If you have been reading the coverage of the debate within the Obama administration about the way ahead in Afghanistan, you quickly noticed much of it hinged on unnamed sources. At the Pentagon, they were not hard to find…until now.

The military wants a decision about what to in Afghanistan as they feel is time is wasting away. Indeed, violence against Afghans and troops alike are at their highest levels of this eight-year war. And a resurgent Taliban is taking over large swaths of the country. Some feel the president is not properly supporting his top commander in Afghanistan, who has asked for thousands of troops.  And because the whole furtive deliberation only includes the top national security advisors, the environment had become ripe for leaking.

Sometimes, a leak would come out of the White House and the Pentagon would respond with a counter leak. Sometimes a military official would leak to get the commander’s viewpoint into the public discourse. The job of a journalist became sorting through the leaks and the leakers to determine what should be reported and why. You can read out breakdown of the leaks here.

But last week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that if he found out who in his building was leaking, it would be a “career ender.” He made the declaration while sitting in his plane en route to Osh Kosh, Wisc. At one point, he declared: “Everyone ought to just shut up.” He had little faith that we reporters traveling with him would report his comments. But we did. And the message had made its way into every hall of the maze that is the Pentagon.

Sources that eagerly talked to you now won’t. Sometimes sources volunteer they have nothing to say before you ask the question. Others are canceling appointments with reporters all together out of fear of being called a leaker by the secretary. 

But I can already feel the dam cracking as some officials are desperate to get their views out. Will this lock down hold until the president announces his decision? To really know, watch the stories coming out on this in the day ahead and see how many unnamed sources are in them.