Sentence First, Verdict After
By Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid
September 16, 2002
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Dr. Steven Hatfill’s persecution is the latest abuse of the public trust by the FBI and the media. The Bureau’s investigation has been spurred on by a New York professor, but the FBI still hasn’t come up with any evidence that Hatfill was involved in the anthrax killings last fall. So the bureau has targeted him for one of its patented media smear campaigns.
The Bureau has fed the media, including local outlets in the Washington area, a steady stream of leaks and rumors, which the media have then parroted to the public. Many reporters, like Scott Shane of the Baltimore Sun, have simply followed the FBI’s script and have done little real investigating themselves. That trend may be reversing as some reporters, like Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post, begin to suspect that the Bureau has misled them.
The FBI denies leaking Hatfill’s name or tipping the media before executing a search warrant on his apartment. Pat Clawson, Hatfill’s spokesman, disputed that, saying that media satellite trucks from Washington were outside Hatfill’s Frederick, Maryland apartment minutes after the warrant was served. FBI spokesman Chris Murray said, "the FBI does not alert the news media to service of search warrants."
But there have been similar FBI abuses over the past decade. Richard Jewell, the security guard who discovered the pipe bomb at the Atlantic Olympics in 1994 is the best known example. He has obtained some satisfaction after his lawyers negotiated a big settlement with media organizations. The Bureau penalized three local agents, but their bosses in Washington were untouched.
In 1999, the Bureau applied its terror tactics against Notra Trulock’s roommate to extract her consent to seize a computer the two of them shared. The Bureau threatened to "bust her door in" and have TV cameras on hand to film all the action, if she didn’t consent. Bureau agents held her against her will, would not allow her to talk to her children without hovering over her, and questioned her for hours about Trulock’s friends, computer activity, and connections overseas. She relented, but the Bureau’s actions are now the subject of a civil rights action.
Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos scientist who pled guilty to mishandling defense information, got the same treatment from the FBI. For nearly four years, the Bureau’s investigation of Lee on espionage allegations went nowhere, due mostly to the ineptitude of the case agents. In early 1999, after the New York Times published a major exposé of the Clinton administration’s bungling of the spy case, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson fired Lee for a string of security violations. Richardson revealed his name in an interview with the Times, but the Bureau had already been feeding its media contacts hints about Lee. Now that abuse is also the subjection of litigation. Former Director Louis Freeh has pronounced himself mortified by the leaks on Lee. But Freeh knew that the Times was running the piece. The Times editors were willing to hold publication if Freeh had called them. He never did. Bureau agents waved the article in Lee’s face during an ugly interview the next day.
Reed Irvine can be reached at ri@aim.org
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By Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid
September 16, 2002
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Steven Hatfill’s persecution is the latest abuse of the public trust by the FBI and the media. The Bureau’s investigation has been spurred on by a New York professor, but the FBI still hasn’t come up with any evidence that Hatfill was involved in the anthrax killings last fall. So the bureau has targeted him for one of its patented media smear campaigns.
The Bureau has fed the media, including local outlets in the Washington area, a steady stream of leaks and rumors, which the media have then parroted to the public. Many reporters, like Scott Shane of the Baltimore Sun, have simply followed the FBI’s script and have done little real investigating themselves. That trend may be reversing as some reporters, like Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post, begin to suspect that the Bureau has misled them.
The FBI denies leaking Hatfill’s name or tipping the media before executing a search warrant on his apartment. Pat Clawson, Hatfill’s spokesman, disputed that, saying that media satellite trucks from Washington were outside Hatfill’s Frederick, Maryland apartment minutes after the warrant was served. FBI spokesman Chris Murray said, "the FBI does not alert the news media to service of search warrants."
But there have been similar FBI abuses over the past decade. Richard Jewell, the security guard who discovered the pipe bomb at the Atlantic Olympics in 1994 is the best known example. He has obtained some satisfaction after his lawyers negotiated a big settlement with media organizations. The Bureau penalized three local agents, but their bosses in Washington were untouched.
In 1999, the Bureau applied its terror tactics against Notra Trulock’s roommate to extract her consent to seize a computer the two of them shared. The Bureau threatened to "bust her door in" and have TV cameras on hand to film all the action, if she didn’t consent. Bureau agents held her against her will, would not allow her to talk to her children without hovering over her, and questioned her for hours about Trulock’s friends, computer activity, and connections overseas. She relented, but the Bureau’s actions are now the subject of a civil rights action.
Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos scientist who pled guilty to mishandling defense information, got the same treatment from the FBI. For nearly four years, the Bureau’s investigation of Lee on espionage allegations went nowhere, due mostly to the ineptitude of the case agents. In early 1999, after the New York Times published a major exposé of the Clinton administration’s bungling of the spy case, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson fired Lee for a string of security violations. Richardson revealed his name in an interview with the Times, but the Bureau had already been feeding its media contacts hints about Lee. Now that abuse is also the subjection of litigation. Former Director Louis Freeh has pronounced himself mortified by the leaks on Lee. But Freeh knew that the Times was running the piece. The Times editors were willing to hold publication if Freeh had called them. He never did. Bureau agents waved the article in Lee’s face during an ugly interview the next day.
Reed Irvine can be reached at ri@aim.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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