Journalist gets death threats for column; FBI called

WASHINGTON — The FBI is investigating death threats against Leonard Pitts, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Miami Herald, after a column about black-on-white crime triggered a furor on white-supremacist Web sites.

Days after Pitts' column, one site posted his address, his home phone number and his wife's name. Other white-supremacist Web sites followed suit, and one gave directions to his house.

Pitts, who is black, has received dozens of hostile phone calls and about 400 e-mails, some of them including death threats, said Dave Wilson, the Herald's managing editor for news.

Wilson said he had asked Bill White, the editor for the site that first posted Pitts' address and phone number, to delete the information. White's reply, according to Wilson: "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."

White said he is "commander" of the American National Socialist Workers Party, which aspires to build a nation "modeled on the German Third Reich."

Pitts' June 3 column, published in The Seattle Times, challenged claims that the January slayings of a white couple in Knoxville, Tenn., reflected a surge in racially motivated violence by blacks against whites. Five blacks have been charged, but Pitts emphasized that the killings weren't being investigated as a hate crime, and he rejected white supremacist claims that black-on-white crime is underreported.