WH’s Gidley on Bolton’s Book: ‘I’m Not Aware of Any Effort for It to Stop Being Published’

Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley discussed former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s upcoming book after the White House told him not to publish the book until classified information was removed.

Host Sandra Smith asked Gidley if the White House is “trying to stop” Bolton’s book from publishing.

“Absolutely not,” he replied. “In fact, the last sentence of the letter that the NSC actually sent to Ambassador Bolton’s attorney said, we’re happy to work with you so that the book can be published. But let’s be very clear here. Right now, according to that letter, the NSC has found top-secret information in that book. We don’t want to risk the lives of American citizens, our assets overseas, not to mention put our brave men and women in harm’s way by getting out information that would reveal sources and methods, for example. So these types of things are monitored at the career level. This isn’t a political decision. The NSC has a process for this, and it’s very commonplace.”

“I’m not aware of any effort for it to stop being published,” Gidley continued. “I can tell you if the ambassador wants to write a book, we have to make sure — we have a responsibility, quite frankly, to the American people and our citizens abroad to protect them at — in every way possible. And we can’t have classified information being published. And so there are serious questions around the information in this book. It’s obvious that the National Security Council has deemed a lot of it something that should not be released to the public. We’ll see what happens moving forward. But the conversation has been open. It has been started. But I can guarantee you this: The president will make sure that the American people and our soldiers, both men and women who are fighting to keep our freedoms every day, are safe and protected and that this information, if top secret, if classified, does not make it into the public sphere.”

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