Fortunately, it appears that President Bush is going to “pocket veto” the federal shield law bill. However, it looks like this trial isn’t going to get started until around the end of his Presidency, and who knows what will happen when the new administration takes over.
Yeah. Also, from what I can tell, it appears that the FBI has pretty much completed its investigation of the Amerithrax case and is just waiting for lawyers in the Department of Justice to authorize an arrest. But the DOJ won't authorize an arrest (of a respected scientist who is NOT Dr. Hatfill) because the FBI's case depends upon the new science of microbial forensics, and there is no precedent for using that science in court.
FBI and other scientists have written paper after paper discussing microbial forensics and how it should be ready for court, plus ways to get it into court, including one by Bruce Budowle from the FBI's lab in Quantico, VA, and Rockne Harmon from the District Attorneys Office in Oakland, CA. The article is from sometime in 2005 and is titled "HIV Legal Precedent Useful for Microbial Forensics."
And it certainly didn't help for the FBI to catch one of the DOJ's top lawyers, Daniel S. Seikaly, in a "sting" operation that caught him leaking bogus information about Dr. Hatfill to the media. And his boss was identified as being another leaker.
I can imagine the whole DOJ legal staff simply waving their hands and saying "Let the next administration deal with it!"