Pre-Publication Review

In order to protect against the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, you are required to submit for security review any material intended for public release that might be based in any way on information you learned through your access to classified information. This requirement covers all written materials, including technical papers, books, articles, and manuscripts. It also includes lectures, speeches, films, videotapes. It includes works of fiction as well as non-fiction.

For purposes of pre-publication review, an electronic file is the same as a paper document. See Pre-Publication Review of Web Site Content for additional detail. If you would need to get pre-publication review for a hard-copy version of something you write, you need pre-publication review before putting the same material on line. Get pre-publication review for any such document or file that you:

• Submit to an online publication
• Draft and store on your publicly accessible home page.
• Send to another Internet site, regardless of the site or location.

For some persons with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information or a Special Access Program, the requirement for pre-publication review may include the resume of your work experience that you prepare when looking for another job. The fact of having a clearance for access to SCI may always be cited on a resume. It is only the specific tasks you perform that may, under some circumstances, reveal the existence of a highly classified program.

If any portion of the information you propose to disclose "might" be covered by your secrecy agreement, you may not take any steps toward public disclosure until you have received written permission to do so. This is a lifetime obligation. It remains long after you have moved on to other unclassified employment or even retired from government service, as long as the information remains classified.

If the government disagrees with your contention that information comes from public rather than classified sources, you may be required to identify specific public sources. The government may take control of all rights, title, and interest in any and all "royalties, remunerations, and emoluments that have resulted, will result or may result from any disclosure, publication, or revelation of classified information not consistent with the terms" of the secrecy agreement you signed at the time you accepted your security clearance.

Related Topic: Pre-Publication Review of Web Site Content.

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