Washington – The Supreme Court refused Monday to shield The New York Times and two of its reporters from a prosecutor’s probe into who leaked word of planned raids on two Muslim charities five years ago.
The decision clears the way for federal prosecutors to review the phone records of reporters Judith Miller and Philip Shenon for several weeks in the fall of 2001. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald says the records will help point to the source of the leak.
The Times maintains it has a First Amendment right to protect the confidentiality of its sources. Floyd Abrams, the lawyer for the paper, said, “There has been no claim of wrongdoing against the Times reporters. The only thing at issue here is a leak investigation in which the government seeks to obtain information on who spoke to the journalists.”
Two years ago, lawyers for the newspaper went before a federal judge in New York and won an order that barred the prosecutor from examining the phone records.
But in August, the U.S. Appeals Court in Manhattan reversed that order in a 2-1 decision. The prosecutor has a “compelling interest” in learning who tipped off the reporters to the planned raids, thereby “endangering federal agents” and permitting the “targets to spirit away incriminating information,” Judge Ralph Winter said in the appeals court opinion.
“We see no danger to the free press in so holding,” he added. “Learning of imminent law-enforcement asset freezes or searches and informing targets of them is not an activity essential, or even common, to journalism.”
The Supreme Court never has squarely ruled that the news media have a First Amendment right to protect their confidential sources. On Monday, the justices turned down an emergency plea from the paper in a one-line order.
Also Monday, the Supreme Court turned down:
A challenge by eight families to a state law in Maine that bars the use of public funds to send students to private religious schools.
A lawsuit against Salt Lake City brought by the widow of a former suspect in the abduction of Elizabeth Smart.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
