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Reporters have the right to say whatever for the most part.

The issue here is whether the press can use free speech to spread illegal leaks and assist in what could be considered espionage against the United States?

Common sense would seem to say no.

Let's say the press in WW2 heard a disgruntled lefty leak, and decided to tell Japan through the newspapers that we found one of those typewriters and that we could now read all their correspondence.
Is the press free to sabotage the defense of our country and remove an advantage we would have had longer over an enemy they don't know about? Common sense says no.

One might argue, as many have, that there is a national interest in promoting debate about defense and security policy and that such debate would be impeded by the prosecution of journalists.

OTOH one might argue, as I do, that journalists are not priests nor any sort of officials at all. Journalists are merely people like you and me, with no credentials which the government is obligated to respect. People who exercise rights that you and I have but ordinarily do not exercise. Say rather, which we ordinarily exercise only humbly via FR, rather than arrogantly.
Journalists call themselves "the press" as if non-fiction or even fictional books were less protected than the particular genre of topical nonfiction known as journalism. And as if the First Amendment covered broadcast journalists whose business could not exist without government censorship of radio transmission which competed with the licensed broadcasters. It is arrogant to argue from a claim of your own virtue, and journalists arrogantly claim the virtue of objectivity.
Journalists claim the status of a priesthood of power - the power of public relations. They maintain that power by maintaining their circulation and their ratings, and they maintain their circulation and ratings by "If it bleeds it leads" negativity and by second-guessing criticism of those who provide the goods and services upon which we depend.

If we depend on the military, then the military must be losing in Iraq (even if its oppostition there holds no territory and is capable only of harassing the Iraqi public and our troops.

If we trust the food in the supermarket, then Alar used to optimize the appearance of apples must be harmful to public health.

If we depend on our pickup trucks, they must be firebombs just waiting to go off.

If we depend on gasoline, the oil companies must be greedy.

If we depend on white men, they must be racist sexist biggot homophobes.

If we depend on the police, they must be either unable to apprehend evildoers or brutal thugs - if not both.

If we depend on Christian principles (which alone explain why slavery was abolished worldwide to the extent that it has been), Christians must be self righteous and domineering.

If we depend on FR and bloggers to give us informed opinion, bloggers and FR posters must be tendentious partisans who unfairly target virtuous journalists and liberal politicians.

And if we depend on an intelligent and public-spirited electorate, the electorate must be a bunch of mind-numbed robots who will fall for anything.
In short, journalism preens itself as the definition of the public interest by promoting the idea that anyone who is not a journalist or a credulous believer of the perspective of journalism is evil. Journalism is in fact nothing but the prototypical special interest. An interest which promotes ~~liberalism~~ tyranny as it promotes itself.

The Times, in reporting on this interview on Monday in an article by Adam Liptak, quoted the Attorney General at length, but suggested that the espionage laws in question had been written to apply to government officials who leaked classified information and not to journalists and newspapers that might have published it.

I agree with you - the Press' interpretation would indicate that if I rob a bank, it is OK to prosecute me, but if a reporter takes the money, knowing that it is stolen, and fences it, the reporter should be granted amnesty.