Posted on 03/09/2007 8:41:11 AM PST by jpl
(CBS) They followed him. They brought bloodhounds into his home. The attorney general identified him to the world as a "person of interest" in the first major bioterrorism attack in the nation's history.
But five years after letters sent through the U.S. mail containing anthrax killed five and injured 17, the FBI has yet to charge Dr. Steven Hatfill. In 2003, he sued the government.
The resulting depositions of FBI personnel and law enforcement records obtained by 60 Minutes provide an inside look into one of the FBI's biggest investigations ever and raise the possibility that the bureau may have a cold case on its hands.
Correspondent Lesley Stahl's report, which contains revelations from those depositions, will be broadcast this Sunday, March 11, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
Hatfill, a scientist who worked at an Army laboratory where the strain of anthrax used in the attacks was stored, is the only "person of interest" named publicly in the case. He has maintained his innocence all along.
Hatfill is suing the government for destroying his reputation by, among other things, naming him "a person of interest." According to depositions taken for Hatfill's suit and obtained by 60 Minutes, the FBI official who oversaw the investigation says the bureau was looking at many more people.
"There were 20 to 30 other people who were also likewise identified as 'persons of interest' in the investigation,' " the FBI's Richard Lambert says under oath.
60 Minutes has learned that today at least a dozen of those other people still have not been eliminated as so-called "persons of interest."
Hatfill charges in his suit that the FBI leaked information about him that was distorted and damaging. After the deadly mailings, evidence-sniffing bloodhounds reportedly "went crazy" at Hatfill's apartment, according to a Newsweek story.
60 Minutes has learned that the bloodhounds reacted similarly at the home and office of another scientist, too. And two of the dogs have been wrong on a number of occasions, including a serial rape case in which a man in California was arrested and jailed, based largely on the evidence from the dogs. He was ultimately exonerated with DNA evidence.
To quell the leaks, FBI Director Robert Mueller instituted a tactic known as "stovepiping," whereby the various squads assigned to the case stopped sharing information with one another.
In his deposition, the FBI's Lambert said he opposed Mueller's order because barring investigators from exchanging information " would inhibit our ability to 'connect the dots' in a case of this magnitude " just as it had leading up to 9/11.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, agrees that stovepiping undercut the investigation. He also charges that the FBI used the leaks to cover a lack of progress in the case.
"I believe they wanted the public to believe that they were making great progress in this case," he tells Stahl. "It's just turning out to be a cold case."
60 Minutes has also learned that the FBI's biggest hope to crack the case turned out to be a dead end created by one of its own investigators.
Early on in its investigation, the bureau was able to lift trace amounts of DNA from one of the envelopes used in the attacks. Agents hoped this forensic evidence would hold the key to solving the crime. But the amount of DNA recovered was so minute the bureau decided not to test it, fearing that doing so would use up the sample without yielding results.
The FBI then improved its DNA-testing technology so it could accurately test the microscopic sample. They then discovered that the DNA belonged to one of its own investigators who had contaminated the envelope.
The U.S. Postal Service employed 75,000 clerks; 335,000 mail carriers; and 209,000 mail sorters, processors, and processing machine operators in 2004.
That equals 619,000. The informatin is here.
You lose.
I stand by my original critique of hyperbole filled bloviation.
You're full of crap.
L
Do you really buy that ill-informed blurb in the midst of a piece of propaganda to advise people about getting USPS jobs?
The reference I gave is to a site that shows, in detail, postal employment for the year(s) in question too.
You just want an excuse for your inclination to appease AlQaida, right?!
About the best thing I can say about the piece is that 60 Minutes strove to try and maintain a neutral tone throughout the whole thing.
I must say though that it was highly disappointing to see a show that normally dedicates itself to questioning and challenging the government in every way possible, didn't spend even so much as one second questioning whether or not the government's entire theory could actually have been wrong.
You just want an excuse for your inclination to appease AlQaida, right?!
At first I didn't think it was possible for me to believe you could be more full of crap than when I first read that poppycock you posted.
Now I see I was wrong.
Not only are you full of crap, you're overflowing with the stuff.
Regardless of the total number of USPS employees in 2001, there is simply no possible way that each and every one of them could have died from that anthrax.
None.
You seriously made the assertion that a few grams of anthrax powder in a couple of east coast locations could somehow magically kill every single USPS employee from Maine to Florida to California to Alaska.
As if that weren't ridiculous enough, I mean most garden variety idiots would have stopped right there, but you had to go on and state that 'tens of millions' would have died.
Now that takes not only a real special kind of stupid, but a disregard for the truth that's so breathtaking in its scope it almost merits admiring.
Almost, but not quite.
Instead it merits only contempt from people who seriously study this kind of thing and then have to plan to keep the public from getting false information from blithering irresponsible idiots who deal in fear and panic.
You're more of an aid to terrorists than I'll ever be.
They count on dimwitted mouthbreathing fools to spread panic and chaos far out of proportion to the actual damage done.
Congratulations on playing right into their hands you mope.
L
I do not recall ever saying that it was possible ~ just that the enemy thought that it was.
Your inability to understand that simple statement suggests that you really don't belong on this thread.
BTW, the BLS data does not count an additional 206,026 employees at Postal Headquarters, USPS Area offices, Postmasters and other Installation Heads, Supervisors, Managers, Professional Administrative and Technical Personnel, Nurses, Mail Handlers, Motor Vehicle Operators, Building and Equipment Maintenance Personnel and Vehicle Maintenance Personnel.
I didn't think it was neutral at all. I just finished putting a comment about it on my web site, and I summarized it this way:
If I were to sum up the "60 Minutes" report, it would be an accusation that, if Dr. Hatfill is the anthrax culprit, the FBI bungled the investigation by turning their investigation of him into a public spectacle, and if Dr. Hatfill is not the anthrax culprit, the FBI bungled the investigation by making it look like Dr. Hatfill was the culprit.
What I considered to be really BAD reporting was the way they didn't mention Barbara Hatch Rosenberg's role in Dr. Hatfill's destruction at all. All they did was point the finger at the FBI for destroying Dr. Hatfill if he's innocent and not catching him if he's guilty. And they left the impression with me that they think he's guilty.
I was a little surprised that they didn't have Senator Grassley trying to point the finger at al Qaeda, but there is only so much misinformation you can put into a 13 minute segment.
I kind of got that feeling from Leslie Stahl myself, but I thought that she did a pretty decent job of not making it too obvious. Maybe that's because the bias is usually so blatant and in your face (at least in my eyes).
I don't think I've seen Barbara Hatch Rosenberg mentioned in a major news report about the anthrax attacks from a major media outlet in years, which is incredible given her central role in this whole thing. It's rather despicable really, and it shows the way the media's agenda drives their reporting.
I have this feeling that Senator Grassley probably gave Stahl a lot of material that they chose to edit out of the report.
I cannot help but wonder, where did they get the deposition tapes of Ashcroft, Lambert and Roth? Who supplied them?
It was also fascinating to watch Ashcroft call Hatfill a "person of interest." He looked extremely uncomfortable using that term, as if he knew he was making a mistake but couldn't think of any other term to use.
My guess is most likely it was Hatfill's lawyer Thomas Connolly, who came off to me as the most forthcoming person Stahl spoke to. The guy was even completely completely honest and straightforward about Hatfill forging his diploma, which couldn't have been very comfortable.
I thought the funniest part of the whole thing was a stupefied-looking John Ashcroft saying "I don't know" over and over again to every question in the deposition.
Yeah, I guess it would almost have to be Connolly. It probably just goes to show that even if you give the media a scoop on something, they'll still twist their reporting to fit their preconceptions.
I remember doing an interview where I was saying just the opposite of what the journalist/interviewer wanted to hear. They interviewed me for 2 hours until they found a 10 second "media byte" they could use.
Actually, I think he just responded "I don't know" to only 85 questions. He probably knew the answers to questions about his name and profession.
I didn't read him as "stupified". To me he looked like a robot lawyer who had been programmed to respond "I don't know."
Ha-ha! Yeah, he probably did, but even that might be giving him a little too much benefit of the doubt.
Actually you did.
Here it is:
"If the attack had gone off as planned, at least 25,000 people on Capitol Hill would have died of anthrax. Another 800,000 people in the USPS would have died. Tens of millions of postal customers, particularly in the East Coast, would have died."
But why let facts get in the way of your bullsh**.
L
"IF" means "IF" ~ and "AS PLANNED" includes the state of mind of the planners. Since the plan was flawed and did not have sufficient elements to work the way the planners wished, that doesn't let the planners off the hook ~ which is what the appeasers and leftwingnuts want us to think.
Your position in this debate has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the terrorists had sufficient anthrax ~ you just want to discredit the idea that the terrorists INTENDED TO KILL MILLIONS OF PEOPLE and DESTROY THE UNITED STATES ECONOMY.
For that reason alone it is fully justified for the United States to pick apart the former Islamic Caliphate a country at a time and remake the place.
Blah, blah, blah....
"State of mind" isn't capable of lethality.
You're a hysterical blowhard who doesn't have his facts straight and your hyperbole aids the enemy.
L
Private Snafu is back I see.
L
Too many people like you don't wish to know what the enemy is thinking nor do you have any intention of countering him.
All you care about is your three hots and a cot.
I spend in excess of 40 hours a week planning to 'counter' and prevent 'him'. I do it for a living.
You're exactly the kind of person the old Private Snafu stuff was made about. A dimwitted panic monger who doesn't even realize that his bumbling and stumbling is actually giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
And you're exactly the kind of person the people in my profession spend countless hours having to debunk when we should be putting our efforts into mitigation, preparation, equipment, and exercises.
But instead inevitably there's always some idiot in the crowd who talks about how this stuff can kill 'millions and millions' which then requires that we waste our time repeating the accurate scientifically researched and documented evidence that's already easily available to the public for anyone with the inclination and intelligence to simply go find it.
It's become painfully evident that you possess neither of those qualities.
You're more interested in passing bogus half baked theories about what you think could have happened.
I spend hours and hours in classroom training, real world exercises, and then training members of emergency response teams and the public on these subjects.
You're a frigging keyboard commando who talks through his backside.
You waste our time.
You waste our money.
You don't know what you're talking about and you look like an idiot when you try.
So stop.
L
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