Nazis up in arms

FBI probing threats to Miami Herald's Pitts

By GREG GORDON, Miami Herald

The FBI is investigating threats against Leonard Pitts Jr., a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Miami Herald, after a column he wrote about black-on-white crime triggered a furor on white supremacist websites.

Days after The Miami Herald published Pitts' column, Overthrow.com posted his address, his home phone number and his wife's name. Several other white supremacist Internet sites followed suit, and one gave directions to his house along with a satellite image of the neighborhood.

Pitts said that none of the threats was specific and that ''nobody has come to the house.'' However, he said, someone leafleted his neighborhood with a flier attacking him for the column.

Pitts has received dozens of hostile phone calls at his home and about 400 e-mails, said Dave Wilson, The Miami Herald's managing editor for news.

''An unsettling number of those were threats,'' Wilson said. The messages, which ranged widely in gravity, included death threats, he said.

WEBSITE EDITOR SPEAKS

Wilson said he had tried to prevent the incident from escalating by sending an e-mail to Bill White, editor for the site, asking him to delete Pitts' address and phone number.

He said White replied: 'We have no intention of removing Mr. Pitts' personal information. Frankly, if some loony took the info and killed him, I wouldn't shed a tear. That also goes for your whole newsroom.''

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