In its mounting campaign against leakers, the U.S. government isn't just going after officials who revealed weighty secrets like the White House's drone strike "kill list" or its plan to sabotage Iran's nuclear sites. Federal agents are also chasing a leaker who gave Danger Room a document asking for a futuristic laser weapon that could set insurgents' clothes on fire from nine miles away.

It's an odd investigation, because the energy weapon doesn't exist; the unclassified document describing it reads almost like a spoof of the laser system out of Real Genius; and this is 2012 – nearly five years after the leak in question.

But that hasn't stopped the Naval Criminal Investigative Service from contacting Danger Room and its attorneys several times over six months regarding an investigation into the document (.pdf), which describes a "Precision Airborne Standoff Directed Energy Weapon" and is marked "For Official Use Only," or FOUO.

"This investigation is currently being conducted as a counterintelligence matter to determine if a loss/compromise of classified information occurred," e-mailed Special Agent Christopher Capps, who works for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service's field office in Washington, D.C.

Capps also asked Danger Room to divulge the source who provided the imaginary weapon document.

"Where did Ms. Weinberger get the information ... that she posted to the website?" he wrote. "Did anyone inform her or give her direction that the document should not be put on the web?"

"As a separate question," Capps continued, "would Wired.com be willing to remove the document from the website?"

Danger Room, through its attorney, declined to provide the information, or to answer any questions related to the reporting of the story. The document has not been removed.

Simplified zoom lens in operation (GIF via Wiki Commons)

The document in question is what's known as a "universal urgent needs statement" – a request from troops in a warzone for a new technology. In this case, the First Marine Expeditionary Force in 2006 wanted a laser for use in Iraq that could cause "instantaneous burst-combustion of insurgent clothing, [and] a rapid death through violent trauma, and more probably a morbid combination of both."

The almost comically over-the-top document included photoshopped images of a V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft with a laser, and pictures with gun sights over insurgents’ heads, demonstrating how the energy weapon could take out a single person.

Dramatic, yes. But the document contained almost no technical information, since the weapon it was requesting, by its own acknowledgment, didn’t actually exist. Rather, what it was proposing was a theoretical weapon based on the Advanced Tactical Laser system, a chemical laser that an Air Force review in 2008 determined was not suitable for operations.

Danger Room posted the document in 2007, as part of an ongoing series of articles about requests for equipment by troops in Iraq – requests that were often rebuffed by the Pentagon. Not all of those requests were over-the-top: One of those "urgent needs" was for bomb-resistant trucks.

When then-Defense Secretary Bob Gates found out through the media that the request wasn't being met, he ordered tens of thousands of trucks built. Gates says that the lives of thousands of U.S. troops were saved as a result – although those figures have recently been challenged.

The NCIS' continued interest in an unclassified document posted over five years ago comes amid a new push by the Obama administration to crack down on leakers. The effort has been Kafka-esque from the start. It started when a pair of books revealed that the White House is intimately involved in approving drone attacks and cybersabotage operations against its foes. Days after the leaks, President Obama scolded the secret-spillers – even though the books' authors were granted officially access to the highest levels of the administration. Congress has also stepped in with its own legislation that would punish leakers of classified information. But the bill, recently passed by the Senate Intelligence Committee, exempts from reprisal most senior White House and administration officials – and, of course, members of Congress, as well.

The leak investigations have also gone after lower-ranking players, like Franz Gayl, a civilian scientist working for the Marine Corps. Gayl, who first brought attention to delays in fielding bomb-resistant vehicles, wasn't celebrated for helping keep troops alive; rather, he was stripped of his security clearance, and then suspended him from work. (Gayl won his job back in November 2011.)

In July, the Pentagon chief established a "top-down" system for reporting leaks, and requires a security officer review of unauthorized disclosures of protected information. The guidance also states that public affairs is the "sole release authority for all DoD information to news media in Washington." That lead some to wonder whether the chase for leakers wasn't really an excuse to keep whistleblowers from speaking out.

A Marine Corps Osprey V-22 tiltrotor aircraft. According to this 2006 request, the V-22 could one day house laser weaponry. A Marine Corps Osprey V-22 tiltrotor aircraft. According to this 2006 request, the V-22 could one day house laser weaponry.

After all, the Obama White House had already gone after whistleblowers with a fury not seen in decades. Former National Security Agency employee Thomas Drake, for instance, was charged with espionage for telling the Baltimore Sun about overbudget, dysfunctional data mining projects at the agency. (He eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.)

For those who protect whistleblowers, the new regulations are seen as new way to intimidate those would would expose official waste or wrongdoing. Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, which represents whistleblowers, said these new policies are likely to have a "chilling and freezing effect" on employees wanting to disclose malfeasance.

"The goal of these actions is to eliminate the possibility of anonymous confidential whistleblowing disclosure," he told Danger Room. "The right to make a confidential disclosure is a cornerstone of the Whistleblowing Act."

Part of the concern with the new leak policy, according to critics, is it lumps together disclosure of classified information, which sometimes violates the law, with disclosure of unclassified information, which under some circumstances may violate policy.

Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. James Gregory wrote in an e-mail that an unauthorized disclosure "is the communication or physical transfer of classified OR controlled unclassified information to an unauthorized recipient." Gregory also points out that it has long been Pentagon policy to prohibit disclosure of FOUO material without prior approval.

Devine, however, sees a dangerous expansion at work. "The new policies are an exponentially broader version of the traditional first principle to silence critics and plumb any leaks that would be threatening to those abusing power," he said.

The Office of Special Counsel, which protects federal employees from unlawful reprisals, offered a more measured response to the new restrictions. "OSC recognizes the Defense Department's need to protect national security information," Ann O’Hanlon, a spokeswoman for the office told Danger Room. "At the same time, we encourage all agencies to proactively advise employees of their right to disclose waste, fraud or abuse."

The problem with the old leak policy was that it punished would-be whistleblowers for trying to shine light on government malfeasance – while exacting no penalty from senior officials leaking information meant to bolster the administration's image. The problem with the new policy – as perhaps evidenced by the Navy’s investigation into the imaginary, insurgent-killing laser – is that it provides official justification for reprisals, even when the threat to national security teeters on the absurd.

The internet is, after all, filled with documents that are supposed to be "For Official Use Only." Many of them, like this presentation (.pdf) about the search for missing troops in Korea, are published on the military's own websites. Similarly, a Navy directory of public affairs, published by WikiLeaks, is also marked FOUO; meaning, under the new guidance, releasing a document that lists the only officers actually authorized to provide the press with information is itself an act worthy of investigation.

In the case of the imaginary laser, Special Agent Capps told Danger Room that the document "was originally reported to NCIS from a government employee performing research in [Florida]. They noticed the document was posted with the markings FOUO. The employee knew, based on training, it was not a 'good idea' to post documents marked FOUO to the public domain."

Capps' argument that Danger Room remove a document is not based on its classification, since the paper in question is unclassified. "Regardless on whether the document is unclassified, DOD [Manual] 5200. Volume 1 (.pdf) states that FOUO information is information that should be withheld from the public because of foreseeable harm to an interest protected by the FOIA [Freedom of Information Act]."

The problem with that argument, however, is that the Pentagon manual does not apply to journalists. "[A]s a non-governmental entity, you are not subject to internal DoD non-disclosure regulations such as 5200," says Steve Aftergood, who studies classification policies at the Federation of American Scientists.

Special Agent Capps, when contacted for comment on this article, did not return messages left by e-mail or phone; a spokesman for NCIS public affairs also did not respond to an e-mail and phone call.

As for the real-world chemical lasers mentioned in the document: Work on the Advanced Tactical Laser also ended several years ago, according to a Boeing company spokesperson, who noted that more information could be obtained from the Air Force, or from "a display at the Air Armament Museum" located in Florida.

Presumably, that display is next on Special Agent Capps' list of places to investigate.