WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- The memoirs of a former CIA official, who sued the agency for the right to publish about its first training class after Sept. 11, will be out this month.
Thomas Waters is one of the 150,000 people who applied to join the agency in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings, and one of the 100 or so of them who were admitted to the CIA Directorate of Operations training program in what he says was the largest, most diverse class in its history.
He left the CIA after two years for what his lawyer later said were "unrelated family reasons," and is now an intelligence contractor with the Department of Defense.
His book, "Class 11: Inside the CIA's First Post-9/11 Spy Class," was originally submitted to the agency for pre-publication review in May 2004.
He said the CIA's Publication Review Board, which checks all such manuscripts to ensure they contain no classified information, approved the text in late September 2004, after requiring redactions, but then turned around last February -- when the book was weeks from being published -- and demanded dozens of other changes.
Waters sued in March, claiming a violation of his first amendment rights. The case remains unresolved, but Water's publishers, Dutton, which is part of Penguin Group, say he has fulfilled all the board's requirements and they plan to publish Oct. 19.
According to the publisher's blurb, "Class 11 provides intimate and human portraits of the surprisingly diverse group of everyday Americans who left comfortable lives in order to serve their country's intelligence services (after the Sept. 11 attacks)."
Among them were an investment banker, a commercial airline pilot, a single mother, and a professional football player, "whose professional and ethnic diversity reflects every part of America."
The publishers say Waters also describes "learning the skills necessary for clandestine international service, such as evading foreign authorities and subtly convincing people to turn over information to the agency."
