Story highlights Sessions wants to find out who leaked details of the President's calls with foreign leaders

The source said the move could be a tactic to motivate the leakers to stop leaking information out of fear of retribution.

(CNN) Attorney General Jeff Sessions has floated the idea of giving polygraph tests to National Security Council staff to determine who is leaking classified information to the media, a source familiar with his thinking tells CNN.

Sessions, a former Alabama Republican senator, proposed the idea of issuing the tests specifically to find out who disclosed the details of President Donald Trump's first phone calls after he took office with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the source said.

Details of the two calls between the leaders first leaked in January, and The Washington Post published the full transcripts of the conversations in early August.

Sessions wanted to target these calls in particular because a small enough universe of people had access to the information to allow him to narrow down who leaked the information, the source said.

This person did not know if the outcome of the tests would be used to fire staffers, but said it could motivate the leakers to stop leaking out of fear of retribution.

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