The Justice Department served a federal subpoena on freelance New York Times reporter Matthew Cole demanding he reveal his sources for a story about a botched 2019 Navy SEAL Team 6 mission in North Korea, a move the government says targets unlawful leaks of national defense secrets.
FBI agents delivered the subpoena to Cole in February, seeking multiple years' worth of records about his contacts and conversations to identify who gave him classified information about the operation. Cole and co-author Dave Phillips published their account of the mission on September 5, 2025, drawing on interviews with nearly two dozen people. The story described a SEAL Team 6 operation in North Korea that resulted in the deaths of two or three unarmed North Koreans, and that the Trump administration did not disclose to key members of Congress before or after it took place.
The Justice Department told the Times it would use all available legal tools to "uncover those who unlawfully disclose national defense information." Cole's attorney, David O'Neil, responded with a pledge to fight.
O'Neil issued a statement casting his client as a career watchdog journalist. Newsmax reported O'Neil's full response:
"He has dedicated his professional life to bringing official misconduct to light and informing the public about the workings of its government. He will not be intimidated from continuing that important work."
O'Neil added that Cole "will defend press freedom and the First Amendment from this administration's brazen attacks on journalists, and he will honor his commitment to his sources." A New York Times spokesperson called the subpoena "part of the government's escalating attacks on journalists, which should concern all Americans."
Both statements frame the matter as a civil liberties crisis. Neither addresses the government's core concern: that someone with access to classified details about a covert military operation handed those details to a reporter, potentially violating federal law.
That distinction matters. The subpoena does not target Cole for what he wrote. It targets whoever inside the national security apparatus decided to disclose information about a sensitive special operations mission, the kind of leak that can compromise methods, endanger personnel, and damage diplomatic relationships.
The underlying story involves a Navy SEAL Team 6 operation conducted in North Korea in 2019. Two or three unarmed North Koreans died during the mission. Cole and Phillips reported that the Trump administration did not notify key members of Congress about the operation either before or after it occurred. The administration's handling of sensitive security matters has drawn scrutiny from multiple directions, but the leak of operational details about a covert mission on foreign soil raises a separate and serious legal question.
Cole wrote on his Substack that he first learned about the story in 2023 but sat on it to protect his initial source. He eventually found enough additional sources, nearly two dozen people in all, to publish the account without exposing the original tipster. The decision to delay shows Cole understood the sensitivity of the material. It also means whoever first disclosed the information did so years after the operation, during a period when the Biden administration controlled the executive branch and its classification apparatus.
Phillips, Cole's co-author, has not been subpoenaed, according to sources cited by the Times. The subpoena appears directed at Cole alone.
The Cole subpoena is not the first of its kind under this administration. The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post all received similar subpoenas that were eventually withdrawn. The circumstances of those withdrawals, whether the government obtained the information it sought through other means, or simply chose not to press the fight, remain unclear.
That pattern raises a practical question: will this subpoena follow the same path? Cole's attorney has signaled he intends to resist, and the Times has publicly backed its freelancer. A prolonged legal battle over reporter's privilege could become a significant First Amendment case. But the government has shown a willingness to back down before, and there is no indication yet that Cole has been held in contempt or faces imminent legal consequences for noncompliance.
The Trump administration's broader posture toward aggressive federal law enforcement is well established. The Justice Department has made clear it views unauthorized disclosures of national defense information as a priority, not as an abstract concern, but as a prosecutable offense. Whether the department follows through in this case will test that commitment.
The media's instinct in cases like this is predictable: frame the subpoena as an assault on journalism and move the conversation away from the underlying conduct. The Times spokesperson's statement does exactly that, describing the subpoena as part of "escalating attacks on journalists." O'Neil's language is even more pointed, calling the administration's actions "brazen attacks."
But a subpoena seeking the identity of someone who may have broken federal law by disclosing classified military operations is not an attack on journalism. It is a standard investigative tool. Reporters have no blanket constitutional right to conceal sources who commit crimes, and the Supreme Court has never recognized an absolute reporter's privilege under the First Amendment. The press can object to the tool. It cannot pretend the underlying leak did not happen.
Someone with knowledge of a covert SEAL Team 6 mission on North Korean soil chose to share that information with a journalist. That decision, not the subpoena, is where the accountability question begins. The government has every reason to find out who made it. Federal employees and contractors who hold security clearances accept binding legal obligations not to disclose classified material. When they break those obligations, the government is not merely entitled to investigate, it has a duty to do so.
Cole, for his part, has other work in the pipeline. He has an upcoming book about Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law, titled "Princes and Thieves." Whether that project factored into the timing or intensity of the subpoena is unknown, but it places Cole squarely in the orbit of reporters who have built careers on adversarial coverage of the Trump administration and its inner circle. The administration has shown a pattern of pursuing federal charges in politically charged contexts, and critics will inevitably frame this subpoena through that lens.
Still, the existence of political tension does not make the leak legal. And the reflexive cry of "press freedom" does not answer the question the Justice Department is actually asking: who inside the national security establishment disclosed details of a classified military operation, and did they break the law?
The media class will rally around Cole. They always do. But the people who deserve scrutiny here are not the investigators trying to find the leaker, they are the officials who decided that their political preferences mattered more than the oaths they swore when they accepted access to the nation's most sensitive secrets.
Journalists can publish what they want. But the people who hand them classified material are not heroes. They are suspects.
