Statement issued by an intelligence agency asserting the unreliability of a source
"Kill notice" redirects here. For the public advertisement of someone's death, see
Death notice.
A "burn notice" is an official statement issued by an
intelligence agency to other agencies. It states that an
asset or intelligence source is unreliable for one or several reasons, often
fabrication, and must be officially disavowed.[1] This is essentially a directive for the recipient to disregard or "burn" all information derived from that individual or group.[2]
Curveball—"The CIA has since issued an official 'burn notice' formally retracting more than 100 intelligence reports based on his information."[4][5]
Manucher Ghorbanifar—1984 and 1986. "The CIA considered Ghorbanifar a dangerous con man and had issued a 'burn notice' recommending that no U.S. agency have any dealings with him."[6][7][8]
Ali Abdel Saoud Mohamed, who was recruited by the CIA and immediately revealed himself to be a double agent. "The CIA issued a burn notice to U.S. and allied intelligence services that Mohamed was not to be trusted."[9]
In the
season 1 episode of
Archer "Job Offer", Malory Archer puts out a burn notice on her son
Sterling Archer after he accepts a job with competing intelligence agency ODIN, which was then made to look like an ODIN
false flag operation.
In the 1966–1973
CBS Network television series
Mission Impossible and the
Mission: Impossible (film series) the IMF leader is given a secret recorded message explaining the mission, followed by a disclaimer to the effect of "should you or any of your team be caught or killed the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions."
In the 2012 film
Skyfall, the main villain
Raoul Silva's main motive is revenge against
M for disavowing him during the
transfer of Hong Kong to China, which resulted in his torture and disfigurement.
The related term kill notice or kill notificaton is used by
news and
photo agencies to declare manipulated or faked documents as "not to be used".[10][11] In March 2024, the term attracted considerable press commentary after news agencies issued kill notices on the
Mother's day photograph of Catherine, Princess of Wales,[12][13] which was found to have been digitally altered.[14][15] Phil Chetwynd,
AFP's global news director, said that the kill notices issued on the photograph were more typical for photographs from the state news agencies of
North Korea and
Iran.[10][11][16]