U.S. reporter charged with terror tip-off

NEW YORK, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- The U.S. Justice Department has alleged a New York Times foreign affairs reporter tipped off an Islamic charity that the FBI was about to raid its office.

The accusation was disclosed Tuesday in Manhattan federal court, where the Times was seeking 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 New York Post reported.

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, which was suspected of funding Islamic terror operations.

"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.

Times lawyer George Freeman told The Post the newspaper denies there was any tip-off and would fight the request for phone records.