Is there a new Edward Snowden? US intelligence chiefs suspect a fresh leak

The latest media revelations about the US intelligence community has convinced officials they have another leak to journalists.

The concerns came after The Intercept, a news site that has had access to documents from leaker Edward Snowden, published items about the scope of the United States terror watchlist.

The Intercept report was "obtained from a source in the intelligence community". Previously, it has not hidden Snowden as its source, suggesting the latest scoop came from someone else.

Officials are now considering whether to ask the justice department for a criminal investigation into the suspected leak of the classified counterterrorism document to the website. The Intercept document provided a statistical breakdown of the types of people whose names and personal information appeared on two government data networks listing people with supposed connections to militants, an official said.

News network CNN, naming only "US officials", reported that national security officers feared a second source leaking classified intelligence from within their ranks.

The document published by The Intercept on Tuesday was dated August last year, months after US spy agency contractor Snowden had fled the US after sending classified documents from inside the intelligence community to the media.

Snowden, who has worked closely with two founders of The Intercept, writer Glenn Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras, left his post as a National Security Agency contractor in Hawaii in May last year. He is not known to have had access to any secret materials since then.