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Sanger: 'This is the most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered'

David Sanger, the New York Times reporter who has spent two decades reporting in Washington, says that the Obama administration is the "most closed, control-freak administration" he's ever covered.

That criticism comes from a forthcoming report on U.S. press freedom written by former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie, Jr., in which he claims that national security reporters face "vast and unprecedented challenges" as a result of government surveillance, secrecy and "sophisticated control" of the news media's access to government.

In that report, which Downie previewed in a Post article on Friday, Sanger says that White House employees and intelligence agency staff were specifically told in 2012 to freeze and retain any correspondence they'd had with him. That directive came after Sanger published a 2012 story about U.S. and Israeli cyberattacks against Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities."

“A memo went out from the chief of staff a year ago to White House employees and the intelligence agencies that told people to freeze and retain any e-mail, and presumably phone logs, of communications with me,” Sanger told Downie. Now his sources tell him, "‘David, I love you, but don’t e-mail me. Let’s don’t chat until this blows over.’ ”

“This is most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered," Sanger said.

The increase in government secrecy and surveillance actually began with the passage of the Patriot Act after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Downie writes.

After the Patriot Act, "a vast expansion of intelligence agencies and their powers, the aggressive exploitation of intrusive digital surveillance capabilities, the excessive classification of public documents and officials’ sophisticated control of the news media’s access to the workings of government, journalists who cover national security are facing vast and unprecedented challenges in their efforts to hold the government accountable to its citizens," he expains.

National security reporters now find "that government officials are increasingly fearful of talking to them, and they worry that their communications with sources can be monitored at any time," he writes.

The pressure has only increased under the Obama administration: "Relying on the 1917 Espionage Act, which was rarely invoked before President Obama took office, this administration has secretly used the phone and e-mail records of government officials and reporters to identify and prosecute government sources for national security stories," Downie writes.

Downie's full report will be published Thursday, Oct. 10, by the Committee to Protect Journalists.