More On Stephen Hatfill

From the Los Angeles Times:

The federal investigation into the deadly anthrax mailings of late 2001 was undermined by leaks and a premature fixation on a single suspect, according to investigators and scientists involved in the case.

More than six years after the mailings, no one has been charged, and the top suspect, former Army scientist Steven J. Hatfill was all but exonerated Friday when the U.S. Justice Department agreed to pay him $5.82 million to settle a lawsuit.

Five people died. As a protective measure, many had to take powerful antibiotics which sometimes cause rather serious side-effects. Post offices were shut down and had to be decontaminated. Throughout the country, folks were afraid of their mail. I watched for white powder myself for a while. Citizens were advised to communicate by email or phone and not to send mail to their representatives in Congress.

Behind the scenes, FBI agents chafed at their supervisors' obsession with Hatfill, who in 2002 was publicly identified by then-Atty. Gen. John D. Ashcroft as "a person of interest." The preoccupation with Hatfill persisted for years, long after investigators failed to turn up any evidence linking him to the mailings. Other potential suspects and leads were ignored or given insufficient attention, investigators said.

Hatfill's apartment was searched more than once, but the news media helicopters were overhead as the FBI arrived. Someone inside the agency had tipped them off. Twice it was suggested to Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, that lie-detector tests be given within the agency to find the leakers, but he refused, saying it would be "bad for morale".

In addition to the searches, a caravan of FBI agents photographed and videotaped Hatfill seven days a week for months. An FBI employee drove over Hatfill's foot, prompting Washington, D.C., police to ticket him for "walking to create a hazard."

Media coverage of the 24-hour surveillance helped cement Hatfill's public image as a central figure in the investigation. The constant aspersions provoked a vehement response from Hatfill, who proclaimed his innocence in a sidewalk news conference.

We are spending $12 billion a month in our occupation of Iraq, a country which never attacked us, but we badly mishandle the investigation of a terrorist attack within our own country. And Osama bin Laden is still free.

Said Peter Setlow, a University of Connecticut biochemist who has served as a consultant to the FBI:

"They're not going to ever catch him until somebody confesses on their deathbed or something like that. You're not going to find a smoking gun."

The attempt, often successful, by the Bush maladministration to politicize virtually every agency of the federal government results in this sort of disastrous outcome. From the military, to the Justice Department, to FEMA, to the CIA, to the Centers for Disease Control, to the Veterans Administration, and on and on and on, Bush/Cheney and their minions have taken the country down a path to destruction. It will be decades before we recover from their depredations, if we ever do.

I commend the LA Times for excellent investigative reporting on the government's treatment of Stephen Hatfill and in exposing the FBI's dereliction of duty in not conducting a proper investigation of a terrorist attack. It wasn't the fault of the investigators; it was the leadership that failed us all. What does that do to morale in the agency? The entire article is worth a read.