A former CIA intelligence analyst is expected to file suit in U.S. District Court Friday demanding that the spy agency approve a memoir he’s written that is already being offered for sale online.

The agency has reclassified material in the book it previously cleared.

In Class 11: Inside the CIA’s First Post-9/11 Spy Class, Thomas Waters, Jr. recounts his experiences as a member of the first training group to graduate from CIA training after the Sept.11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The book is scheduled for publication by Dutton on April 6.

“It was the largest and most diverse class in the agency’s history,” says a description of the book from his publisher, Dutton, online at Amazon.com. Waters describes how “trainees learned methods of subterfuge, mastering disguises, withstanding interrogations, and crossing into hostile territory without being detected.”

Waters left the CIA on March 5, 2004 for personal reasons unrelated to his duties, according to his Washington lawyer, Mark Zaid. At the time Waters was serving as an analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence’s Office of Transnational Issues.

On Thursday, Zaid informed Richard Puhl, head of the CIA’s Publications Review Board, that he intended to file suit “challenging the Board’s infringement of Mr. Water’s First Amendment rights to publish his unclassified work, as well as the unlawful reclassification of information,” according to a copy made available to Congressional Quarterly.

Waters will ask for an “expedited review of the Board’s actions,” and a “a temporary restraining order/preliminary injunction prohibiting the Agency from pursuing any type of administrative or legal action” against the former analyst.

The CIA warned Waters on Feb. 15 that if he released the book for publication without making its requested changes, “the Agency is fully prepared to exercise any and all of our legal remedies, to include the attachment of any royalties you may personally receive from the publication of this manuscript.”

Zaid told the CIA he would ask the court to “immediately overturn the arbitrary and senseless classification decisions contained in your correspondence” to him and his client.

In 2004 the CIA initially approved the publication of the “overwhelming majority” of information that it now deems classified, Zaid wrote the agency.

“If you wish to avoid this litigation and explain to me under what authority you believe permits lawful reclassification, as well as the basis for your demand that my client include a specific disclaimer when no such requirement existed before, I would be happy to take your call.”

In a separate letter Thursday to the CIA’s office of general counsel, Zaid said he and his law partner Roy W. Krieger would refuse to sign future secrecy agreements with the agency unless both sides could agree beforehand on access to classified information or the client’s relationship with the Agency was itself classified.

Zaid said the CIA abuses the arrangement by blocking them from “relevant classified facts involving their case. “

Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.