On July 6, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs issued a scathing report detailing what the Committee characterized as a seething epidemic of classified information making its way into the press. Titled, “State Secrets: How an Avalanche of Media Leaks Is Harming National Security,” the 23-page document cites “at least 125 stories” between Inauguration day and May 25 “with leaked information potentially damaging to national security.” That last part is debatable. While the report, which was commissioned by the Republican majority, does include a handful of truly astonishing disclosures—things like FISA warrants and transcripts of private phone calls with foreign leaders—most of the document essentially reads like a chronology of what the public has learned about the interlocking investigations into the Trump administration and its potential ties to Russia. The bylines of New York Times and Washington Post reporters are especially prolific. “Listing individual reporters who allegedly harmed national security is something that illiberal nations do,” the Committee to Protect Journalists wrote in response.

The report was provided to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who would stand before a podium one month later and announce that the Trump administration had already tripled the amount of leak investigations pursued under Barack Obama, whose administration had in turn been more aggressive about hunting down sources than any other since Nixon’s. “I strongly agree with the president and condemn in the strongest terms the staggering number of leaks undermining the ability of our government to protect this country,” Sessions said. “We are taking a stand. This culture of leaking must stop. . . . So, today, I have this message for the intelligence community: the Department of Justice is open for business. And I have this warning for would-be leakers: don’t do it.”

Consternation about the report was particularly high in The Washington Post’s newsroom, not only because 33 of its journalists’ stories were in the crosshairs, but also because “State Secrets” was being promoted on Twitter by one of their own. Jerry Markon was a longtime Post reporter who covered the Department of Homeland Security until February, when he left the paper to work for the Committee on Homeland Security as senior policy adviser to its chairman, Senator Ron Johnson. When the report landed, along with six retweets from Markon touting its findings, jaws hit the floor. At least one of Markon’s former colleagues, according to people with knowledge of the matter, e-mailed him to ask if he’d written the report himself. Adam Goldman, who worked with Markon at the Post and even shared some bylines with him, was blunt in his assessment. “Many former colleagues at the Post were disappointed,” Goldman told me. “It was a betrayal.” (I reached out to Markon through the Committee’s press office but he was not made available.) A Johnson aide emphasized that Johnson’s “concern is about the leakers and the national-security threats their leaks pose, not individual journalists.”

“People treated Obama like a cult figure. Some people view Trump more as the Godfather.”

I spoke with more than half a dozen national-security journalists at several major news organizations to get their take on the current climate. The conversations were overwhelmingly off the record, either because these reporters have a policy of keeping discussions pertaining to their tradecraft offline, or because they didn’t want to inflame hostilities or play into the government’s hands. (Indeed, some were of the opinion that a story like this one would do more harm than good.) Goldman, who now covers the F.B.I. for the Times, and who was the only one of the group to give me a quote for attribution, summed up the state of play like this: “We can’t do our jobs effectively if we have to run around fearful the government is always watching us. We’re journalists, not spies.”

And yet many journalists these days do have to acts like spies. That’s not exactly new. Back in the 70s, Bob Woodward resorted to moving a flowerpot around on his balcony in order to arrange post-midnight meetings with Deep Throat. As the government in recent years has become more heavy-handed about cracking down on whistleblowers, and as electronic surveillance has become increasingly sophisticated, reporters have in turn become increasingly sophisticated about communicating through encryption and other highly secure methods.