As NewsBusters was first to report last December, Navy veteran Zachary Young, the man who took CNN to court for malicious defamation and won, was set to release a memoir titled American Spy co-written by American Sniper author Scott McEwen. It would heavily describe CNN’s defamation from his perspective. But new information obtained by NewsBusters is that the Central Intelligence Agency, Young’s former employer, was blocking the book.
Speaking with someone familiar with the matter, NewsBusters can confirm that the CIA is withholding permission to allow the book to be published; that’s despite the fact that everything in the book pertaining to Young’s time in the Agency was already part of the public record via the trial.
NewsBusters has obtained a copy of the letter the CIA’s Publications Review Board received from Young. The letter, which included a copy of his manuscript, explained how all the information about his time in the Agency had already been released publicly and provided the evidence of it being broadcast around the world.
In his opening paragraph, Young made it clear that while he no longer worked for the Agency, he was abiding by his obligation to submit his manuscript for review and was doing so in “good faith”:
I respectfully submit the enclosed manuscript for prepublication review pursuant to my obligations as a former Agency officer. I understand that the purpose of this review is to identify and prevent the disclosure of classified national security information. I submit the manuscript in good faith to facilitate that process, and I note at the outset that, to the best of my knowledge, the manuscript contains no classified information.
Read Full Article: https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2026/06/26/cia-attempting-block-navy-vet-telling-cnn-defamation-story
