By MATTHEW BARAKAT Associated
Press Writer ALEXANDRIA, Va.
A federal judge has dismissed a libel lawsuit brought against The New York Times by Steven
Hatfill, who claimed the newspaper falsely insinuated he was responsible for the deadly anthrax attacks in 2001.
U.S.
District Judge Claude Hilton also dismissed Hatfill's lawsuit against Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who wrote several
columns in 2002 on the FBI's handling of the anthrax investigation.
Hilton ruled that Kristof's columns did not defame
Hatfill, and that they accurately reflected the state of the FBI's investigation, in which Hatfill was labeled "a person of
interest" by Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Hilton's ruling, issued Wednesday, noted that the primary target of Kristof's
columns was the FBI, for its handling of the investigation. While several columns accused the FBI of failing to investigate
Hatfill thoroughly, Kristof also wrote that Hatfill was entitled to a presumption of innocence.
"It is evident that
the Op-Ed pieces highlighting the perceived shortcomings of the FBI are not reasonably read as accusing Hatfill of actually
being the anthrax mailer," Hilton wrote.
In most of the five columns cited in the lawsuit, Kristof did not mention
Hatfill by name, referring to him only as "Mr. Z." Only after Hatfill held a news conference in August 2002 did Kristof identify
Hatfill.
The October 2001 attacks killed five people and sickened 17. Hatfill is the only publicly identified "person
of interest" in the case. He has not been charged.
The judge's ruling has no effect on a libel suit Hatfill filed in
Washington against Ashcroft and other government officials, claiming they named him as a person of interest to deflect attention
from their inability to find who was responsible.
Hatfill's lawyer, Victor Glasberg, said no decision has been made
on whether to appeal Hilton's ruling.
Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said the paper is pleased with the ruling,
"which upholds an important First Amendment right to comment on an investigation."
Hatfill strikes back in anthrax case
Former NIH virologist sues to protect his reputation
Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, shown here in a 2002 file photo, has never been charged
or named by authorities as a suspect in the anthrax cases.
By Jim Popkin & the NBC News Investigative Unit
Updated: 3:16 p.m. ET Oct. 4, 2004
For more than two years, Steven Hatfill has lived life in legal limbo. Publicly branded a “person
of interest” in the anthrax case, he’s never been charged with any crime. Now Hatfill is striking back, in a libel
lawsuit against one of his many armchair accusers.
Court documents show that Hatfill has filed suit against Donald Foster, an English professor at
Vassar College who wrote about Hatfill in the October 2003 issue of Vanity Fair. Hatfill claims Foster and other defendants
defamed him by leaving “no doubt in the minds of reasonable readers that he was imputing guilt for the anthrax attacks
(as well as some anthrax hoaxes) to Dr. Hatfill.” The lawsuit seeks $10 million in damages and, along the way, makes
folly of a novel investigative tool called “literary forensics.”
In the fall of 2001, someone mailed anthrax-laced letters to two U.S. senators and to a number of media
organizations, including NBC News. The finely milled anthrax spores were remarkably buoyant, and five people who inhaled them
were killed.
Foster's ‘literary forensics’ Enter Donald Foster. A practitioner
of “literary forensics,” Foster is perhaps best known for fingering the author of the political novel “Primary
Colors.” Foster is skilled at identifying the authors of anonymous texts by examining word usage, grammar, punctuation
and slang. His usual suspects, he jokes, are dead poets — Shakespeare and Wordsworth. But in October 2001 the FBI contacted
the English professor to examine some documents in the growing anthrax investigation.
Foster eagerly jumped in, examining letters the FBI sent him and then snooping around on his own. “I
searched for stories of past so-called hoaxes — and uncovered a trail of seemingly related biothreat incidents,”
he writes. After months of Internet research and collaboration with molecular biologist Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, Foster says
he became interested in virologist Steven Hatfill: “Steven Hatfill was now looking to me like a suspect, or at least
— as the FBI would denote him eight months later — ‘a person of interest.’ When I lined up Hatfill’s
known movements with the postmark locations of reported biothreats, those hoax anthrax attacks appeared to trail him like
a vapor cloud,” Foster writes in Vanity Fair.
One example Foster cites took place in August 1998, in Wichita, Kan., when someone spread powder throughout
several floors of the Finney State Office Building. Without presenting evidence that Hatfill was anywhere near Kansas in 1998
or that his handwriting matched that of the author of an anonymous letter later taking credit for the threat, Foster seems
to draw a link. He notes that the Finney building is “40 miles southeast of Southwestern College, Hatfill’s alma
mater.” Hatfill graduated from Southwestern in the 1970's.
Hatfill’s legal response “Each of these implied accusations
is false,” Hatfill's lawsuit states, and the article “betrays complete inattention to even a rudimentary sense
of balance or fairness toward Dr. Hatfill.”
The lawsuit also attacks comments made prior to publication of the article, that suggest Foster at
first believed a foreigner was responsible for the anthrax mailings. In a Dec. 26, 2001, article in The Times of London, for
example, Foster says: “It is my opinion that the documents are at least compatible with that of a foreign speaker of
Urdu or Arabic — although it's quite possible that it's someone using it as a smokescreen. There are some other indications
that this person may be a Pakistani.”
The suit concludes that Foster failed to mention any contradictory statements in the Vanity Fair piece
“because Foster’s purpose was to portray ‘literary forensics’ as a valuable technique and Don Foster
as a skilled practitioner of that technique.” It takes Vanity Fair’s editors to task for not challenging Foster’s
methodology and conclusions: “When a professor of English literature says that he has identified a criminal who has
eluded the FBI for two years, deep skepticism is warranted.”
Foster concedes in Vanity Fair that when the FBI first approached him, “I was perfectly willing
to believe that the anthrax was ‘garden variety’ and that it had been sent by Muslim extremists.” He changed
his mind, he writes, after plotting Hatfill’s travels next to the delivery dates of several suspicious hoax letters,
reading old interviews of Hatfill in which he warned how easy it would be to carry out a biological attack and after reviewing
Hatfill’s unpublished novel, "Emergence." The novel, Foster writes, revolves around an Iraqi virologist who launches
a bioterror attack on the United States.
The coincidences are too much for Foster, as is the FBI’s incompetence in the case. He writes:
“I have worked with the FBI for only six years, on no more than 20 investigations. But never have I encountered such
reluctance to examine potentially critical documents.” Foster concludes that Hatfill is not being unfairly targeted
like Richard Jewell, an early FBI suspect in the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta. The FBI is on the right track with
Hatfill, Foster writes, referring to the unemployed scientist as “my suspect.”
Don Foster is out of the country and did not return a phone message. His lawyer would not comment to
NBC News. A separate lawyer representing Conde Nast Publications, which publishes Vanity Fair, stands by the story. “We
intend to vigorously defend the story,” the lawyer tells NBC News, adding that Conde Nast has until Oct. 20 to file
a response to the suit in federal court.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 - In a development that could undercut reporters' ability to obtain confidential
information, Justice Department officials agreed Thursday to distribute to dozens of federal investigators in the 2001 anthrax
case a document they can sign to release journalists from pledges of confidentiality.
Lawyers for Steven J. Hatfill, a former Army bioterrorism expert, had sought the releases as a step
toward questioning reporters about their sources in the case. Dr. Hatfill, who has been described by Attorney General John
Ashcroft as a "person of interest'' in the anthrax investigation, is suing the government over leaks of a variety of information
suggesting his guilt.
Experts on journalism and the law said the releases - first used in another case, involving a leak
of the identity of Valerie Plame, an undercover officer for the Central Intelligence Agency - could erode government employees'
confidence that they can provide information to reporters without fear of being later identified and punished.
These experts said being presented such a form could pose an excruciating dilemma for news sources.
If they refuse to sign, superiors may suspect that they were the source of a leak. If they did leak information and then do
sign, they risk being identified by the reporter as the source.
Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said it was
"ridiculous" to think that waivers sent by the Justice Department to its employees would be viewed as voluntary.
"The ultimate result of this,'' Ms. Dalglish said, "will be that in the future, less information will
get to the public.''
The experts said the use of release forms in the Hatfill case suggested that the practice of asking
people whom reporters may have promised anonymity to then permit the release of their names could become routine. Documents
filed by Dr. Hatfill's lawyers already refer to the forms as "Plame waivers," as if they were an established legal tool.
Justice Department lawyers said Thursday that under the new agreement, they would send the release
forms, beginning in about four weeks, to at least 80 people who have worked on the government's investigation of the anthrax-laced
letters that killed 5 people in the fall of 2001 and made at least 17 others ill. The list of those who are to receive the
forms includes Mr. Ashcroft and Robert S. Mueller, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as numerous F.B.I.
agents, postal inspectors and federal prosecutors.
The releases will be accompanied by a letter advising the recipients that signing them is voluntary.
Waivers that are signed will be passed on to Dr. Hatfill's lawyers, who can then present them to reporters in an effort to
persuade them to disclose who gave them information about Dr. Hatfill.
Reggie B. Walton, the federal district judge overseeing the Hatfill case, first allowed the plaintiff's
lawyers to question reporters last March. But they have not yet sought to do so, maintaining that case law first required
them to exhaust all other routes before pursuing journalists.
At a hearing Thursday before Judge Walton, Justice Department lawyers and Dr. Hatfill's portrayed the
waivers as a compromise that would advance proceedings in the lawsuit without interfering with the criminal investigation
of the anthrax case by requiring depositions from a large number of investigators.
"All that's affected by the waiver is a private promise of confidentiality," said Mark A. Grannis,
a Washington lawyer who is representing Dr. Hatfill. "We want that waived precisely so that we don't have to depose investigators
but can get the information from reporters."
Elizabeth J. Shapiro, a lawyer in the Justice Department's civil division, called the decision to distribute
the release forms to anthrax investigators "an extraordinary concession."
"We will work as fast as we can,'' Ms. Shapiro added, "to get these waivers to our people and back
to the plaintiff's counsel."
As a "person of interest'' in the anthrax case, Dr. Hatfill, 50, of Washington, was trailed by F.B.I.
surveillance teams for months. He has denied any connection to the anthrax letters and has said that being treated as a suspect
has made him unemployable and wrecked his life.
In addition to suing the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, he has filed defamation lawsuits against
The New York Times, for columns about him by Nicholas D. Kristof, and against Vanity Fair magazine, for an article by Don
Foster, a Vassar College professor who has analyzed documents in criminal cases.
None of the discussion in the hourlong court hearing Thursday touched on the question of the waivers'
effect on journalism and public information. But legal specialists said the impact could be profound, making government whistle-blowers
and other sources reluctant to share information with reporters.
Bruce W. Sanford, a Washington lawyer specializing in media law, called use of the releases "outrageous"
and said it "shows a fundamental failure to understand the role the press plays in our society."
USA TODAY
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton told lawyers for Steven Hatfill, 50, that
depositions of scientists and other experts could "tip the hat" if made public and give the anthrax killer clues about the
probe.
Walton is presiding over a civil lawsuit filed last year by Hatfill against Attorney General John Ashcroft
(news - web sites) and the FBI. Hatfill alleges that Ashcroft and the FBI improperly cast suspicion on him to fool the public
into believing progress was being made in the investigation.
"I hope Dr. Hatfill didn't do this. I don't know
if he did. I don't think anybody knows," the judge said. "There are some very unique things the government is doing at this
time. If ... this were to be known to the perpetrator, it could have an adverse impact on the investigation."
Three
years ago, five people died, 17 others were sickened and thousands more were forced to take antibiotics when anthrax-tainted
letters were mailed to the media and two U.S. senators.
A task force of FBI agents and Postal Service inspectors
has drained a pond, swabbed numerous desks in government labs and interviewed scores of scientists across the country to try
to catch the culprit.
Investigators also have been working with biologists and others to develop scientific tests
that could be used in court to link a suspect to the anthrax mailings.
Since the lawsuit was filed, Justice lawyers
have given Walton secret progress reports on the investigation to justify at least three requests for delay to keep Hatfill
from taking depositions and gathering other evidence that is typical in civil cases.
On Thursday, Walton gave
investigators until April 22. If they don't solve the anthrax mystery by then, the judge said, he likely will allow the lawsuit
to move forward.
Hatfill, a former researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases
at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., has denied involvement in the attacks. He says that by singling him out, federal investigators
cost him a $150,000-a-year job at Louisiana State University.
At the heart of Hatfill's lawsuit is who leaked
sensitive details about the probe to reporters and why.
Over the next several weeks, Justice lawyers will take
the unusual step of mailing a "waiver" to an unknown number of law enforcement officials who were briefed on or had direct
knowledge of the anthrax investigation. The letter and waiver form are being negotiated with Hatfill's lawyers.
The
form will give recipients the chance to waive confidentiality agreements they made with reporters in exchange for inside information
about the probe.
With such waivers in hand, Hatfill's lawyers hope reporters will not feel compelled to protect
their sources and will testify about how and possibly why they received inside information on the probe.
No one
"got careless and let some information slip," said Mark Grannis, one of Hatfill's lawyers. "These defendants orchestrated
a campaign of leaking Dr. Hatfill's name to the press."
Hatfill Files Another Lawsuit
Jul
14, 2004 1:09 pm US/Eastern (WJZ)The man mistakenly
labeled a person of interest in deadly anthrax mailings nearly three years ago has filed another lawsuit.
Former Fort
Detrick researcher Steven Hatfill is suing The New York Times, as well as columnist Nicholas Kristoff.
Hatfill claims
a series of columns in the Times identified him as a likely culprit. He's accusing Kristof of hurling "false and defamatory"
allegations.
In several 2002 columns, Kristof criticized the FBI for failing to aggressively pursue a scientist he
initially identified as "Mister Z." Kristof later acknowledged that Mister Z was Hatfil. He also wrote that Hatfill deserved
the "presumption of innocence" and that there was no physical evidence linking him to attacks.
In another lawsuit last
year, Hatfill accused the government of conducting a "coordinated smear campaign." That case is on hold while the investigation
continues.
Experts: Hatfill's Suit Against 'NY Times' Will Be Tough to Win
By Joe Strupp
Published:
July 14, 2004 11:37 AM EST
NEW YORK Former U.S. Army scientist Steven J. Hatfill's lawsuit against
The New York Times, claiming he was defamed in a series of columns by Nicholas Kristof about the FBI investigation of the
2001 anthrax attacks, will be tough to win, according to veteran libel attorneys.
"The basic
principle is that accurately reporting the fact that someone is under investigation, and why, is not a proper basis for a
libel suit," said Peter Canfield, an attorney representing The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Click for QuikCap) against a similar pending lawsuit by former Olympic bombing suspect Richard Jewell. "Columnists are entitled
to comment on the news."
Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom
of the Press, which monitors such legal actions, agreed. "It seems to me this is a tough suit to win and that (Kristof) is
a weird choice of a person to go after," Dalglish said. "He is a columnist and what they would have to prove is that the facts
he wrote were false. They would also have to show malice."
Hatfill, a former U.S. Army researcher,
filed suit in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. on Tuesday, according to today's Washington Post. The suit alleges that
the Times and Kristof defamed him in columns that identified him as a likely suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks.
Hatfill, who was identified by investigators at the time as a "person of interest" in the anthrax case, last year
filed suit against Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That case, postponed for six months
in March, is still pending. Victor Glasberg, Hatfill's attorney, did not return calls seeking comment.
A Times attorney, David McCraw, declined to comment, referring all inquiries to the newspaper's corporate communications
office, which issued a statement. "We believe this case does not have merit. Mr. Kristof began a series of columns in July
of 2002, criticizing the FBI for its response to the anthrax crisis," the statement said. "At that time, Dr. Hatfill had already
been publicly identified as a person of interest in the investigation. While encouraging the FBI to investigate the matter,
Mr. Kristof was careful to note that Dr. Hatfill was presumed to be innocent and that the FBI owed it to him to clear his
name if they had no evidence. We believe in a case like this, the law protects fair commentary on an important public issue."
Dalglish added that Hatfill's stronger case may be against the federal government if he can prove
leaked information damaged his reputation. "If Kristof looked at the facts, that this was a person of interest, and made opinions
based on facts, I don't see what the claim is," she said. "If [Hatfill] has anything here, it is a privacy act case against
the FBI."
The FBI says it regrets labeling Dr. Steven Hatfill a "person of interest" in the Anthrax probe.
[FBI Anthrax probe leader Michael] Mason told reporters Monday that giving out "person of interest" information publicly
"leads to the same sort of calamity" that occurred when Richard Jewell was wrongly accused in the 1996 bombing at the Atlanta
Olympics. "It's very hard to take that back if you're wrong," Mason said.
Meanwhile, Hatfill's suit against the FBI and Ashcroft, "accusing the government of "a campaign
of harassment" and unfairly singling him out," is pending.
So "person of interest" now becomes a justly deprecated term. We hope "under the umbrella of suspicion" is next.
WASHINGTON (CNN) --Steven Hatfill, the former U.S. Army bioweapons
scientist named a "person of interest" in the 2001 anthrax attacks, filed suit Tuesday against Attorney General John Ashcroft,
the Justice Department and FBI, saying his constitutional rights were violated.
"Dr. Hatfill had nothing to do with the horrific anthrax attacks," Hatfill attorney Thomas Connolly said.
"No evidence links Dr. Hatfill to the crime, yet the attorney general and his subordinates have attempted to make him a
scapegoat. In the process, they have trampled his constitutional rights and destroyed his life."
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, also names various lower-level Justice Department and FBI officials.
It asks for a declaration that government officials violated Hatfill's constitutional rights and seeks an injunction against
future violations. It also seeks an undetermined amount of monetary damages.
Hatfill's attorneys said the FBI tipped the news media to searches of Hatfill's home to deflect attention from what the
attorneys characterize as a floundering anthrax investigation. They said 24-hour surveillance and wiretaps violated Hatfill's
privacy.
The suit alleges:
• Violations of his Fifth Amendment rights by preventing him from earning a living
• Violations of his First Amendment rights by retaliating against him after he sought
to have his name cleared in the anthrax probe
• Disclosure of information from his FBI file.
Justice Department officials had no immediate response to Hatfill's lawsuit against the federal government, but they promptly
released an internal document showing that the department's ethics watchdogs fully cleared Ashcroft for calling Hatfill a
"person of interest."
Hatfill has steadfastly maintained that he had no involvement in the anthrax attacks that came on the heels of the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001.
Beginning in October of that year, anthrax-laced letters arrived at offices of U.S. Sens. Tom Daschle of South Dakota and
Patrick Leahy of Vermont, to television network news offices in New York and possibly to other places.
Five people -- two U.S. Postal Service employees in Washington, an employee at American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, Florida,
a 94-year-old woman in Oxford, Connecticut, and a New York hospital supply room worker -- died of exposure to anthrax.
Although officials have said they were looking at a list of about 20 people in the case, only Hatfill has been named as
a "person of interest." No suspects have been named in the case, and no one has been arrested.
Hatfill, a former Army bioweapons researcher, had his apartment searched three times and lost his job after the "person
of interest" designation.
He was fired in September from a position at Louisiana State University, where he was helping train first-responders in
the case of a bioterrorism attack.
The firing came after a Justice Department official sent an e-mail to the program director in August directing him not
to use Hatfill on any Justice Department-funded programs; the program Hatfill was working on was one such program.
More recently, anthrax investigators drained a Maryland pond as part of their probe. Tests of soil samples taken after
the draining yielded no evidence of anthrax.
The pond is about eight miles from the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, where Hatfill
once worked.
Judge doubts Hatfill suit will harm anthrax probe Scientist's claim
that leaks wrecked his career elicits
By Scott Shane Sun Staff Originally published January 27, 2004
WASHINGTON - A federal judge said yesterday that he is not convinced that allowing a lawsuit by Dr. Steven J.
Hatfill to proceed will endanger the FBI's investigation of the anthrax letters that killed five people in 2001.
During
a motions hearing, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton expressed sympathy for Hatfill's claim that government leaks have
wrecked his career, the basis for the suit he filed in August against Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Justice Department,
the FBI and other law enforcement officials.
"I totally understand how his life has been, at least at this point, virtually
destroyed," Walton said. "I know I'm not inclined to give an open-ended stay," which would freeze the lawsuit indefinitely.
Walton
said the government's voluminous court filings have not persuaded him to postpone the suit until the anthrax case is solved,
as Justice Department lawyers are seeking.
"Is Mr. Hatfill still a suspect?" Walton asked. "Are there any suspects?
At some point, it seems to me, if Mr. Hatfill did not commit this crime, he should get his life back."
In response,
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark E. Nagle told the judge that later yesterday the Justice Department would deliver to him an affidavit
containing secret additional information on the progress of the anthrax case to justify the delay.
Nagle called Hatfill
"an individual who by his own declaration is implicated in the investigation" but gave no indication of whether investigators
still are interested in the former Army biowarfare expert.
Hatfill, 50, who worked as a virologist at the Army's biodefense
laboratory at Fort Detrick from 1997 to 1999, was the focus of an international tidal wave of publicity after the FBI first
searched his Frederick apartment in June 2002. Investigators also searched his girlfriend's apartment in Washington and a
storage locker he had rented in Florida.
For much of 2002 and 2003, FBI surveillance teams kept Hatfill under 24-hour
watch, and one FBI watcher actually ran over Hatfill's foot after the scientist approached his car outside a Georgetown paint
store. In three nationally broadcast television appearances, Ashcroft called Hatfill a "person of interest" in the anthrax
case.
Since coming under scrutiny in the anthrax case, Hatfill has been fired from jobs as a bioterrorism trainer at
defense contractor Science Applications International Corp. and at Louisiana State University, which was formally advised
by the Justice Department not to employ him on federal contracts.
In researching hundreds of articles and broadcasts
about Hatfill, reporters have discovered that he claimed to hold a Ph.D. he did not earn and used a forged Ph.D. certificate
from a South African university to get research jobs at the National Institutes of Health and at Fort Detrick. Acquaintances
have described Hatfill as a colorful and eccentric character who explained and sometimes demonstrated how terrorists could
cook up bioweapons in kitchen labs and once posed for a magazine photographer in an improvised biohazard suit.
But
FBI investigators have never made public evidence linking Hatfill to the anthrax attacks. Law enforcement sources told The
Sun last year that the investigators were divided over whether the pursuit of Hatfill showed promise or was a distraction
and waste of resources
For his part, Hatfill has consistently denied that he had anything to do with the anthrax attacks,
which shut down federal and congressional offices and sickened at least 17 people in addition to the five killed. In public
statements and in his lawsuit, he asserts that the government has made him a scapegoat for its failure to find the real culprit
who mailed anthrax-laced letters to news media organizations and two U.S. senators in late 2001.
Hatfill now lives
with his girlfriend in Washington and has been unable to find work, his lawyers and friends say. They also say the FBI surveillance
that was obvious until late last year has become far less evident or has been dropped.
Mark A. Grannis, who represented
Hatfill yesterday along with Thomas G. Connolly, said his client has a right under the federal Privacy Act to find out who
in the government leaked his name and details of the investigation to the news media.
"For the past 14 months, [Justice
Department officials] have been feeding Dr. Hatfill's name to the press," Grannis said.
Walton said that after reviewing
the government's secret affidavit, as well as more information Grannis promised to provide on Hatfill's behalf, he will either
issue a written ruling on the government's request to freeze the lawsuit or hold an additional hearing Feb. 6.
Marilyn Thompson, whose article about Hatfill's case appeared
in the September 14 Washington Post Magazine, fielded questions and comments about the article.
Thompson, a Post investigative reporter, is the author of "The
Killer Strain: Anthrax and a Government Exposed."
The transcript follows.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control
over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to
answer questions.
________________________________________________
Galveston, Tex.: Regardless of the guilt or innocence
of Hatfill, I'm disturbed by the FBI's narrow-minded methods. What if Hatfill is innocent and they have invested all their
time and effort in the wrong guy? I used to debug network software for a living and trying to leap frog to a solution without
investigating all the possibilities usually wastes time and causes embarrassment eventually.
Marilyn Thompson: The FBI contends that it has
pursued many other avenues, with thousands of interviews all over the country. Many months ago, the FBI made a couple of publicized
searches of scientists' homes in Chester, Pa., and Milwaukee. They focused considerable attention on a former USAMRIID anthrax
researcher who now lives in New Jersey. Agents say that they continue to put certain interesting people on the investigative
"hot seat" from time to time to update their information and theories. The recent re-interviewing of inhalational anthrax
victim Ernesto Blanco is a sign of their strategy -- to keep revisiting people and places looking for possible new clues or
details missed during the initial hurried sweep.
Yes, of course the bureau faces the prospect of major humiliation
if this case remains unsolved, but officials talk confidently of bringing it to closure. They make clear that they operate
on their own careful timetable and will not rush the case just to appease the public.
_______________________
Fredericksburg, Va.: Ms. Thompson,
Thank you for helping keep the anthrax investigation alive.
Hypothetical question: What if the anthrax mail was prepared by Hatfield, but delivered by another person?
While many red flags do point to Hatfield, I am convinced he
could escape prosecution with the workplace timecard alibi. Being hours away from the New Jersey mailbox where anthrax spores
were found, and from where the notorious mail was postmarked, certainly pales the other circumstantial evidence piled against
him at this time.
While this defense argument seems to rest on the fact he cannot
be placed in the vicinity of the mailings, it does not preclude the notion, however, that he could have prepared the package
and an accomplice mailed it.
Do you think more emphasis should be placed on investigating
this possibility? Did two (or more) persons working together on some high-scale bioterrorism project, create and commit this
"perfect crime"?
Marilyn Thompson: I believe that the FBI has thought
for some time that the commission of this crime involved more than one person. It is likely that an accomplice or accomplices
helped mail the letters from their scattered locations. If you recall, a few bore a St. Petersburg postmark but the most virulent
were stamped in Trenton. Hoax letters from other locations are believed to be involved.
_______________________
College Park, Md.: There seem to be numerous instances
in which Hatfield seems easily connected with the anthrax mailings. So what evidence does the FBI actually need in order to
make an arrest?
Marilyn Thompson: Ideally, the FBI needs hard physical
evidence - actual spores found in the possession of a suspect. The bureau does not have such evidence. That means that it
would have to present a less convincing body of facts to a jury and run a higher risk of losing the case.
_______________________
Baltimore, Md.: So, how does someone with dim credentials
-- no Ph.D. and difficulty in med school -- work his way from studying viruses in 1997 to reportedly having "close ties to
U.S. military intelligence or the CIA?" Why did Leahy's committee have to prod the FBI to investigate this guy?
Marilyn Thompson: Good questions. Mr. Hatfill seems
to have benefitted from inattentiveness to detail and to some loopholes. The Phd. certificate he submitted to NIH could have
easily been tracked back by authorities and exposed as a forgery, but it was overlooked and Hatfill's credentials helped him
gain access to sensitive government agencies. USAMRIID allowed him in as a contract researcher because it depended on his
funding agency to vet his credentials, and so on and so on. As for the influence of Leahy's committee, I think it is safe
to say that this FBI investigation has been more closely watched and prodded than any other -- since two of the intended victims
were members of the U.S. Senate.
_______________________
Chicago, Ill.: Has Dr. Hatfill even been notified
that he is a target of the grand jury?
Marilyn Thompson: His attorneys say that he has
not.
_______________________
Washington, D.C.: They dredged and drained a pond.
They surveilled him for over two years. They have taken apart every computer the man ever touched.
Please -- remind me -- exactly what further evidence against
Hatfill do they purport to have? Is it lawful for them to continue hounding him?
Marilyn Thompson: The FBI contends that it is lawful
for the agency to watch anyone that it considers a public threat, and certainly, under the new powers of the Patriot Act,
the bureau has authority to pursue anyone suspected of any connection whatsoever to a terrorism act. That being said, I think
that the FBI is increasingly aware that it needs to produce a case or back off of this particular individual.
_______________________
Washington, D.C.: Doesn't it seem a little suspicious
that Hatfill threatened The Post reporter's career, a la John Mitchell during Watergate? It seems that an innocent
man wouldn't mind the news media -- during their fact-finding stages -- talking to his acquaintances. Any thoughts on this?
Marilyn Thompson: Of course, I have many thoughts
on this. Having worked on many stories of this kind over far too many years, threats of this sort are fairly unusual and more
than a little unsettling.
_______________________
Los Angeles, Calif.: Does it seem credible to you
that John Ashcroft's handling of the Hatfill affair could have been unaffected by input from his boss, President George W.
Bush?
Marilyn Thompson: I certainly believe that this
case is being monitored by the highest levels of government. The President, however, has made no public comment on it since
the early days of the attacks.
_______________________
Ilion, N.Y.: Does Attorney Glasberg still represent
Dr. Hatfill (in addition to the lawyers at the other firm)? His presentations in the summer of 2002 were very impressive.
Marilyn Thompson: Yes, Dr. Hatfill's press conferences
were very well managed, mostly due to the input of his then-spokesman Pat Clawson, a former television investigative reporter
with media savvy. Glasberg is a civil lawyer and Hatfill consulted him early on about possible lawsuits against the media
and government agencies. His new team specializes in criminal law but also is handling his lawsuit against the Justice Department
and FBI.
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Los Angeles, Calif.: Have you been able to confirm
the story which appeared in SEED magazine and the The Observer newspaper that Hatfill fabricated his MSc research? Do you
know who fed that story to researchers, and what their motivation is?
Marilyn Thompson: I do not know who fed that story
to SEED magazine or leaked an old email in which Hatfill's Professor Bohm was complaining about the student's research techniques.
Dr. Bohm declined to speak with me but did tell me that he understands Hatfill's research has now been successfully duplicated.
_______________________
Angers, France: Can you tell us anything about
the status of the grand jury? Thank you for the story!
Marilyn Thompson: Numerous friends and associates
of Dr. Hatfill told me that they have received document subpoenas from a federal grand jury supervised by U.S. Attorney Roscoe
Howard. I have found no one who has actually been called to testify.
_______________________
Virginia: How many lawyers and spokesmen does he
have? They seemed to changed all the time. Must be stressful to work for.
Marilyn Thompson: I think there has been some tension
in the legal team, resulting recently in Pat Clawson's decision to have nothing more to do with the case. This followed on
the heels of a very lively City Paper story in which Hatfill and Clawson allowed a reporter to ride with them while they were
purportedly pursued by the FBI. Usually, criminal defense lawyers frown on this kind of antics, which may not sit well with
a federal judge.
_______________________
West Chester, Pa.: Ms. Thompson --
Thanks for your continuing scientific investigation of the anthrax
story. Your detailed description of Steven Hatfill's pinpointing by the FBI was the most comprehensive account I've seen.
However, equally as plausible is to take the notes in recovered envelopes at face value and assume that the perpetrator(s)
is(are) Muslim extremists.
Some points perhaps worthy of note:
1. Each of the postmarks recovered was on a Tuesday (following
soon after 9/11, a Tuesday);
2. Bob Stevens, the first anthrax casualty, worked for a tabloid
which had recently published a scathing article regarding unsavory habits of the Saudi royal family;
3. Two of the highjackers (Atta and el-Shehhi) had rented an
apartment in Ft. Lauderdale from an AMI editor's wife while taking flight lessons; and
4. One of the highjackers had presented himself to a doctor
in Ft. Lauderdale with a black-scabbed skin lesion in July 2001, which, in retrospect, the doctor admitted could have been
cutaneous anthrax.
I'd like your opinion on this alternative scenario, which, I
believe, has as much credence as the trumped up case against Steven Hatfill.
Thanks.
Marilyn Thompson: I appreciate your question. I
wrote extensively about the hijacker theory in a book I did on the anthrax attacks. The FBI contends that it pursued a hijacker
connection in the early days and became convinced that they were not involved in these mailings -- mainly because the anthrax
strain used was a military research strain. Many people in Florida, however, who know about the hijackers' movements in that
part of the country in the months before 9/11, do not believe the FBI pursued this with enough vigor.
_______________________
Easton, Md.: Good article. Thank you. In the current
issue of Vanity Fair, literary analyist Don Foster infers that Hatfill was present in a part of Africa that suffered a devastating
outbreak of anthrax, where no anthrax had been before. Would you care to comment on Professor Foster's article?
Marilyn Thompson: I have read Mr. Foster's article
with great interest. His frustrations with the FBI are shared by other consultants who have worked on the peripheries of this
case. I believe you are referring to Mr. Hatfill's years in Rhodesia at the time of a massive outbreak of anthrax poisoning
the Tribal Trust Lands, an event that has been extensively analyzed as a possible bioterror event.
_______________________
Angers, France: Yes, the issue of Pat Clawson is
interesting. He was such a passionate supporter of Mr. Hatfill. Is there any info on what caused him to abandon his support
(or at least his public support)?
Marilyn Thompson: He has not abandoned his support
of Hatfill. He truly believes that Hatfill had nothing to do with these crimes and is being unfairly targeted. But he has
differed with the new lawyers on several crucial issues -- including how much Hatfill should be allowed to say publicly in
his own defense.
_______________________
Washington, D.C.: I heard that at the time of Barbara
Rosenberg's meeting with Senators Leahy and Daschle, many Senators had publicly made it known that they were displeased with
how the FBI had handled domestic terrorism cases and were considering turning those responsibilities over to another government
agency. Do you think this had anything to do with why the FBI turned up the heat on Hatfill in the following weeks?
Marilyn Thompson: Yes, there had been much displeasure
on the Hill with the FBI's performance on terrorism cases. I do not know about your theory that the responsibilities could
have been turned over to others. But it seems very clear that the FBI cannot afford to have a high-ranking Senator, at that
time the Judiciary Committee chairman, convinced that it was not aggressively pursuing leads and trying to solve this important
case. The pressure from Capitol Hill continues to be intense.
_______________________
Bethesda, Md.: Great article! Way to present both
sides throughout the story. It is hard to tell whether he did it or not, you seem to have created a planned the confusion
in your article. It seemed to really represent the confusion of the FBI in the investigation. Being a graduate with a degree
in Biology and working in the research field, this was a very interesting article. Everything seems to be pointing to Hatfill,
but somehow and someway the FBI can't pin-point him or anyone else for that matter. If I were a betting man, which I am not,
I would say it was someone that is close to Hatfill and that new his actions, and by knowing his location, especially in London,
the blame and evidence could be traced to Hatfill and not the real perpetrator. Again, great article. Thank you
Marilyn Thompson: Thanks for your feedback. Yes,
confusion has been a very real factor in this investigation. Confusion over the science especially. As I reported, lab analysis
alone has cost $13 million and it is not yet complete.
_______________________
McLean, Va.: If Hatfill does not have either an
MD or a Ph.D, why do you continue to refer to him as "Dr. Hatfill?"
Marilyn Thompson: Hatfill has a medical degree.
The Phd. is the one in question.
_______________________
Deale, Md.: Greeting, Marilyn:
Sandra here at Bay Weekly. Is this person of interest or someone
else indeed likely to get away with a "perfect crime?" It's vastly puzzling -- as curious as the twists and turns of the investigation
of the assassination of President Kennedy -- that that organization with the world's most sophisticated investigative array
could continue to be outfoxed. Please comment on possible reasons for this.
Marilyn Thompson: The FBI has made it clear that
it considers solving this case extremely important, partly because of the message it wants to send to anyone else who would
ever contemplate using a deadly agent against American citizens. Let's hope the agency is successful in solving it. Death
by anthrax is a ghastly proposition.
_______________________
Long Beach, Calif.: Two questions:
1. If Mr. Hatfill seemed to often talk hypothetically about
how to conduct bio-terror attacks, perhaps someone close to him learned techniques from him. Has this avenue been explored?
2. Isn't it interesting that the letters were sent to news organizations
and Democratic politicians. Has anyone investigated Mr. Hatfill's political leanings, or anyone elses, that would lead a would
be attacker to target such individuals?
Marilyn Thompson: Yes, the avenue you describe
has been explored. As for political leanings, the FBI has said from the start that it believes this person is of a conservative
bent, which might explain the intended targets to some degree.
