www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/chrisgeidner/trump-administration-launches-broad-new-anti-leak-program
Trump Administration Launches Broad New Anti-Leak Program
National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster’s memo directs top officials to warn staff against leaking information in a government-wide training program. We got the memo.
[I appreciate that any administration is not a fan of leaks so I started reading this thinking that this was probably going to be ok but]
The request includes “[s]uggested training materials” — provided by the National Counterintelligence and Security Center — that include the 15-minute C-SPAN video of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ August news conference about leaks and a six-minute Fox News video of an interview with the National Counterintelligence and Security Center’s director, William Evanina.
And
The memo, dated Sept. 8, signals a potentially dramatic expansion of the previous administration’s war on leaks. The Obama administration moves focused on alleged national security leaks and “insider threats” — an effort centered around the intelligence agencies under an October 2011 executive order from President Obama. Those investigations — and in some cases, prosecutions — were widely criticized, particularly in the media.
McMaster’s memo is directed to a much larger group, including virtually every senior official in the federal government — from the vice president and cabinet heads to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the director of the Peace Corps. Perhaps more importantly, the memo asserts that “unauthorized disclosure” of both classified and “controlled unclassified” information “causes harm to our Nation and shakes the confidence of the American people.”