U.S. Probes Alleged (NYT) Leak on Terror Probe (Bad Day for OLD MEDIA)

WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal prosecutor is investigating whether two reporters for The New York Times were leaked information about a terror financing investigation that may have tipped off the targets of the probe.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago last week notified the newspaper in a letter that he intended to subpoena the telephone records of reporters Philip Shenon and Judith Miller.

An attorney for The Times, Floyd Abrams, confirmed receipt of the letter and said he was negotiating with Fitzgerald in hopes of preventing the telephone company records from being subpoenaed. He said neither The Times nor its reporters have received subpoenas.

``We are in ongoing discussions to either seek to head that off or to persuade the government that it should not proceed any further down that line,'' Abrams said.

Fitzgerald, who also is investigating the leak of a CIA undercover officer's name to the media, is attempting to determine if anyone in the government tipped off the Times reporters about a plan in December 2001 to seize the assets of the Illinois-based Global Relief Foundation on suspicion that it was financing terrorism. Existence of the probe was first reported Friday by The Washington Post.

According to a staff report from the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI had intended to obtain secret surveillance warrants to monitor the reaction of the charity in the United States after its overseas offices and those of another Islamic charity, the Benevolence International Foundation, were searched on Dec. 13, 2001.

``This plan went awry,'' the report said, after word about government action was leaked to Global Relief, apparently when a Times reporter called a charity spokesman to ask whether he knew about a plan by the U.S. government to freeze its assets.

``FBI personnel learned that some of the targets of the investigations may be destroying documents,'' the Sept. 11 commission report said, adding that the FBI then did a ``hastily assembled'' search of both charities' offices in Illinois.

Global Relief attorney Roger Simmons said he and Global Relief officials have been interviewed in detail about the matter by the FBI. Simmons said there was no destruction of evidence.

``I told everyone at GRF, 'Don't throw anything away and don't act like you're throwing things away,''' Simmons said. ``There were some instances in which they took stuff home with them and brought it back to make sure it didn't get hurt or destroyed or lost.''

The Sept. 11 report says that ``press leaks plagued'' most actions to freeze assets in the United States taken by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.

No criminal charges have been brought in the Global Relief case, although its founder has been deported. Through a spokesman, Fitzgerald declined comment on the leak investigation.

Fitzgerald has also sought interviews with or subpoenaed reporters during his probe into whether a crime was committed in the leaking of the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA undercover officer. A federal judge ruled in August that the First Amendment did not necessarily protect the reporters from giving testimony in a grand jury criminal investigation.

Plame's name appeared in a July 2003 item by syndicated columnist Robert Novak after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was critical in a newspaper opinion piece about President Bush's claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq sought to obtain uranium in Niger. The CIA had sent Wilson to Niger to investigate that claim, which he concluded was unfounded.

Hmmmm...any guesses on who eaked the info to the NY Times?

DECEMBER 14, 2001 Friday : (US SEIZES RECORDS & ASSETS OF TWO ILLINOIS-BASED ISLAMIC CHARITIES : GLOBAL RELIEF FOUNDATION & BENEVOLENCE INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION) The United States widened its efforts to stem terror financing on Friday, acting to seize records and assets of two more charitable groups. The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which has taken the lead in U.S. efforts to track down terror-related funding, said late on Friday it ordered the financial assets and records of Benevolence International Foundation Inc. and Global Relief Foundation Inc. blocked, invoking a recently enacted U.S. anti-terrorism law. Ebony Harrel, a spokeswoman for the FBI, said agents executed the warrants at the Global Relief Foundation in Bridgeview and the Benevolence International Foundation in Palos Hills, both in the state of Illinois. Harrel would not comment on the search warrants, saying they were both sealed.
"Offices were seized and all financial assets and records have been frozen and blocked," said an administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The move marks the fifth time since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York City and Washington that the U.S. government has attempted to block assets of individuals, businesses or groups believed to have links to terror financing. Treasury officials have said $67 million in funds have been blocked in the U.S. and overseas as a result of the efforts.
At the Global Relief Foundation, agents were executing the search warrants into Friday evening, removing furniture and fixtures as well as records, said Asim Ghafoor, a foundation spokesman. "Everything in the building is subject to seizure, they are going to take what they want to take," Ghafoor said. Global Relief was listed as having addresses in Bridgeview, Illinois.
The search warrants were served the same day that NATO-led peacekeepers and United Nations police raided two Global Relief's offices in Yugoslavia. - "Feds Close Two More Muslim Groups, " Reuters & AP contributed to this CBS report, CBS, Dec. 14, 2001

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