Eric Lichtblau and James Risen were the two reporters who broke the story of the Bush administration's probably-illegal wiretapping operations. And I think I'm being charitable to put in the "probably."
Lichtblau has written a book that covers, among other thing, how they put that report together and Slate has an excerpt which should be of interest to anyone who cares about your government breaking the law…or even just about the state of journalism in the country today. On the latter count, the following paragraph leaped out at me…
The only real question now was not whether the story would run, but when. That decision was helped along by a chance conversation I had soon after our White House meeting. The administration, I was told, had considered seeking a Pentagon Papers-type injunction to block publication of the story. The tidbit was a bombshell. Few episodes in the history of the Times — or, for that matter, in all of journalism — had left as indelible a mark as the courtroom battle over the Pentagon Papers, and now we were learning that the Bush White House had dusted off a Nixon-era relic to consider coming after us again. The editors in New York had already decided they would probably print the story in the newspaper for that Friday, Dec. 16, 2005, but when word of the Pentagon Papers tip reached them, they decided they would also post it on the Internet the night before. That wasn't routinely done at that time on "exclusive" stories because we would risk losing the scoop to our competitors, but the editors felt it was worth the risk. The administration might be able to stop the presses with an injunction, but they couldn't stop the Internet.
I don't think the government could have stopped the presses either, but the ability to launch the story out into the world via the 'net probably preempted that battle. And has rendered so many others moot.