This morning on CBS Face the Nation, President and CEO of the Associated Press Gary Pruitt called the Justice Department’s seizure of AP’s call records “unconstitutional” and said it has already had a chilling effect on newsgathering.

The chilling effect may end up being the lasting effect of this scandal: while the subpoenas are certainly an assault on press freedom, it's the American public is who ends up losing the most in these investigations. Virtually the entire national security apparatus is classified, and often the only way the American people find out what their government is doing behind this veil of secrecy is through leaks to the press.

Recently, the nation's leading national security reporters have begun to explain why these leak investgations are so dangerous:

McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay recently wrote a report on US drone strikes based on five years of Top Secret classified intelligence reports, which has been called “the most important story about CIA drone strikes ever.” He told Huffington Post: