House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) accused a group of journalists of committing a crime yesterday, falsely stating at a committee hearing that NSA reporters are “selling” the leaked Snowden documents and are breaking the law.

Mike Rogers indicated in an interview afterwards that he was referring to Glenn Greenwald, who has entered into standard freelance contracts with news organizations to report various stories related to the NSA. But his comments apply equally to Barton Gellman, who is not a Washington Post employee yet publishes NSA stories there, presumably on a contract basis. It also potentially applies to any media organization who is selling copies of its paper or ads based on their reporting on the NSA documents, which includes the New York Times.

Greenwald later told the Guardian he has “never, never, ever” sold the documents themselves to anyone and “Mike Rogers is literally just fabricating and lying when he says that.”

While Mike Rogers has a long history of fabrications, this is just the latest in a disturbing pattern of top intelligence officials suggesting we should the First Amendment should not apply to journalists reporting on the NSA.

Just last week, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper strongly insinuated all the NSA journalists “accomplices” to a crime merely because they possessed the Snowden documents and continued to publish stories based on their contents. (Again, this does not just apply to Greenwald, but dozens of reporters and editors at Washington Post, New York Times, Guardian, ProPublica, and NBC News.)

In October, NSA chief Keith Alexander also bizarrely said journalists were selling these documents (again with no proof). He then suggested that policy makers should circumvent the First Amendment to stop further reporting: