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Just in time for the nation’s semiquincentennial, President Donald Trump has issued what might be the most bizarre order of his presidency—a high bar to cross. In fact, if we were on the eve of April Fools’ Day, not the Fourth of July, I’d guess that the few news stories about the order were pranks.

But the story was first revealed by the New York Times (a paper not known for high jinks), and other outlets have since confirmed it, so we must assume that Trump has indeed ordered his acting director of national intelligence to assemble a “master spy list.”

As the Times describes the order, he wants the intelligence agencies to “turn over the names” of all foreign spies, “including suspected spies and potential recruits” on a single all-in-one-place list.

The dangers of such a list existing should be obvious. Foreign intelligence agencies, notably Russia and China, would likely pay billions of dollars for such a list. They would certainly hunt valiantly for some American official who has access to the list and enough need or greed to sell it to them for mere millions.

It brings to mind the story of Aldrich Ames, the CIA counterintelligence officer who in the 1980s gave his Soviet handlers the names of over 30........

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