FOX NEWS
Posted: 11:33 AM, December 31, 2009

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Transportation Security Administration, sent federal agents to the homes of two journalists and served them with subpoenas on Tuesday night to try to identify the source of a leak about aviation security changes imposed after the failed attempt on Christmas Day to blow up Northwest Flight 253.

In separate visits, the DHS employees told Chris Elliott and Steve Frischling that their computers and all e-mail correspondence related to the leak of the security directive were being subpoenaed as part of an investigation into who leaked the document to them, which both journalists published on their Web sites.

The directive, issued within hours after 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed to detonate explosives that had been sewn into his underwear, restricted passenger movement and activities on all international flights.

After being published by Elliott and Frischling, the restrictions were widely ridiculed by travel experts, bloggers, and news organizations, which deeply embarrassed the TSA and the homeland security agency, already under pressure for their missteps in the foiled attack.

The TSA backtracked almost immediately on the restrictions — which had ordered airlines, among other things, not to permit passengers to go to the bathroom an hour before arrival on all international flights and to prevent them from holding pillows, blankets and personal possessions on their laps. A TSA spokesman said that the added security precautions were discretionary.

Elliott, the blogger who first published Security Directive SD-1544-09-06 and writes a travel column for The Washington Post, said he was surprised and somewhat intimidated by the TSA visit and being served with the subpoena.

In his blog, Elliott wrote that he had “just put the kids in the bathtub when Special Agent Robert Flaherty knocked on my front door with a subpoena. He was very polite, and used “sir” a lot, and he said he just wanted a name: Who sent me the security directive?”

Elliott said in an interview that he had declined to tell Flaherty the identity of his source or turn over his computer. He said he has referred further inquiries about his stance to Mark Holsher, an attorney, who did not return calls for comment.

Frischling, who runs a travel Web site called “Flying with Fish” and published the directive minutes after Elliott, said in an interview Thursday that he had given his computer to the two federal agents who came to his house on Tuesday night.

Frischling said he complied with their request after they asserted that he was “not a journalist” and handed him a subpoena, telling him he had now been “served.” They also said they would return the next morning to confiscate his computer and other communications equipment if he failed to cooperate.

Spokesmen for the Department of Homeland Security declined comment on the inquiry and subpoenas.