"If I told you, I'd have to kill you."

It's been a tired pop-cliché meme for ages. Way back in 2000, when Adam Garcia tried to lay it on Piper Perabo in Coyote Ugly, she groaned, "That's original."

It drew eye rolls in Top Gun in 1986. Going back at least that far, we've known it's usually bullshit when someone says they're keeping a tantalizing secret from you for your own good.  

Former CIA director John Brennan is pulling this stunt now, and the press is again taking him seriously, despite his proven unreliability.

Brennan has an elaborate history of lying to the public, most infamously about the CIA monitoring computers Senate staff were using to prepare a report on torture. When asked if it were true the CIA spied on congress as it was doing oversight of that agency, Brennan all but covered his heart. "Nothing could be further from the truth," he told Andrea Mitchell in a panel discussion, shaking his head. "We wouldn't do that!"