The publisher of The New York Times said Monday that the Trump administrationwould not help one of its reporters who was about to be arrested in Egypt two years ago, saying the episode was just one of many instances of the U.S. retreating from its “historical role as a defender of the free press.”

In a scathing op-ed about the growing threat to journalism around the globe, Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger wrote that in 2017 one of the paper’s reporters, Declan Walsh, was facing “imminent arrest” by government officials in Egypt. While such calls are alarming, Sulzberger said they’re standard for the paper, which has hundreds of reporters working in more than 160 countries. Under President Donald Trump, however, things took a shocking turn when an unnamed diplomat called Times leadership.

“This particular call took a surprising and distressing turn,” Sulzberger wrote. “We learned the official was passing along this warning without the knowledge or permission of the Trump administration. Rather than trying to stop the Egyptian government or assist the reporter, the official believed, the Trump administration intended to sit on the information and let the arrest be carried out. The official feared being punished for even alerting us to the danger.”

Read the full editorial over at The New York Times.

The publisher continued to note that rather than counting on the U.S. government to help protect Walsh from arrest, the Times instead reached out to Irish diplomats, who were at the reporter’s home within an hour and escorted him onto a flight before he could be detained (Walsh is Irish).

“Those of us leading The Times find it hard not to worry, knowing we have colleagues on the ground where war is raging, disease is spreading and conditions deteriorating,” Sulzberger continued. “But we’ve long taken comfort in knowing that in addition to all our own preparations and all our own safeguards, there has always been another, critical safety net: the United States government, the world’s greatest champion of the free press. Over the last few years, however, something has dramatically changed.”

After the editorial was published, many in the media called it “stunning” and “chilling.”