A federal court has ordered media personality Glenn Beck to reveal the names of sources who he claims provided the basis for statements he made about a victim of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. The order came as part of a defamation lawsuit brought by 23-year-old Abdulrahman Alharbi, who Beck called a "proven terrorist" and "money man" behind the bombing.
Alharbi, a Saudi Arabian student who at the time was attending the New England School of English, was treated for mild burn injuries after the attack, questioned by law enforcement and highlighted by some media outlets as a potential "person of interest," but ultimately cleared by authorities of wrongdoing within hours.
Beck has nonetheless stood by his claims, citing up to six confidential sources in the law enforcement community. On Tuesday, Judge Patti Saris of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts ordered Beck to turn over the names of at least two Department of Homeland Security employees who he claims constituted the basis for the most salacious allegations.
"I ordered several government agencies, including the FBI, CBP, ICE, the National Security Division of the Department of Justice and the Boston U.S. Attorney's Office to provide redacted copies" of documents related to the case, Saris wrote in the 61-page opinion. "None of the documents supports the idea that Alharbi was 'the money man' financing the Boston Marathon attacks."
Saris said the problem was significant enough to outweigh freedom of the press and the oath of source secrecy. "On the other side of the scale, the defendants' promise of confidentiality to the sources weighs against compelled disclosure."
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The order allows for restrictions, including limited attendance and restrictions on the dissemination of documents, to be set on the hearing, to limit repercussions the sources could face outside of the courtroom.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted for the April 15, 2013, bombing. His brother Tamerlan was killed in a standoff with police, while Dzhokhar was sentenced in a subsequent trial to death. He is being held in the Florence, Colo., Supermax prison while he appeals the sentence.
Whether Beck will comply with the order remains to be seen. The last time a judge issued a similar order was in 2005, when New York Times reporter Judith Miller was asked to turn over the name of a source who revealed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame. Miller ultimately served just under three months in jail.