In an article published Friday, The New York Times outed the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) top spy overseeing the organization’s efforts in Iran. The paper justified its outing of the undercover CIA spy and his role within the agency by saying it was necessary since the agent is “leading an important new administration initiative against Iran.”

Yes. That really happened.

In an article entitled “C.I.A. Names New Iran Chief in a Sign of Trump’s Hard Line,” the newspaper of record revealed that Michael D’Andrea, who previously led the hunt for Osama bin Laden, will now be in charge of the agency’s operations in Iran.

As the Times explained in its report, Iran is “one of the hardest targets” for the CIA to keep tabs on.

“The agency has extremely limited access to the country — no American embassy is open to provide diplomatic cover — and Iran’s intelligence services have spent nearly four decades trying to counter American espionage and covert operations,” the article noted.

So the Times has apparently made it the newspaper’s mission to make the agency’s work much more difficult and far more dangerous by publicly identifying the man in charge of its covert operations in the Persian country. The paper’s rationale? The report’s authors claimed that because the newspaper already outed D’Andrea in 2015 as the official in charge of a CIA drone program, ignoring desperate pleas from the CIA at the time to keep his name secret in order to protect both the agent and overall national security, it was kosher to out him as the agency’s new Iran chief in 2017.