U.S. Intel Folks Ordered to Just Pretend Leaks Didn’t Happen

Forget about closing the barn
door after the horses get out. The latest orders from the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) are to pretend that
there are no horses, they didn’t get out, and those large whinnying
creatures you see cantering about the meadow are not horses.

From The New York Times:

A
new pre-publication review policy for the Office of Director of
National Intelligence says the agency’s current and former
employees and contractors may not cite news reports based on leaks
in their speeches, opinion articles, books, term papers or other
unofficial writings.

Such officials “must not use sourcing that comes from known
leaks, or unauthorized disclosures of sensitive information,” it
says. “The use of such information in a publication can confirm the
validity of an unauthorized disclosure and cause further harm to
national security.”

Failure to comply “may result in the imposition of civil and
administrative penalties, and may result in the loss of security
clearances and accesses,” it says. It follows a policy that James
R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, issued in
March that bars officials at all 17 intelligence agencies from
speaking without permission to journalists about unclassified
information related to intelligence.

A professor at Brown University notes that this is prior
restraint—telling people they cannot quote information that is now
within the public sphere whether the administration wanted it to be
or not—and is a violation of the First Amendment rights of those
affected.

Furthermore, the Times notes, the policy being updated
once referred to the need to protect classified information. This
new policy is broader: “to prevent the unauthorized disclosure of
information.” That’s an extremely important and problematic twist.
The Department of Justice,
for example, has a reputation for overclassifying documents and
keeping information secret that shouldn’t be kept secret. Such a
policy actually incentivizes ODNI to overclassify information to
keep secret information that isn’t pertinent to national security,
but is problematic or embarrassing, from being discussed publicly
by people connected to intel.