According to a Washington Post report by Peter Finn and Greg Miller, “The Defense Department is attempting to buy the entire first printing – 10,000 copies – of a memoir by a controversial former Defense Intelligence Agency officer so that the book can be destroyed.” The book, Operation Dark Heart, “recounts the adventures and frustrations of an Army reservist, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who served in Afghanistan in 2003, a moment when the attention of Washington and the military had shifted to Iraq.” It’s currently scheduled to be released later this month by St. Martin’s Press.

But the tense situation seems to be of the Pentagon‘s own devising: After all, the branch of the military that Shaffer served in — the Army Reserves — cleared his manuscript for publication last winter. But at the last minute this summer — after the book had been sent to the printer, apparently — critics at other agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA, came up with “major objections.”

As a result, an anonymous official tells the Post that the Defense Department “sent up a team to talk with the publisher some time ago,” leading to an agreement to censor certain passages in a second printing.

But what to do with the 10,000 copies already printed and sitting in a warehouse in Virginia? Yep. Per the settlement with St. Martin’s, the Pentagon will buy the entire first print run.

Which means that reviewers who got advance copies — such as the Post itself — now have a valuable item soon to appear, no doubt, on eBay.

Meanwhile, a New York Times report on the situation by Scott Shane notes a nice bit of publishing history in observing that the episode …

… recalled the C.I.A.’s response to the planned publication of his 1964 book on the agency, “The Invisible Government.” John A. McCone, then the agency’s director, met with him and his co-author, Thomas B. Ross, to ask for changes, but they were not government employees and refused the request.

The agency studied the possibility of buying the first printing … but the publisher of Random House, Bennett Cerf, told the agency he would be glad to sell all the copies to the agency – and then print more.

Now, that’s publishing.