William F. Buckley admitted breaking CIA’s rules—three years too late
Playing favorites with national security makes a mockery of the game.
Author’s note: Sam Tanenhaus has just published a long-awaited biography of conservative icon and National Review founder, William F. Buckley. Among other things, the 1,080-page tome explores Buckley’s brief stint as a CIA operative, a little-known episode in his more than half-century career in public life. Michael Isikoff of Spy talk has just published a perceptive review of Buckley: The Life and The Revolution that Changed America. He reminds us that during Watergate Buckley helped his former CIA boss, E. Howard Hunt, cover up the scandal. Later, during my own encounters with Buckley, I discovered that his capacity for deceit and evasion extended to his obligations to the CIA itself.
Here’s that take:
When I published Decent Interval in 1977, I did so because I believed the public had a right to know the truth about the bungled end to the war in Vietnam, where I had served as a CIA officer for nearly six years. Though I revealed no classified information, I bypassed the Agency’s prepublication review process—on principle. For that, the Carter Administration sued me. In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled against me in United States v. Snepp, forcing me to forfeit my first amendment rights and my royalties and marking me as a warning to other would-be whistleblowers.
Three years later, in 1983, William F. Buckley Jr.—a once-proud spook and a longtime defender of the Agency—published a memoir of his own, Overdrive. In it, he casually admitted: “I do not, as a matter of course, submit what I write to the CIA for clearance. I am not under any formal obligation to do so, and no one has asked me to.”
No lawsuit followed. No forfeiture. No public reprimand. Just silence.
Had Buckley made that admission publicly while my case was still in litigation, it might have changed the outcome. It could have helped demonstrate that the CIA was not applying its rules uniformly—that it was punishing dissidents like me while giving a free pass to loyalists like Buckley. Instead, his acknowledgment came years too late, safely distanced from the courtroom where selective enforcement could have been a powerful legal argument.
To be fair, Buckley had invited me more than once to appear on his TV program, “Firing Line.” Our exchanges had been spirited but civil, and I respected his willingness to engage across ideological lines. But what struck me then—and strikes me more forcefully now—is the double standard his conduct represented. He had carved out a private exemption from the very rules he publicly upheld. He disapproved of my decision to bypass Agency review but made no apologies for doing the same himself.
Buckley had every reason to know the implications of his words. He had built his reputation on defending the CIA’s moral clarity. His novels in the Blackford Oakes series were deeply informed by his time at the Agency, yet he never submitted them for review—and never faced consequences.
The CIA’s selective enforcement of its secrecy rules is part of a larger problem: the politicization of prepublication review. In the wake of United States v. Snepp, the Agency doubled down on silencing dissenters, while letting sympathetic voices publish freely. I wasn’t punished because I endangered national security—I didn’t. I was punished because I embarrassed the Agency.
Buckley never faced that threat. He burnished the CIA’s image and reinforced its mystique. And so, the rules bent in his direction.
This isn’t just about fairness. It’s about the corrosive effect of selective secrecy. something very much in vogue in the current administration. The CIA argued to the Supreme Court that enforcing the review process was vital to national security. But when a politically aligned alumnus skipped that process, nothing happened.
That tells you all you need to know about how power and loyalty can distort even the most highly touted institutional rules.
I’ve made my peace with what happened. But I still believe that the truth matters. And part of that truth is this: William F. Buckley Jr. committed the same offense alleged against me. The enforcers looked the other way, establishing a pattern of political favoritism in the security game that persists today.
