最高情报官员告诉一名联邦法官，前国家安全顾问约翰·博尔顿作为政府阻止该书下周二发行的最后努力的一部分，奥巴马的回忆录《发生的房间》有给美国国家安全造成“严重”损害的风险。
在周三晚上提交给联邦地区法院的宣誓声明中，国家情报局局长约翰·拉特克利夫、国家安全局局长保罗·中曾根康弘和DNI国家反情报和安全中心主任比尔·埃瓦尼娜都表示，他们认为他们在当前手稿中审查的几个段落包含机密材料，包括指定为绝密/敏感区信息级别的材料。
“泄露这些信息可能会导致一个有价值的[信号情报]来源的永久丢失，并对美国[信号情报]系统造成不可挽回的损害，”中曾根康弘在华盛顿地区法院的一份宣誓书中说。
在国家安全委员会长达一个月的审查过程中，经过多次修改，博尔顿一再否认他的书包含任何机密信息。
在提交这些文件的同时，美国司法部要求对波顿发出紧急禁令，迫使他推迟出版自己的书。司法部表示，这将对波顿的出版商西蒙·舒斯特(Simon and Schuster)以及目前持有该书的任何发行商产生类似的约束。
在这张摄于2020年2月17日的档案照片中，前国家安全顾问约翰·博尔顿在北卡罗来纳州达勒姆的杜克大学演讲
但就在几个小时前，多家新闻机构已经开始广泛报道该书的细节博尔顿在《华尔街日报》上写的一篇文章改编自他的回忆录，其中他说唐纳德·特朗普总统请求中国习近平主席帮助他确保连任。
西蒙和舒斯特的发言人在周二的一份声明中表示:“政府今晚的申请是一项无聊的、出于政治动机的徒劳之举。”。“约翰·博尔顿的《发生的房间》已经在全国和全世界发行了数十万册。政府要求的禁令不会有任何效果。
法官罗伊斯·兰伯特已下令各方在周五下午1点召开听证会。但是，如果没有兰伯特下令暂停一本书的出版，而这本书已经印刷了成千上万册，并运往美国各地的发行商，法律专家认为这项努力可能不会成功。
国家安全律师马克·扎伊德将这一举动描述为“前所未有的、毫无意义的”备案，类似于尼克松政府在五角大楼文件案中阻止《纽约时报》和《华盛顿邮报》发布机密信息的失败尝试。
“尽管五角大楼文件案从开始到结束仅用了大约两周的时间，但1971年不是2020年，”扎伊德在一条推特上说。“我会感到震惊的是，这项动议将被决定，更不用说简要介绍，及时停止出版在[星期二]。图书分销系统不是这样的。”
然而，据一位知情人士透露，此次释放可能只是波顿法律麻烦的开始，因为DOJ至少会试图从他的书中攫取利润，并可能根据《间谍法》以泄露机密信息为由提起刑事诉讼。
作为周三文件的一部分，司法部就与波顿律师的争议提供了更多见解，该律师称，该机密材料仍保留在该书的当前副本中。
国家安全委员会记录访问高级主管艾伦·奈特于12月30日首次收到手稿，到1月23日，她通知波顿的律师，手稿似乎包含“大量机密信息”
该文件称，她随后与波顿反复合作，删除机密信息，直到4月27日，她认为这些信息不再包含机密信息。然而，5月7日，DOJ表示，奈特通知波顿，“该流程仍在进行中”，她的员工将“一旦有更新需要提供，就会立即联系。”
与此同时，波顿的继任者罗伯特·奥布赖恩(Robert Oo ' brien)已经单独审阅了手稿，“断定它似乎仍包含机密信息”，他指派国家安全委员会副法律顾问迈克尔·埃利斯(Michael Ellis)从5月2日开始审阅手稿。
文件称，埃利斯花了一个多月的时间才在6月9日做出决定，将“机密、机密、绝密和绝密/SCI级别”的信息包括在内。
这是在政府得知博尔顿已经提交了他的手稿以待出版并计划不顾白宫的批准出版后的两天。
在提交给法院的机密文件中，埃利斯描述了“手稿中需要国家安全信息分类系统保护的六个段落示例，以及对每个示例进行分类的原因，”他在随附的宣誓书中表示。
根据这份文件，埃利斯在周二给博尔顿送去了一份“手稿当前版本的完整标记副本，标明了他确定的段落”...似乎包含机密信息”，并提议与博尔顿会面，讨论删除该信息。
博尔顿的一名律师没有立即回应置评请求，但DOJ在周二提交的文件中表示，根据他们迄今就此案的沟通，博尔顿反对政府的行动，并将在法庭上做出回应。
Bolton book could cause 'grave' damage to US national security: Top intel officials
Top intelligence officials have told a federal judge that the publication of former national security adviserJohn Bolton's memoir, 'The Room Where It Happened,' risks inflicting "grave" damage to U.S. national security, as part of the administration's last-ditch attempt to prevent the book's release next Tuesday.
In sworn statements submitted to a federal district court Wednesday evening, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, National Security Agency Director Gen. Paul Nakasone, and the DNI's National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director Bill Evanina all said that they believed several passages they had reviewed in the current manuscript contained classified material including material designated at the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmentalized Information level.
"Compromise of this information could result in the permanent loss of a valuable [signal intelligence] source and cause irreparable damage to the U.S. [signal intelligence] system," Nakasone said in an affidavit with the D.C. District Court.
Bolton has repeatedly disputed that his book contains any classified information following multiple revisions over the course of a months-long review by the National Security Council.
The filings accompanied a request from the Justice Department for an emergency injunction against Bolton forcing him to delay publication of his book, that the department said would similar bind Bolton's publisher Simon and Schuster and any distributors currently in possession of the book.
In this file photo taken on Feb. 17, 2020, former national security adviser John Bolton speaks at Duke University in Durham, N.C.
But the request came just hours after multiple news outlets had already begun reporting extensively on details from the book, along withan essay penned by Bolton in the Wall Street Journaladapted from his memoir -- in which he states that President Donald Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping for help in ensuring his reelection.
"Tonight’s filing by the government is a frivolous, politically motivated exercise in futility," a spokesperson for Simon and Schuster said in a statement Tuesday. "Hundreds of thousands of copies of John Bolton’s 'The Room Where it Happened' have already been distributed around the country and the world. The injunction as requested by the government would accomplish nothing.
Judge Royce Lamberth has ordered the parties to convene for a hearing Friday at 1 p.m. on the request. But absent an extraordinary action from Lamberth ordering the suspension of a book's publication when thousands of copies have already been printed and shipped to distributors around the U.S., legal experts argued the effort was likely not to succeed.
National security lawyer Mark Zaid described the move as a "unprecedented, meaningless" filing akin to the Nixon administration's failed attempt in the Pentagon Papers case to block the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing classified information.
"Even though [the] Pentagon Papers case was litigated in about two weeks time from start to finish, 1971 is not 2020," Zaid said in a tweet. "I would be shocked this Motion would be decided, much less even briefed, in time to stop publication on [Tuesday]. That's just not how book distribution system works."
However, the release will likely be only the beginning of legal trouble for Bolton, as the DOJ at a minimum is expected to seek to seize the profits from his book and potentially pursue criminal charges under the Espionage Act for divulging classified information, according to a person familiar with the matter.
As a part of its Wednesday filing, the Justice Department provided more insight on the dispute with Bolton's attorney's over the classified material it says still remains in the current copies of the book.
The NSC's Senior Director for Records Access Ellen Knight first received the manuscript on Dec. 30, and by Jan. 23 she informed Bolton's attorneys that it appeared to contain "significant amounts of classified information."
She then worked back and forth with Bolton to remove classified information until on April 27 she determined in her view it no longer contained classified information, the filing says. On May 7, however, the DOJ says Knight informed informed Bolton that “[t]he process remains ongoing” and that her staff would “reach out as soon as there is an update to provide.”
Meanwhile, Bolton's successor Robert O'Brien had separately reviewed the manuscript and "concluded that it still appeared to contain classified information," and he assigned Deputy Legal Advisor to the National Security Council Michael Ellis with reviewing the manuscript starting May 2.
It took Ellis more than a month before on June 9 he came forward with the determination that it included information "classified at the Confidential, Secret, Top Secret, and Top Secret/SCI levels," the filing states.
This was two days after the government learned that Bolton had already submitted his manuscript for publication and planned to publish regardless of the White House's approval.
In the classified submission to the court, Ellis describes "six examples of passages in the manuscript that require protection under the national security information classification system, and the reasons for classifying each example," he says in an accompanying affidavit.
According to the filing, on Tuesday Ellis sent Bolton a "complete marked copy of the current version of the manuscript identifying passages that he had determined... appeared to contain classified information" and proposed a meeting with Bolton to discuss the removal of that information.
A lawyer for Bolton did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the DOJ said in its Tuesday filing that based on their communications on the case so far, Bolton opposes the government's actions and will respond in court.
