By and large, the Donald Trump era has wrought a series of unprecedented actions, uncharted waters, first times for everything. Arguably one of the most stunning such firsts, at least in the media landscape, arrived on Wednesday afternoon, when The New York Times published an op-ed submitted by an anonymous “senior official” titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” This official not only confirmed the West Wing chaos so often described in White House reporting, but also informed readers that concerned White House staffers are working on a stealth plan to protect the republic from Trump’s erratic behavior as commander in chief, in what read like a mixture of a cry for help, a patriotic warning, a professional exculpation, and a sign that the inmates know they are banging around in a tortured asylum.

The article was strewn with eye-popping, stomach-churning confessions such as: “The dilemma . . . is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations,” and: “from the White House to executive-branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions.” Finally, the author invoked a fear of the 25th Amendment, which my colleague Gabriel Sherman reported on last year. “Given the instability many witnessed,” the author noted, “there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis.”

Inside the Times’s newsroom and Washington bureau, the op-ed caused jaws to drop. The news and opinion departments function independent of one another, and editorial-page editor James Bennet confirmed to me that he did not inform executive editor Dean Baquet about the column in advance, in order to respect the firewall. “People are totally stunned,” one senior Times journalist told me. “It’s a parlor game. Everybody’s trying to figure out who it is, including the Washington bureau. It feels like a crazy moment.”

Indeed, Times reporters who cover the White House now find themselves in the rather unorthodox and surely awkward position of trying to discern the identity of a source whose anonymity is being protected by another department of their own organization. “I’m obviously very concerned about preserving the anonymity of the writer,” Bennet told me, “but I understand reporters are doing their job.”

In a brief phone interview Wednesday evening, Bennet wouldn’t say much about the genesis of the op-ed. He offered that it had already been in the works before similar claims about a White House in crisis began leaking out of Bob Woodward’s forthcoming Trump tell-all, Fear. Jim Dao, the editor who oversees op-eds for the Times, told CNN that “several days ago” the official “contacted me through an intermediary.” Bennet told me there was a rigorous vetting process, and that his team took seriously the precautions to protect the identity of the official about whom America’s political and media establishment is now engaged in a feverish guessing game.

Bennet elaborated that the Times has granted anonymity to op-ed writers before—say, a person inside Syria whose life would be endangered by a byline, or an undocumented immigrant fearful of deportation. But one cannot recall an instance when the Times, or any major newspaper, offered an unnamed administration official a platform upon which to torch the very administration for which he or she works. It’s a decision that speaks to the extraordinary times we live in, and one that was bound to be met with controversy, adding to an already substantial series of controversies the opinion section has weathered under Bennet’s stewardship. “The author of the anonymous op-ed is hoping to vindicate the reputation of like-minded senior Trump staffers,” wrote David Frum, the former George W. Bush aide and anti-Trump conservative, in a piece for The Atlantic. “But what the author has just done is throw the government of the United States into even more dangerous turmoil. He or she has enflamed the paranoia of the president and empowered the president’s willfulness.”

Trump, in a televised appearance on Wednesday, renounced the piece and its author. “We have somebody in what I call the ‘failing New York Times‘ talking about he’s part of the resistance within the Trump administration. This is what we have to deal with,” he said. “So when you tell me about some anonymous source within the administration, probably who’s failing, and probably here for all the wrong reasons—no. And The New York Times is failing. . . . So if the ‘failing New York Times’ has an anonymous editorial—can you believe it, anonymous, meaning gutless, a gutless editorial.” (Editorials, intended to reflect the position of a newspaper’s editorial board, appear without a byline. Wednesday’s bombshell was in fact an anonymous opinion piece.)

“There will be a lot of criticism, and I understand it,” Bennet told me. “The question for us was, does making this unusual grant, is it merited by the significance of the piece? We feel that it was.” He added, “Our job isn’t to publish op-eds to further one political argument or another. Our job is to publish op-eds that further the public’s understanding of what the hell is going on, and I think this piece makes a significant contribution.”