Posted on 08/05/2008 8:16:19 PM PDT by Wolfstar
WASHINGTON - Before killing himself last week, Army scientist Bruce Ivins told friends that government agents had stalked him and his family for months, offered his son $2.5 million to rat him out and tried to turn his hospitalized daughter against him with photographs of dead anthrax victims.
The pressure on Ivins was extreme, a high-risk strategy that has failed the FBI before. The government was determined to find the villain in the 2001 anthrax attacks; it was too many years without a solution to the case that shocked and terrified a post-9/11 nation.
The last thing the FBI needed was another embarrassment. Overreaching damaged the FBI's reputation in the high-profile investigations: the Centennial Olympic Park bombing probe that falsely accused Richard Jewell; the theft of nuclear secrets and botched prosecution of scientist Wen Ho Lee; and, in this same anthrax probe, the smearing of an innocent man — Ivins' colleague Steven Hatfill.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Even the lawyer for a widow of one of the victims says he is skeptical.
Richard Schuler, attorney for anthrax victim Robert Stevens' widow, Maureen Stevens, said his client will attend Wednesday's FBI briefing with a list of questions."No. 1 is, 'Did Bruce Ivins mail the anthrax that killed Robert Stevens?'" Schuler said, adding, "I've got healthy skepticism."
The FBI's reputation is in tatters, and no one trusts them anymore. In addition to the Jewell, Hatfill, Ruby Ridge, Waco, and other cases, don't forget that the FBI's once-reputable crime lab was found to have been manufacturing evidence for many court cases during the 1990's.
Do they administer IQ tests to FBI agents?
They'll do their 'blame it on the dead guy' dance when in all likelihood it was their pressure tactics on an unstable man that drove him to suicide.
And don't forget the Boston Office of the FBI and their stellar work in the Whitey Bulger case...
L
“According to the scientist, who said he spent about 80 hours with Ivins to help him recover from his addiction, the FBI agents pressured Ivins’s children, and they were pressuring Ivins in public places. One day in March, when Ivins was at a Frederick mall with his wife and son, the agents confronted the researcher and said, “You killed a bunch of people.” Then they turned to his wife and said, “Do you know he killed people?” according to the scientist.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/05/AR2008080503747.html
I'll always believe that Iraq was behind the anthrax...BUT Osama's dudes were to be the deliverers.
Wonder what Hatfill thinks of this event.
A: ...offered his son $2.5 million to rat him out...
Q: What would the Founders have done to "get" someone who they thought was guilty?
Correct!!! Ding, ding, ding!
The Founders would have whipped out the ol' bottomless taxpayer checkbook and cut the son a government check without blinking.
Probably for $5 million, though - you know how timid and uncertain government agents are in THIS day and age...
===============
Or maybe that was "The Founders would NEVER have offered to pay a witness like this".
I get confused between the "ALWAYS" and "NEVER" deal sometimes...
Not as "aggressive" as when they incinerated scores of innocent men, women, and CHILDREN at Waco.
Good question these days.
There's been way too many such FBI cases over the past 15 to 18 years or so.
The really beneficial news for FBI is that their latest victim will not be able file a lawsuit against the FBI for "ruining his life."
Whoever committed the anthrax attacks, whether it was Ivins or not, that kind of behavior by the FBI is astoundingly unprofessional. Hatfill is a strong personality and he had friends who helped him fight back. This guy Ivins apparently was a much less strong individual emotionally. Whether or not he was guilty or innocent, the extreme pressure by the FBI is clearly what pushed him over the edge to take his own life.
That, of course, plays right into the FBI's hands, because now they can claim anything against Ivins without risk of anyone fighting back.
Me too, and our circumstantial evidence is at least as good as whatever the FBI has. Their track history over nearly the last two decades makes it impossible to believe whatever "evidence" they come up with, because they not only could manufacture it, they HAVE manufactured evidence in many cases.
Exactly. Whether or not Ivins was guilty of the anthrax attacks, it's become impossible to believe the FBI anymore.
WSJ: Bruce Ivins wasn’t the anthrax culprit.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2056608/posts
The Feebs have been a rogue agency since at least the 1960s. Dunno how law-abiding they were before that.
Couldn’t his estate take some action?
This launderer has been seen in local papers supporting the local new House Democrat, Travis Childers, who also supported Joey Langston, the lawyer convicted in the Dickie Scruggs Judge bribery scandal.
I would now be sitting in the federal pen for aggravated assault and battery against these FBI nincompoops if they had done this to me and my wife.
Good question, but I don't know the answer. If Ivins was innocent, I hope the family can and does sue.
They also have done squat in terms of charging Rep. William Jefferson, the congressman found with loot in his freezer after Hurricane Katrina. Supposedly the FBI videotaped him accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from a Northern Virginia investor who was wearing an FBI wire. That was in 2005, before Katrina. So where is the indictment of Jefferson -- or did I miss news reporting of it? FBI Says Jefferson Was Filmed Taking Cash
The Justice Department has found ways to indict Republicans, but no Democrats, not even one like Jefferson who was supposedly caught in the act of accepting a bribe.
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