A Congressman recently argued that the source behind a recent article published by the New York Times is "treasonous." 

The Daily Caller reports that U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) made the claim during a recent appearance on CNN.

The Times story was about a botched Navy SEAL mission in North Korea. Zinke himself is a former SEAL.

Top secret SEAL Team 6 killed North Korean civilians during failed covert mission in 2019: report https://t.co/GmN4b8YuEO pic.twitter.com/AfL0pSPGWn

— New York Post (@nypost) September 5, 2025

Background

In case you missed it, the Times this past week published a story about a botched U.S. Navy SEAL mission that was carried out during President Donald Trump's first term in office.

The New York Post reports:

A group of Navy SEALs secretly entered North Korea in early 2019 to plant a device to intercept the communications of dictator Kim Jong Un — but ended up firing on unarmed civilians diving for shellfish, puncturing their lungs to conceal their bodies and aborting the mission, according to a report.

The botched mission was carried out by the Red Squadron, which is also the unit that took out Osama Bin Laden. It was approved by Trump.

The president, however, when recently asked about the botched mission, denied knowledge of it.

The Hill reports Trump as saying, "I don’t know anything about it. I’m hearing it now for the first time."

A "treasonous" source

Zinke is not happy about how the Times came up with this story.

The source, of course, was a leaker, but the question is who could it have been, considering that this is fairly high level classified information.

Zinke, during his CNN appearance, said of the Times article:

Deeply, deeply disturbing. World War II, loose lips sink ships. To disclose this type of operation, the leak had to come from somewhere. The details are too great. So this is treasonous to disclose because what it does is that there’s no doubt been multiple operations since then, and there probably will be.

Zinke went on to argue that such a disclosure puts lives at risk.

He added:

But when you disclose details of an operation like this, it puts at risk every SEAL, every warrior, every special operations, every soldier, sailor,  airman, or Marine on future operations. It incurs greater risk. I think it was irresponsible for [The] New York Times to publish such an article. And what I’m hoping is, is they go back to the source, and they find the source, and they prosecute it.