Posted on 09/07/2002 1:41:10 AM PDT by kattracks
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:08:24 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
September 7, 2002 -- The FBI and the Justice Department had better come up with a case against Dr. Steven Hatfill - and they'd better make it stick.
Otherwise, Hatfill - who's been named a "person of interest" in the FBI's interminable anthrax probe - will be taking the feds to the cleaners when a jury gets hold of the lawsuit he's sure to file.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
The FBI was in sorry shape when Clintoon took office and it was on a rocket slid to heck after he took office and appointed Reno. The FBI needs a major house cleaning and a from the bottom up reorganization. Some modernization of methods is definitely needed.
A release of his name by the leftists led to the media feeding frenzy and 24/7 surveillance of him by the press. It was the feeding frenzy, not the FBI letter, that seems to have concerned the University.
Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times.
btttt (I don't know what it means, but I think it's favorable)
That may be Hatfill’s way of suggesting that the FBI ought to look at a possible Islamic terrorist link to the anthrax attacks. There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that the 9/11 hijackers or other Al Qaeda operatives were involved in them. CNN has obtained dramatic videotapes showing that Al Qaeda had experimented with chemical and biological weapons. Yet the FBI continues to target Hatfill.
Hatfill’s dramatic August 25th news conference, outside his lawyer’s office, included the release of a series of photos showing how FBI agents even trashed his girlfriend’s apartment. They took air vents out of the floors and dumped personal belongings on the floor. But CNN and MSNBC are the only cable or broadcast networks which showed any of those photos. FBI agents told Hatfill’s girlfriend that he was a murderer who had killed five people. She was locked in a car and interrogated for several hours. Hatfill blamed Attorney General John Ashcroft for this. Ashcroft has called the scientist a "person of interest" in the case. Hatfill said Ashcroft, a self-described committed Christian, had broken the Ninth Commandment against bearing false witness.
Hatfill has not been called a suspect or accused of a crime, but he finds himself under constant surveillance by the FBI because of a campaign waged against him by left-wing activist Barbara Hatch Rosenberg and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. They have problems with Hatfill’s military background and his belief in a strong national defense against bioterrorism. Rosenberg convinced liberal Democrats on Capitol Hill that Hatfill ought to be investigated in the case, and they put pressure on the FBI. Kristof has written five columns and thousands of words urging scrutiny of Hatfill.
Hatfill’s lawyer Victor Glasberg released some letters and emails to the Times showing how Hatfill has been desperately trying to get his side of the story in that newspaper. An August 13 Glasberg letter to the paper was censored because it was too long. The paper said it would consider a column on the matter but not if it rebutted Kristof by name. Among his errors, Kristof has claimed Hatfill failed three polygraphs. Hatfill says he passed the only polygraph he took in the anthrax case, and it was administered by the FBI.
The Times quoted Gail Collins, the editorial page editor of The Times, as saying that she had invited Dr. Hatfill to submit a column for publication. The Times failed to point out that the ground rules are that the column cannot respond directly to anything Kristof wrote about Hatfill and rebut him by name. Responding to the criticisms of Kristof, the Times quoted Collins as saying, "We have confidence in our columnists." Then why protect him from direct criticism in an op-ed?
- Reed Irvine, Accuracy in Media
MR. RUSSERT: But if he ever did that, would we not wipe him off the face of the Earth?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Who did the anthrax attack last fall, Tim? We don’t know.
MR. RUSSERT: Could it have been Saddam?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I don’t know. I don’t know who did it. I’m not here today to speculate on or to suggest that he did. My point is that it’s the nature of terrorist attacks of these unconventional warfare methods, that it’s very hard sometimes to identify who’s responsible. Who’s the source? We were able to come fairly quickly to the conclusion after 9/11 that Osama bin Laden was, in fact, the individual behind the 9/11 attacks. But, like I say, I point out the anthrax example just to remind everybody that it is very hard sometimes, especially when we’re dealing with something like a biological weapon that could conceivably be misconstrued, at least for some period, as a naturally occurring event, that we may not know who launches the next attack. And that’s what makes it doubly difficult. And that’s why it’s so important for us when we do identify the kind of threat that we see emerging now in Iraq, when we do see the capabilities of that regime and the way Saddam Hussein has operated over the years that we have to give serious consideration to how we’re going to address it before he can launch an attack, not wait until after he’s launched an attack.
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