know that you share my concern regarding the increasing threat to our national security posed by unauthorized disclosure of classified intelligence information. The compromise of our Intelligence sources, both human and technical, has placed lives tn jeopardy and rendered expensive technical collection systems ineffective. Unfortunately, we have not been able to take effective steps to punish those who have violated their obligation to protect classified information and this has created the perception that nobody cares. We simply must restore discipline to the handling of sensitive information.
While there is no single solution to the problem of leaks, one step that can be taken is to enact legislation that would criminalize the reprehensible conduct of disclosing classified information to those outside government who are not authorized to receive it. Enactment of leaks legislation, combinedigorous effort to detect those who are engaged in disclosing classified information, will restore an element of risk to those who misuse classified information.
We have proposed leaks legislation as part of the draft Intelligence Authorization Bill for the past two years. Last year, objections were raised to the inclusion of leaks legislation in the Authorization Bill because the issue needed to be studied more closelyonsensus reached within the Executive Branch on whether we should attempt to enact leaks legislation. Tom not aware that any action has been taken to reachonsensus
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Given the exceedingly compressed time frame imposed on the authorization process byo not want to jeopardize the rest of our FYuthorization bill because of another Internal debate on this issue. eluctantly agree to the deletion of the leaks provisions from this year's bill. Inrust that OMB will support and facilitate the enactment of strong leaks legislation this year.
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