The State Department wrote a memo on the danger of leaks. It leaked.

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last updated 24 February 2017

A State Department memo leaked to The Washington Post warned Secretary of State Rex Tillerson of the dangers of leaks to the media, the Post reported Friday. The four-page document prepared by legal counsel concerned information labeled SBU (Sensitive But Unclassified), a category in which the memo itself was placed.

"When such information is leaked ... It chills the willingness of senior government officials to seek robust and candid advice, which ultimately is to the detriment of informed policymaking and the reputation of the institution from which the leak emanated," the memo says. "If the department is going to be able to influence policy deliberations, we need to have a reputation for engaging responsibly in those deliberations."

Instead of leaking information, the memo suggests State Department employees should use the internal Dissent Channel to express their concerns in a manner that can confidentially "facilitate open, creative, and uncensored dialogue." Shortly after President Trump took office, hundreds of State Department workers signed on to a Dissent Channel memo objecting to Trump's immigration executive order. The document was leaked to the Post before it was officially filed.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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