The new Directive creates an anomalous situation in which routine interactions that are permissible between an intelligence employee and an ordinary member of the public are now to be prohibited if that member of the public qualifies as “media.” 
 
 So under most circumstances, an intelligence community employee is at liberty to discuss unclassified “intelligence-related information” with his or her next-door neighbor.  The Director of National Intelligence has forbidden most intelligence community employees from discussing “intelligence-related information” with a reporter unless they have specific authorization to do so, according to an Intelligence Community Directive that was issued last month. Likewise, there is no particular reason to think that routine interactions between intelligence agency employees and reporters — especially on unclassified matters — pose any kind of threat to national security, or that limiting them will offer any benefit. The new Directive reflects — and escalates — tensions between the government and the press over leaks of classified information. Significantly, however, the new prohibition does not distinguish between classified and unclassified intelligence information.
– The nation's intelligence chief has issued a new directive that severely clamps down on his underlings' ability to talk to reporters, reports the Federation of American Scientists. James Clapper's intent with Directive 119 is to eliminate leaks of classified information and thus make the country safer. Instead, this bone-headed directive—which makes even the discussion of non-classified information off-limits—will do just the opposite, writes Jack Shafer at Reuters. One big problem is that the move "increases the insularity of the national security state," and insularity can be a dangerous thing. Instead of healthy debates about national security, we get an ever-shrinking circle of yes-men decision-makers. "One excessively ingrown presidential administration, as you may recall, acted on its excessively ingrown intelligence information and analysis to invade a foreign land to capture diabolical biological and chemical weapons that didn’t exist," writes Shafer. If only we had "more unauthorized leaks to neutralize all the authorized leaks of bogus information to gullible reporters," we might have saved ourselves from a war. Click for his full column, which draws from lessons offered in the new book Secrets and Leaks by Rahul Sagar.