Bill would threaten pensions of loose-lipped intell employees

Intelligence employees who leak information would forfeit their federal pension plans under new legislation.

Intelligence agency employees would be required to sign a contract to give up their pensions if they were caught leaking any information, including non-classified materials, to the media, Congress or groups such as WikiLeaks, under legislation pending in the Senate Intelligence Committee, reports The San Francisco Examiner newspaper.

The new stipulation was reportedly added to the intelligence authorization bill in a closed door session last week, and the bill's House version would require the national intelligence director to create a program that would use technology to weed out whistleblowers by detecting unauthorized access and the transmission of sensitive materials, the article states.

Whistleblower groups fear the bill would give intelligence agency leaders very broad discretionary power to decipher what determines a "leak."