Months after the Edward Snowden surveillance disclosures presented US intelligence with a more skeptical media landscape, the intelligence community’s leader has instituted a new media policy: substantive contact with journalists without prior approval can be a firing offense.



Unlike other policies designed to protect classified information, a directive signed on Sunday by James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, is agnostic about the classification status of information his spies, analysts and technical specialists might communicate with the media.

“No substantive information should be provided to the media regarding covered matters in the case of unplanned or unintentional contacts,” reads the directive, which defines “covered matters” as “intelligence-related information, including intelligence sources, methods, activities, and judgments.”

At a “minimum,” the directive reads, incidents “will be handled in the same manner as a security violation.”

Shawn Turner, Clapper’s spokesman, said the directive merely consolidates at a higher level existing policies within the various intelligence agencies. He said it was intended to show that the intelligence community can “police ourselves,” forestalling an effort that began in the Senate intelligence committee to regulate media policies. Turner also disputed that the policy change had any meaningful connection to the Snowden controversy.

The directive orders that contact between US intelligence employees and the media regarding such issues “must be authorized by their IC [intelligence community] element,” such as the agency chief, his or her deputy, or a public-affairs official. “Unplanned or unintentional contact with the media” must be reported to the relevant agency’s public affairs office.

The public affairs section within Clapper’s office will now compile a semi-annual report on all media contact, complete with “names or positions” of those who talked to the media and a log of what they were authorized to discuss.

The directive discusses the protection of “intelligence information from unauthorized disclosure,” a category broader than the classified information the agencies seek to keep close. It would have the effect of limiting the contacts between intelligence officials and the journalists covering them, and limiting candid discussion even further.

“It’s often the case that intelligence community employees are privy to information that, while it may not be classified, it’s still sensitive information that should be vetted before it’s released,” Turner said.

Violations of the policy can result in “administrative actions that may include revocation of security clearance or termination of employment.” Should a violation result in the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, “referral to the Department of Justice for prosecution may occur.”

The directive is less clear on what may happen to an official who engages in an authorized disclosure of classified information, something that senior officials often do with journalists for the purposes of crafting sympathetic or positive stories. The Justice Department is looking, for instance, into which officials leaked word of an operation known as Olympic Games, a cluster of cyberattacks and electronic espionage against Iran’s nuclear program, during President Obama’s reelection effort.

“The new policy will make it harder for reporters to discover and to report facts and opinions that are at odds with the official line,” said Steven Aftergood, the Federation of American Scientists intelligence analyst who first blogged about the directive.

“Some of the best reporting on the lead-up to the Iraq war described dissenting views about the state of Iraq’s nuclear program. Those kinds of ‘unauthorized’ perspectives are going to be tougher to find and to present to the public.”

The new media policy comes in the wake of Snowden’s widespread surveillance disclosures, the after-effects of which continue to influence the myriad ways the intelligence agencies treat information in their possession. Senior officials say they have limited the access that National Security Agency employees, and particularly technical advisors, have to the agency’s data. They have also established a surveillance-related Tumblr to present their narratives to the public unmediated and unchallenged by journalism.

The policy does not change any existing practices relevant to internal whistleblowing on waste, fraud or abuse, and states that “appropriate” dealings with the media are “encouraged.”

Turner said he doubted that the directive would have a significant impact on intelligence journalism.

That contention “would only have merit if this policy required a practice that’s not already in place,” he said.

Aftergood contended that the policy would redound to the intelligence community’s detriment.

“On some level, the IC [intelligence community] gains credibility when it is the object of critical reporting. By insisting now that all intelligence news must be ‘authorized’ news, the DNI will undermine that credibility and reduce the public's confidence in the overall integrity of the intelligence system,” Aftergood said.