Current and former employees of the U.S. intelligence agencies generally must submit anything they write about their time in government for “prepublication review.” Unfortunately, the government’s system of review is a confusing tangle of regulations, policies, and nondisclosure or secrecy agreements that differ across agencies.

Below, you can study and compare the key features of the prepublication review regimes of the 17 intelligence agencies and of three of the standard agreements that those agencies typically require their employees to sign as a condition of access to classified information. You can also find links to annotated versions of the regulations, policies, and agreements in which we’ve highlighted key provisions.