The NYT actions certainly were a crime. It is illegal to reveal secret information about the conduct of a war during wartime. It really doesn't get any more straighforward than that, and the NY Times indulged purposefully in what they knew well beforehand would be a crime.
Law is not opinion. Law is by very specific act. Please reread the part of my post regarding the Constitutional guarantee of a free press overweighting a statute prohibiting the release of certain information.
We may not like it, but it is the way the Constitutional protections operate.
Would you really have wanted the reporters who broke the Monica story jailed because they reported on the testimony given before a Grand Jury?