TIME SERVED.(The Talk of the Town)(FBI tears out letters to the editor in magazine received by shoe bomber Richard Reid in prison)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 28-JUN-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Some months ago, Betty Satterwhite, who edits the letters section at Time, got a call from a federal defender in Boston who was representing Richard Reid, the infamous shoe bomber, in a court appeal. Reid, it turned out, was a devoted Time reader, but he'd been having a little trouble with his subscription. As he awaited sentencing at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute, he began receiving peculiarly abridged editions of the magazine: the letters to the editor were always missing, as though they'd been torn out.

In fact, they had--by F.B.I. agents responding to a series of "special administrative measures" issued by the Attorney General. Late last month, a federal court...

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