Pentagon tightens media rules for military

The order, issued by Gates on Friday in a brief memo to military and civilian personnel worldwide and effective immediately, tells officials to make sure they are not going out of bounds or unintentionally releasing information that the Pentagon wants to hold back.

The order, first reported by The New York Times on its website Friday night, has been in the works since long before Gen. Stanley McChrystal stunned his bosses with criticism and complaints in a Rolling Stone article that his superiors did not know was coming.

"We were not happy with the content, and we were not happy that we didn't know about it," Assistant Defense Secretary Douglas Wilson said this week.

Nonetheless, Wilson promised that no "Iron Curtain" would fall between the Pentagon and the news media.

The memo does not spell out exactly how the new directive will work but appears to require hundreds of thousands of officers to funnel interview requests through a small central office at the Pentagon.

"I am concerned that the department has grown lax in how we engage with the media," Gates wrote.

"We have far too many people talking to the media outside of channels, sometimes providing information which is simply incorrect, out of proper context, unauthorized, or uninformed by the perspective of those who are most knowledgeable," about how the information may fit into larger government operations or goals.