Clapper’s Clampdown

Jack Shafer criticizes the gag order (seen above) that James Clapper recently placed on the entire intel community:

The nation’s top spy has prohibited all of his spies from talking with reporters about “intelligence-related information” unless officially authorized to speak. … Directive 119 increases the insularity of the national security state, making the public less safe, not more. Until this directive was issued, intelligence community employees could provide subtext and context for the stories produced by the national security press without breaking the law. Starting now, every news story about the national security establishment that rates disfavor with the national security establishment — no matter how innocuous — will rate a full-bore investigation of sources by authorities.

Tina Nguyen has more on how far the order extends:

From now on, all communications between US intelligence officials and media must be authorized in advance, and no one is allowed to discuss anything deemed “covered matters” (nebulously defined as “intelligence-related information, including intelligence sources, methods, activities, and judgments”). Any violation of these rules “will be handled in the same manner as a security violation” and offending parties will likely lose their clearances, get fired, or even get investigated by the Department of Justice.

Is that reasonable? Not particularly in this case, as the Guardian lays out: the new rules are “agnostic” as to the degrees of classified information his employees can give the press. In addition, “unplanned or unintentional contact with the media” must be reported immediately to the employee’s relevant agency — even if the employee hadn’t disclosed any “substantive information.” From the looks of it, if I accidentally ran into a high school friend who now works with the NSA — not that I have a friend like that — and we talked about nothing more than the weather, he would have to immediately notify the NSA that we’d been in contact.

Marcy Wheeler’s take-away:

I guess James Clapper, whose credibility is already shot to shit for lying to Congress and spending 10 months uttering transparent lies, wants to doom the [Intelligence Community's] credibility entirely. After all, from this point forward, we can assume that any statement citing an [Intelligence Community] source is approved propaganda. Thanks for clearing that up, Clapper.