You sure have to hand it to the Russians.

They understand the power of free-flowing information, how it can upend government and politics.

It’s why they don’t let information flow too freely in their own country. And it’s why, if United States intelligence assessments are correct, they have worked so hard to send it roaring through ours.

There is a certain kind of brilliance to the way the Russians are said to have hacked the email accounts of senior Democratic officials and gifted the contents to their BFFs at WikiLeaks.

The Russians seem to be using the United States’ free press — a great symbol of our democracy — against it while setting up an impossible choice for American newsrooms: Run with the stolen and in many cases unverified correspondence and potentially assist an audacious Russian attempt to disrupt a presidential election, or decline to print it and betray their mission to combat the great political fog machine.