Earlier this year, media organizations went on alert after Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales said in a television interview that prosecuting journalists for publishing leaked classified information was a legal "possibility." Their apprehension eased somewhat after one of Gonzales' deputies reminded a Senate hearing that the Justice Department "has never in its history prosecuted a member of the press [under] the Espionage Act of 1917 for the publication of classified information, even while recognizing that such a prosecution could be possible under the law."

But the Bush administration has persuaded a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., to abandon the interpretation of the Espionage Act that has shielded journalists all these years: that the law's purpose is to punish government employees who disseminate secret information.

This month, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III ruled that the Justice Department could put two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on trial for violating the Espionage Act's prohibition on disclosing or receiving information "related to the national defense."

Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman allegedly received confidential information about U.S. policy options in the Middle East from a Pentagon analyst and conveyed it to their committee colleagues, a Washington Post reporter and an Israeli diplomat.

Ellis ruled that the government still had to show that it had reason to believe the information "could be used to the injury of the United States or the advantage of any foreign nation."

But his ominous bottom line was that "the government can punish those outside of the government for the unauthorized receipt and deliberate retransmission of information relating to the national defense." It's hard to see why that interpretation wouldn't cover news reporting of leaked information.

The defendants in this case are unattractive stand-ins for a free press. They allegedly provided inside information not only to a reporter but also to a foreign country.

But if they are found guilty and higher courts uphold their convictions, the Espionage Act could mutate into a British-style Official Secrets Act that could be used against journalists.

That outcome would fly in the face of the history of the Espionage Act, which scholars note was enacted after Congress rejected language that would have punished newspapers for articles that, in the president's view, "might be useful to the enemy." Original intent aside, an interpretation of the Espionage Act that allowed for the prosecution of journalists would be bad for present-day America.

Consider the articles that inflamed the Bush administration against the media and led to speculation that it might try to prosecute journalists: the New York Times' reporting of the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance of the e-mail messages and telephone calls of Americans suspected of ties with terrorists, as well as reports in the New York Times and this newspaper about U.S. monitoring of international financial transactions.

The NSA article, which may force Congress and the courts to belatedly rein in the White House, is only one example of the healthy interplay between government and media in a democracy. The government may keep secrets but, if it fails, the media, in the words of the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, "may publish what it knows."