What the New York Times has done is nothing less than to 
    compromise the centerpiece of our defensive efforts in 
    the war on terrorism. If information about the NSA 
    program had been quietly conveyed to an al-Qaeda 
    operative on a microdot, or on paper with invisible ink, 
    there can be no doubt that the episode would have been 
    treated by the government as a cut-and-dried case of 
    espionage. . .

    The real question that an intrepid prosecutor in the 
    Justice Department should be asking is whether, in the 
    aftermath of September 11, we as a nation can afford to 
    permit the reporters and editors of a great newspaper to 
    become the unelected authority that determines for all us 
    what is a legitimate secret and what is not.