John Bolton's revelatory book gets redacted. Wholesale!

John Bolton, would-be bestselling author and holder of Donald Trump secrets, has become Enemy Number 1 in the White House. And Trump and co have the perfect revenge. On the grounds that his book contains top secret classified information, it has been banned from publication for the foreseeable future. In other words until at least November!! It's a classic move by the White House. Bolton's book had to be sent to the review team in the National Security Council that monitors all ex-cabinet members' memoirs and if a chunk of it hadn't been leaked to the New York Times, they would probably have sat on it for months. Now they're going to sit on it for months anyway but claiming that Bolton has breached classification rules. Worthy articles have appeared in the American press saying that under the review system books are only supposed to be evaluated by members of the "records management division" and not sent around the White House for a view, and certainly not from the president. It's all supposed to be non-political, just purely about national security. Hohohoho! EVERYTHING is political. Especially national security. National security is what you want it to be, and the dividing line between genuine secrets and geuine political emabarrassment is wavery at the best of times. By wonderful coincidence, the vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General John Hyten, has just declared that far too much stuff is classified as secret by the Pentagon and he wants to start lowering or declassifying a whole lot of information to make it easier for people outside the Defence Department to know what the hell is going on. He mentioned a comical incident recently when he attended a top secret briefing on America's strategic deterrence status - he was then commander of US Strategic Command. The top generals attending were all four stars and cleared for the most secret stuff but their three-star staff officers who went with them were banned from attending because they were NOT cleared for such highly classified intelligence. Hyten said that was crazy. Four stars always want to know what their three-star chaps are thinking! But for the White House, Bolton's book is obviously so full of seriously embarrassing recollections by the former national security adviser that the review board, or far more likely the president himself, wants to whip the rug from under Bolton's moneymaking book dreams by stamping national security violations all through the manuscript. It's such a wheeze, and there is nothing Bolton and his publishers and lawyers can do about it because it's the oldest game in the book. If the White House decides that, "In the morning President Trump rang the British prime minister and said, look you blithering idiot..", is top secret, then top secret it is. Is that sentence a matter of national security? Definitely not, Bolton would say. But Trump and his team would say, "Hang on, that's all about personal relations between the president of the United States and the prime minister of Her Majesty's government, so of course it's a matter of national security." You see? It's easy! By the way I'm not suggesting Bolton wrote this sentence in his book or that Trump thinks the British prime minister is a blithering idiot or that the British prime minister IS a blithering idiot. It's just an example of the kind of argument that might be made by both sides in this Bolton book drama. Bolton himself has made his view clear which is that he knows all about national security after many years in the government business and was sure that his book contained absolutely no violations whatsoever. I recall Bob Gates being annoyed when he submitted one of his memoirs to the White House, believing it to be free of any classification breaches. As a former defence secretary and CIA director he also knew all about what should remain secret. But lo and behold, the Obama administration blue-pencilled chunks of his book and he wasn't happy at all. In Bolton's case I imagine that most of the chapters now look more blue than white. Expect over the next few days further leaks to The New York Times!