Mark Esper, who briefly served as Secretary of Defense in the Trump Administration, has sued DOD for attempting to censor, A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times, due out from William Morrow in May of 2022.
“Esper claims Pentagon officials are using the pre-publication review process to block key portions of his forthcoming memoir,” reports Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly senior writer. “Attorneys for Esper allege that, ‘significant text… crucial to telling important stories’ is being “improperly withheld from publication…under the guise of classification concerns.”
https://velocityofcontentpodcast.com/review-or-censorship/
Catalog copy for the book promises “shocking details” of “a White House bent on circumventing the Constitution for its own benefit,” Albanese tells me.
“The problem Esper complains of is a well-worn tale for many former government employees with book manuscripts,” he says. “It seems clear that government reviewers are not interested in having former government officials say what they know—and that’s a problem.”