WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has launched initiatives
targeting journalists and their possible government sources. The
efforts include several FBI probes and a warning from the Justice
Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws.

In recent weeks, dozens of employees at the CIA, the National Security
Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed by agents
from the FBI's Washington field office, who are investigating
revelations that led to reports about secret CIA prisons and the NSA's
warrantless domestic surveillance program, according to law enforcement
and intelligence officials familiar with the two cases.

Numerous employees at the CIA, FBI, Justice Department and other
agencies also have received letters from Justice prohibiting them from
discussing even unclassified issues related to the NSA program,
according to sources familiar with the notices. Some GOP lawmakers are
considering whether to approve tougher penalties for informing the
press about government secrets
.
In a little-noticed case in California, FBI agents from Los Angeles
have already contacted reporters at the Sacramento Bee about stories
published last July that were related to a terrorism case in Lodi,
according to the newspaper.

Some media watchers, lawyers and editors say that, taken together, the
incidents represent perhaps the most extensive and overt campaign
against a free press in a generation. They say the incidents have
worsened the already-tense relationship between mainstream news
organizations and the White House.

"There's a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging
reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding
information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the
public's business risk being branded traitors," said New York Times
Executive Editor Bill Keller, in a statement responding to questions
from The Washington Post. "I don't know how far action will follow
rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring
war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad."