It certainly looks like Dr. John Michie of the University of Stellenbosch Radiobiology Lab is indeed "Scorpion," the individual who spread many of the rumors about Hatfill on South African bulletin boards, including supporting disinfo for the famous "Greendale School" talking point. Based on information I have obtained privately, it appears also that Michie provided Stephen Dresch with the e-mail concerning Hatfill allegedly sent by Prof. Bohm to Prof. Kirby, implicating all three men in gross scientific misconduct. On top of that, Michie seems to be the source for much of the material on Alan J. Weberman's "STEVE HATFILL NAZI SWINE" hate page at the JDO web site, material supposedly implicating Hatfill in white supremacist activity. If Michie supplied the e-mail to Dresch, then I would guess that he also supplied the page from Hatfill's Stellenbosch lab notebook that is reproduced on Weberman's site.
All of which raises a host of questions. If Michie is a really an enemy of Hatfill and a genuine whistle-blower, then Hatfill, Kirby, Bohm are all charlatans. Michie himself is likely, on that scenario, also a somewhat disturbed individual, inasmuch as he has been a colleague of Hatfill's thesis advisor, Bohm, since at least 1989, and authored a paper with him as recently as 2000. Odd that he would choose to collaborate scientifically with a man he knew to be a scoundrel and a charlatan. Odd that he would expose a friend like that, anonymously. Odd that he would choose to make his case through the medium of Andrew J. Weberman, the eccentric Bob Dylan "garbologist" whose Lower Manhattan apartment was used as a sniper nest by Mordechai Levy. Odd that not a wit of supporting evidence for the melodramatic tale of Hatfill's wholesale scientific deception is to be found in the public domain, and odd that his papers, including the supposedly fraudulent MSc work, are still being referenced in prestigious scientific journals to this very day.
There is another explanation for all this bizarreness, and it is the one I favor. The e-mail supplied by Michie is, IMHO, a sophisticated fraud. I say sophisticated, because the author clearly has a good understanding of molecular biology, and the "inside baseball" talk in the e-mail is quite impressive, and suggests at the very minimum considerable insight into Hatfill's MSc thesis work. This stuff is right up my alley, professionally, but I had to dig around a bit to understand what the "DIAGEN" reference and the "GC clamp" talk were about -- these details refer to the very specialized Thermal Gradient Gel Electrophoresis technique Hatfill used for the Lancet paper and are not, incidentally, discussed in that publication. Aside from noting the sophistication, one would have to assume that, if the e-mail is a fraud, the perp is either very confident that he will not be sued by the three men implicated in gross scientific conduct, and quite happy to completely trash their reputations -- or, the perp knows perfectly well that none of those individuals will raise a ruckus about the e-mail, and, even in the unlikely event someone other than the smeared parties tried to make an issue of it, the whole matter would soon be exposed as a Internet hoax and melt away in the light of day -- perhaps because the e-mail address in the To: line of the header puts Ralph Kirby in Taiwan in 1993, when he didn't move to Yang Ming university until ten years later.
On that second scenario, the author of the e-mail is likely Steven Jay Hatfill himself. Michie, who is probably a friend and confidante rather than an arch-foe of Hatfill, is acting as Hatfill's "cut-out" to feed superficially incriminating but ultimately toothless "evidence" into the Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce. Hatfill's Msc thesis advisor, Bohm, and his PhD thesis advisor, Kirby, are also old friends -- they've authored many papers together and Kirby was introduced to his wife by Hatfill -- and they are in the know, or at least have been given a heads up by Hatfill. They know "everything is under control" and "it's a national security issue" and Hatfill isn't a a cold-blooded murderer, nor is he in any danger of being railroaded and sent to the Florida death house, and everything's gonna be alright, and in the mean time, they should just keep their mouths shut.
And that is what my best guess as to what's really going on here. Care to hazard your own theories?
"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." — Winston Churchill
"...In the case of Hatfill, it is unclear why FBI agents waited at least six months after they first questioned him to conduct a thorough search of his home. One possibility: a briefing last week for Senate staffers by biologist Barbara Hatch Rosenberg.Rosenberg, who heads a biological weapons working group at the Federation of American Scientists, has repeatedly criticized the bureau for failing to aggressively pursue a "likely suspect" whom she has not named but who closely resembles Hatfill. Her Senate briefing was attended by Van Harp, who heads the anthrax investigation as assistant FBI director in charge of the Washington field office, and three other FBI agents.
This, again, is my take:
Daschle and Leahy are angry no progress is, apparently, being made. Naturally, because they were the targets. The staffers meet with media-anointed expert Barbara Rosenberg. She gives her pitch, which I call Portrait of a Possible Frame Job
The staffers are impressed with Rosenberg's delivery, and her verisimilitude of scientific knowledge, expertise, and insider access to the industry. Additionally, since Hatfill might fit the "right wing guy" profile, connections to Rhodesia seem ominous, and these democratic staffers might be more receptive to Rosenberg's pitch thereby.
Staffers brief the boss, Daschle. He gets on the horn and says why isn't this guy being taken out? He might have threatened jobs and funding too, alarmed that the man who tried to kill him was not being pursued. In fact, I can't imagine him not making any threats, under the influence of Rosenberg's portrait.
Within days, Project Hatfill began. Leaks about searches and the like kept it public and in the minds of staffers and Daschle. The semblance of progress is being made, pressure is taken off, funding continues. Investigators start to believe the Hatfill scenario themselves. Lots of time and effort and prestige has been invested in it.
The timing of the Project Hatfill fits the Daschle meeting scenario, and, IMO, fits an explanation that is plausible within established scenarios of bureaucratic politics.
War on terror:FBI guilty of cover-up over anthrax suspect(Rosenberg knows name she says)
Before the Daschle meeting, June 16, Rosenberg had this to say:
"...Rosenberg said she knows who that person is and so do a top-level clique of US government scientists, the CIA, the FBI and the White House."Early in the investigation," Rosenberg told Scotland on Sunday, "a number of inside experts, at least five that I know about, gave the FBI the name of one specific person as the most likely suspect. That person fits the FBI profile in most respects. He has the right skills, experience with anthrax, up-to-date anthrax vaccination, forensic training, and access to the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (AMRIID) and its biological agents through 2001." ..."
In September, after the meeting, and after Hatfill's statements about Rosenberg, she might have changed her mind, or conducted some CYA to show, after the fact, that she wasn't single-minded about Hatfill:
FBI Criticized for Failing to Solve Anthrax Case (Hatfill plus Rosenberg Alert)
"...Rosenberg said she has sent a new commentary about the anthrax attacks to the FBI, but would not make it available to others. She said she did not want to interfere with the proceeding investigation by making public statements. ..."