Justice Department subpoenas freelancer over New York Times North Korea story

The Justice Department has subpoenaed Matthew Cole, a freelance contributor to The New York Times, over records tied to a 2025 North Korea story, placing a freelancer at the center of a national-security leak fight. The paper publicly disclosed the demand, and the subpoena sought contacts, notes and testimony meant to identify the source or sources behind the reporting.

The story at issue was “How a Top Secret SEAL Team 6 Mission Into North Korea Fell Apart,” published on Sept. 5, 2025, and co-written by Dave Philipps and Cole. The Times said the 2019 operation had been greenlit by President Donald Trump and left unarmed North Koreans dead. NPR later aired a Sept. 10, 2025 segment on the same reporting, underscoring how closely the account tracked a highly classified military episode.

The subpoena matters because North Korea reporting sits at the intersection of intelligence, sanctions enforcement and covert military activity. When prosecutors seek reporters’ notes or source contacts in that terrain, press-freedom advocates worry not only about one investigation but about future sourcing from officials, experts and defectors who may only speak if confidentiality holds. In this case, the request reportedly aimed at the sourcing of a 2025 story about a botched U.S. military operation in North Korea.

The case also tests where the Justice Department draws the line when the target is not a staff reporter but a freelancer. Cole was identified by The Times as the freelancer named in the subpoena, and later reporting said the newspaper was funding his defense. That leaves a harder question in the background: whether the department’s protections for members of the news media, tightened and revised in recent years, meaningfully cover contributors and stringers whose work can be central to major newsroom investigations but whose employment status is more precarious.

The move fits a broader pattern of subpoena fights involving The Times and other outlets. In July, the Justice Department subpoenaed Times reporters over Air Force One coverage, then later withdrew those demands on July 25, 2026. In May, it also subpoenaed The Wall Street Journal in a separate leak investigation. Each case sharpened concerns that national-security inquiries are becoming a route to pressuring journalists for unpublished material and source identities.

For now, the Cole subpoena stands as another test of how much shelter the government’s media rules actually provide when a national-security investigation collides with freelance reporting.