(CNN) — The White House is preparing a government-wide nondisclosure agreement aimed at curtailing federal workers’ sharing of “confidential government information,” as it seeks to stop internal leaks to media organizations.
The draft notice, posted to the Federal Register on Tuesday by the Office of Personnel Management, says the NDA is intended to track existing and new federal employees’ agreement to “safeguard non-public, confidential or proprietary information, created or obtained through their official duties.” The proposal is scheduled to be published on Wednesday.
Agencies have the option of using the NDA, according to the draft notice, which will be subject to a 30-day comment period after it is published.
The controversial move is the latest step in the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on the dissemination of its internal planning and data. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office last year started mandating that Pentagon officials sign NDAs before being read in on projects, initiatives and other work products, CNN has reported.
President Donald Trump is also upending the federal workforce, which he sees as an impediment to implementing his agenda.
The draft cites federal workers’ providing the New York Times and Washington Post with “unauthorized disclosures” in advance of the US raid on Venezuela earlier this year. News organizations delayed publishing the information “to avoid endangering US troops,” the draft said.
The New York Times’ executive editor has said the paper did not have verified details about the raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, nor did it withhold publishing a story at the Trump administration’s request. A Washington Post spokesperson declined to comment, saying the paper does not discuss its newsgathering practices.
Also, a federal staffer this year disclosed the personal information — including names, addresses, emails, phone numbers and job titles — of about 4,500 Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, putting their safety at risk, according to the draft.
The draft proposal takes a wide view of confidential information, defining it as “internal agency operations, personnel matters, procurement processes, or any sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material that is not currently publicly available and should not be disclosed under applicable law.” Such disclosures “disrupt agency operations and erode public trust.”
The measure would not create “new substantive restrictions” on workers and would preserve the rights of whistleblowers, according to the draft proposal.
But the federal workforce’s largest union, the American Federation of Government Employees, decried the draft as an attempt to silence staffers, noting the proposal “sweeps in an extraordinarily broad category of information.”
The union said it believes the administration will push agencies to require their employees to sign the NDA and then fire those who refuse.
“This proposed NDA is another attempt by the administration to purge the civil service of nonpartisan career employees and replace them with loyalists who won’t speak out against waste, fraud, and abuse,” Everett Kelley, AFGE’s national president, said in a statement. “Federal employees do not surrender their First Amendment rights when they accept federal employment, and the public has a right to know about this administration’s abuses.
The-CNN-Wire
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