The CIA's new campaign to prevent leakers among its ranks might have a ready-made starting point after a memo outlining details of the "Honor the Oath" campaign was "obtained" by the Associated Press. The inference that the memo may have itself been leaked is lending itself to some instantaneous and rather glaring irony:

CIA memo vowing crackdown on leaks leaked to AP http://t.co/mkVn9bZo3i via @trevortimm — Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) June 26, 2013

The new campaign comes straight from CIA Director John Brennan, who himself has an allegedly interesting relationship with leaks of classified information. He, some have argued, played a secondary but important role in steering journalists towards the classified tactics behind a foiled al-Qaeda plot in 2012, when he was Obama's counter-terrorism advisor. Incidentally, that's the same plot that probably prompted the DOJ to secretly obtain phone records of Associated Press reporters after they wrote a story on it, in an attempt to identify their source or sources. The White House, in a Reuters piece chronicling Brennan's possible role in the classified information leak, strongly denied that Brennan had anything to do with conveying classified information to the AP or anyone else.

The memo was unclassified but marked for official use only, according to the Associated Press, indicating that the agency didn't intend for it to become public. Here's how Brennan's memo explains his new campaign to stop the CIA's leakage :

"Brennan says the 'Honor the Oath' campaign is intended to 'reinforce our corporate culture of secrecy' through education and training...Brennan writes that the campaign stems from a review of CIA security launched last summer by former director David Petraeus, following what Brennan calls 'several high-profile anonymous leaks and publications by former senior officers.'"

The new campaign will also tighten up the CIA's review of books or articles by former employees of the agency.

Click here to follow The Atlantic.



More From The Atlantic:

Hospitals Don't Need To Be Sleep Deprivation Centers

Google Finally Admits Its Infamous Brain Teasers Were Completely Useless For Hiring

The Incarceration Epidemic

From TheAtlantic - shaping the national debate on the most critical issues of our times, from politics, business, and the economy, to technology, arts, and culture.