US National Intelligence's boss bans his employees from contacts with journalists
22 April 2014, 05:07 -- The Director of the US National Intelligence James Clapper has forbidden his subordinate employees to discuss any issues concerning intelligence with journalists unless under a special permission. This is what his order that was issued on March 20 and became available to the press on April 21 says.
The document says that now, only heads of intelligence departments, their deputies and representatives of these departments’ press services have the right to discuss issues concerning intelligence with journalists. Any other employees will be allowed to do so only under a special permission. Offenders of this law may be punished with denial of access to secret information or with cancellation of the labor contract.
No information of any considerable significance concerning intelligence should be made available to journalists as a result of unsanctioned or unplanned contacts, the document says.
It should be noted that this ban is spread not only onto information that has a secrecy label but onto information that doesn’t have this label as well. Spokesman for the US National Intelligence Shawn Turner has explained this by saying that there are quite a few cases when information possessed by his agency does not officially has the label of secrecy, but access to it is still limited.
One should view such information very thoroughly before revealing it to a wide audience, Turner said.
However, many experts assess this measure as another attempt of the US authorities to prevent leakages of secret information.
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