Storming its way to publication, No Easy Day—a first-person account of the May 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, penned by an ex-Navy SEAL who was part of the operation—was released Tuesday amid plenty of controversy. A letter sent by the Pentagon general counsel last week threatened legal action over alleged violation of the author’s non-disclosure agreements, while raising questions on another legal front, too: what, if any, liability could the book’s publisher face?
Legal experts agree that it’s authors who are on the hook for pre-publication review. But a publisher’s liability in a case such as this is likely to hinge on the 1917 U.S. Espionage Act, and whether the government can show that the book contains classified information, says Washington D.C. attorney Mark Zaid.
