The New York Times moved on July 15 to quash a set of grand-jury subpoenas that would force it to turn over information about its own journalists' reporting - subpoenas issued by a US Attorney who is also the president's nominee to run the intelligence community [1]. The filing, in federal court in Manhattan, is the newspaper's formal fight-back against a demand it calls unconstitutional.
The subpoenas grew out of a Times story reporting that the Air Force One jet gifted by Qatar lacks the antimissile countermeasures of the older presidential plane [1]. Three of an expected five journalists were served on July 11 [1]. The office of US Attorney Jay Clayton - whose nomination for director of national intelligence was before the Senate the same week - issued them; the Times' deputy general counsel, David McCraw, said they 'violate the constitutional rights of The Times and its journalists' [1].
The mechanism is the point. A grand-jury subpoena aimed at reporters over a published national-security story is a demand to compel journalists to become witnesses about their sourcing and their work - the kind of forced disclosure that press-freedom protections exist to prevent, because a reporter who can be subpoenaed over an unflattering story is a reporter sources learn not to trust [1]. That the subpoenas come from an official the Senate is at that moment weighing for the top intelligence job sharpens the conflict, rather than softening it.
What the record shows is a press-freedom fight in its opening move: the government has subpoenaed reporters over a story about the president's plane, and the newspaper has asked a court to stop it [1]. The motion to quash is where that fight now sits [1].
