ON THE FRIDAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING, Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, said CIA officials had given him “carte blanche” to attack President Bush anonymously last summer in publicity interviews for his book Imperial Hubris. Specifically, Scheuer said, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow had told him “We’re giving you carte blanche” to do whatever interviews he wanted, as long as the criticism in those interviews was directed toward Bush, not the CIA. Scheuer didn’t follow the rules. He took on senior CIA officials in his publicity interviews. As a result, he said, he was “muzzled.”

Last week Harlow stepped forward to challenge Scheuer’s claim. “His assertion that I gave him ‘carte blanche’ to attack the president is absurd,” Harlow told me in an email. And he continued: