here:

The CIA has imposed new and tighter restrictions on the books, articles, and opinion pieces published by former employees who are still contractors with the intelligence agency. According to several former CIA officials affected by the new policy, the rules are intended to suppress criticism of the Bush administration and of the CIA. The officials say the restrictions amount to an unprecedented political "appropriateness" test at odds with earlier CIA policies on outside publishing.

The move is a significant departure from the CIA's longtime practice of allowing ex-employees to take critical or contrary positions in public.

The move is a significant departure from the CIA's longtime practice of allowing ex-employees to take critical or contrary positions in public, particularly when they are contractors paid to advise the CIA on important topics and to publish their assessments.

This has to be in response to the ever increasing claims of ex-CIA that the lead up to the Iraq war was all bullshit, capped off by the 60 Minutes interview last Sunday with the chief of the CIA in Europe, who basically said the administration lied our nation into a war.

Can there be any clearer violation of the first amendment? Can there be any clearer sign the that the Bush administration is turning into nothing more than a Soviet style dictatorship?

But - maybe I'm missing the context here.. or maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. I must be missing part of the story, because all I can see is that the CIA is censoring their former officials and instructing them to not be critical of the Bush administration.

I'm sure there's a logical explanation for doing that.. there has to be, right? Otherwise we're living in a fascist dictatorship.

via Americablog: