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.
~snip~
Follow this chain of personalities:
Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, man charged with conspiring to assasinate GWB has Ashraf Nubani as his lawyer. ( post 77)
Ashraf Nubani has defended the Global Relief Fund (post 179)
The GRF sued several MSM outlets for libel but failed after being called a "terrorist organization". (post 189)
A veteran New York Times foreign correspondent (Philip Shenon) warned an alleged terror-funding Islamic charity (the GRF) that the FBI was about to raid its office (post 196)
[snip] NY Times sues Justice Dep't over phone records
First the Valerie Plame case, now a probe of an Islamic charity raid—the government just can’t get enough of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, only she doesn’t want to tell them anything. The paper yesterday sued the Justice Department in an effort to keep phone records for reporters Miller and Philip Shenon private. The paper was angered when Justice tried to obtan the records, from the post-Sept. 11, 2001 period, directly from the phone company instead of the paper. The records are part of a Justice investigation into a raid on the Islamic charity Global Relief Fund. The government says that the reporters were tipped by a government source about the raid, a tip it believes was criminal. The Times insists that the reporters’ phone records should be kept private under reporters’ privilege.[/snip]
NY Times sues Justice Dep't over phone records - MediaLifeMag (Sept 2004)