Feds: Times Reporters Tipped Off Terror Charity

Wed, Sep 29, 2004 at 7:50:06 am PDT

The Justice Department is accusing two New York Times reporters of tipping off the Islamic charity Global Relief Foundation that they were about to be raided by the FBI: Times Reporter Tipped Off Terror Charity: Feds. (Hat tip: lawhawk.)

September 29, 2004 — The Justice Department has charged that a veteran New York Times foreign correspondent warned an alleged terror-funding Islamic charity that the FBI was about to raid its office — potentially endangering the lives of federal agents.

The stunning accusation was disclosed yesterday in legal papers related to a lawsuit the Times filed in Manhattan federal court.

The suit seeks to block subpoenas from the Justice Department for phone records of two of its Middle Eastern reporters — Philip Shenon and Judith Miller — as part of a probe to track down the leak.

The Times last night flatly denied the allegation.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago charged in court papers that Shenon blew the cover on the Dec. 14, 2001, raid of the Global Relief Foundation — the first charges of their kind under broad new investigatory powers given to the feds under the Patriot Act.

“It has been conclusively established that Global Relief Foundation learned of the search from reporter Philip Shenon of The New York Times,” Fitzgerald said in an Aug. 7, 2002, letter to the Times’ legal department.