United States v. Terry
Court: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
Date Filed: March 5, 2025
Background: In July 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Sue Mi Terry, a foreign policy expert and former CIA analyst, with conspiracy to violate and failure to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. FARA is a famously expansive World War II-era statute that was originally intended to counter Nazi propaganda in the U.S. by requiring propagandists to register with the government.
The indictment, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, accuses Terry of being an unregistered foreign agent for the Republic of Korea, based on organizing meetings with ROK representatives and government officials, disclosing “nonpublic U.S. government information” to ROK intelligence officers, and publishing articles and making media appearances advocating “ROK policy positions.”
Many of the alleged activities mentioned in the indictment look a lot like traditional news reporting, including source cultivation, the receipt and dissemination of information from sources, and the use of editorial discretion. One allegation, for instance, states that Terry texted a South Korean official a list of questions, which were then answered, and that Terry later published an article that was “broadly consistent with the responses” by the official.
Terry moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing, in part, that FARA’s broad and vague terms violate the First Amendment.
Our Position: In a friend-of-the-court brief, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press urges the district court to grant Terry’s motion to dismiss. It is imperative that FARA be applied narrowly by the court to avoid the myriad First Amendment problems that would arise if FARA were given its literal textual sweep.
- Applying FARA to interactions with foreign sources and other journalistic activity would chill newsgathering and not serve the public interest.
- Were FARA triggered by routine journalistic activity, it would raise several constitutional concerns.
- FARA is susceptible to politicized and selective enforcement.
- Were it applicable to protected journalistic activity, FARA would also be unconstitutionally overbroad.
- The government and courts have historically been cautious in enforcing FARA against the press.
From the Brief: “[D]eploying FARA to force registration and labeling under penalty of criminal sanction poses a unique and acute threat to press freedom. Not only would journalists face pressures to avoid reporting that could trigger scrutiny from the FARA Unit, but even the intimation of foreign influence would fatally undermine the trustworthiness of the journalism in the eyes of the reader, listener, or viewer.”
Related: Two days before filing this friend-of-the-court brief, the Reporters Committee submitted public comments to the Justice Department urging officials to reconsider parts of a proposed rule that would expand FARA in a way that could chill First Amendment-protected news reporting that the government dislikes.