THE THIRD AUTHOR

BY ALLAN WOLPER

Here is the conflict-of-interest situation: James Risen, a New York Times reporter who covers the CIA, received an advance in late 1999 to co-author a book with Milton Bearden, a retired chief of the intelligence agency's Soviet-East European division.

Bearden submitted their proposed project to the CIA's Publications Review Board (PRB) -- the clandestine group's censoring operation -- before it was sent to Random House. The CIA will vet the final manuscript before it is published, sometime in late 2002.

The book, tentatively titled The Main Enemy, is an analysis of the KGB-CIA rivalry from 1985 to 1991, the end of the cold war, a subject of intense CIA interest, partly because of the recent indictment of Robert P. Hanssen, the FBI agent accused of spying for Moscow. The CIA will also scrutinize the section of the book that describes Bearden's relationship with the convicted spy Aldrich H. Ames, whom he supervised during the 1980s when he was stationed in Bonn.

Meanwhile, Risen, except for a four-month leave last fall from the Times to focus on the book, has reported extensively on intelligence and CIA activities during the two-plus years he and Bearden have worked together. So he is writing stories about the CIA at a time when the book he is co-authoring needs CIA approval.

"He shouldn't cover the agency while he is writing about it," says Victoria Toensing, a former assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration who represents ex-CIA agent authors in dealings with the agency, and who admires Risen's reporting on the CIA. "If your beat is national security, you always rely on the CIA for your sources. If you publish things they don't want to see in print they can cut you off. The question is, During the time he is asking them to bless his book, is he keeping things out of his articles?"

Risen and his editors at the Times insist his reporting has not been compromised by the book contract, although Risen concedes that he might stop any whispering if he recused himself from CIA and national security stories. "I have talked with my editors frequently about the status of the book," he says in a two-page e-mail sent before a telephone interview. "I have always tried to be conscious of making sure that my book doesn't get in the way of anything I do for the paper."

Bill Keller, the Times managing editor, who initially approved the contract with Bearden, says Risen is sensitive to his delicate situation. "Jim knows what the issues are," Keller says. "We've told him that he has to work this so that he is not in any way beholden to the CIA. If he runs into any kind of wall because Bearden can't get it approved then that is where the project ends. How he unties it is up to him."

Keller agreed to the Risen-Bearden collaboration because the former CIA operative is no longer on active duty with the agency. Bearden, who did not return repeated calls to his office or home, retired in 1994.

But the CIA retains a life-long legal relationship with all its operatives through a contract, upheld by the courts, which employees are required to sign when they join the agency. That agreement requires all agents, current and former, to have their work vetted by the PRB.

How serious is this process? Bearden had to submit his 1998 novel, The Black Tulip, featuring a fictional CIA agent involved in the Afghan war, to the PRB before Random House could publish it. The CIA doesn't provide free-speech wiggle room for operatives who try to sidestep its censors by co-authoring a book with non-agency writers. "Prepublication review obligations cannot be avoided by causing another person, such as a ghostwriter, spouse, friend, or associate to prepare the material," the rules say.

Risen seemed startled that anyone would even pose questions about a possible conflict. "The modern CIA doesn't give a shit about any of this stuff anymore," Risen says. "The only people who care are you, no disrespect, and your magazine."

Yet others have noticed just how much the CIA does care. "I hear from former CIA operatives all the time," says Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press. "They all signed agreements and have to get their material vetted. The agency doesn't want anything coming out that they haven't approved."

The agency's staff vetted 300 manuscripts during the October 1999 to September 2000 fiscal year and approved 68 percent of them with no fuss, according to Bill Harlow, the director of public affairs for the agency. For the remaining 32 percent, the CIA "worked with authors on language changes," says Harlow. "We aren't trying to stop anything from being published. We do not want to interfere with a person's right to sell a story, as long as it does not reveal classified information. We are not a stumbling block."

It is routine, however, for CIA writer wannabes to hire a lawyer as soon as they think about writing a book. And those lawyers say that dealing with the agency lately has been unpleasant. "You go through hell," says Toensing. Her general feeling is: you write a book, you go to court. "The CIA has complete control unless you fight them. They usually want to review every word."

Risen seems to think he can avoid the fight. "I am not going to talk to the CIA or have anything to do with them," Risen says. "Milt [Bearden] is going to submit the manuscript strictly as a formality. We are both going to write separately and then marry it up later. You have someone who is an insider and an outsider. We are simply trying to do something creative. We want to game the system."

The danger is that the system could game the Times. "They are in thin-ice territory," says Robert Steele, ethics group leader for the Poynter Institute.