The Trump administration issued subpoenas to five of our journalists in what I think is a naked attempt to intimidate The New York Times, and to keep us from reporting on matters that we think are essential to national security. My name is Joe Kahn. I’m the executive editor of The New York Times. I oversee our staff of more than 2,000 journalists in this country and around the world. Last week, the F.B.I. and some senior administration officials asked The New York Times to disclose the sources who provided us with the information about the problems on the new Qatari-donated 747-8 jet that President Trump was using as Air Force One. They also tried to keep The New York Times from publishing this information. There’s nothing more important that an independent news media does in a democracy than reporting fully and fairly on the way public officials protect national security and use taxpayer dollars. An active choice by the president to use a jet that’s less well equipped than others available to him, is clearly something the public should know about. The president, of course, flies on this plane, but so do hundreds of other government officials, cabinet members, members of Congress, invited guests and journalists, including our journalists. The Department of Justice has said that the reporters themselves are not the targets of the investigation, but their real targets are the government officials who were providing that information. We see this, though, as an attempt to intimidate the journalists and The Times itself, and we’re going to continue to report both about Air Force One and on the circumstances around the government use of prosecutorial power to intimidate the independent news media. I’ve been a foreign correspondent in China, and I’ve seen the way an authoritarian government can keep journalists from reporting on a huge amount of news and information that’s very clearly in the public interest. It’s really essential to American democracy that that kind of erosion of press freedoms not happen here.