"The U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago (7th Cir.) last week affirmed a lower court's dismissal of a libel lawsuit by an Islamic charity against six media organizations and eight reporters. The court found that the media organizations' news stories about the government investigating the Global Relief Foundation for possible ties to terrorism were substantially true." RCFP - 12/7/2004
TIMESMAN TIPPED OFF TERROR CHARITY: FEDS (NY Times Correspondent Accused)
Incidentally, his colleague, Judith Miller, who was just found in contempt in the Plame case is also wanted for testimony in the Shenon investigation.
excerpt:
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.
He said he understood journalists' concerns about protecting the identities of their sources, but national security and preventing leaks that thwart probes into "terrorist fund-raising" trump such confidentiality.
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