Federal agents staged a pre-dawn raid on the home of an award-winning investigative journalist, and walked away with hundreds of documents — including a top-secret list of government whistleblowers.

Reporter Audrey Hudson, 50, has spent a career in journalism, once working for the Washington Times, then guiding her career into freelance reporting. The disturbing raid that she endured “shook her to the core” and made her question the security of Americans’ rights and freedoms under its current brand of government.