It sounds like Hatfill exaggerated some credentials on his resume. He may well be a bit of a self-promoter. I've known many, many people like that, in academia, in business, in science and in government. Incidentally, many of them are very good at what they do, but it doesn't stop them guilding the lilly. It also doesn't justify spinning elaborate X-Files theories about them being serial-killers without even circumstantial evidence. After all, it's not as if his resume includes hijacking an airliner and flying into a skyscraper, like certain other "persons of interest" I could mention.
If he is working with the feds and this all is just a staged charade, why would the feds bring this negative publicity upon themselves now if they're planning to go public with hard evidence in the next few weeks?
That's a reasonable question and here's how I would analyze it. In the first place, the people who are actually carrying out the investigation probably don't understand the big picture, or are smart enough, career-wise and pension-wise, to understand that they are not supposed to think about the big picture. I assume that the people who are actually carrying out the investigation are not independent thinkers. Bob Roth isn't Frank Serpico. He's no Harry Callaghan. More than likely, he's a bureaucratic time-server who takes direction well.
Bush says to Mueller: stall. Mueller says to his Number 2: Find somebody we can put on this domestic angle thing, and make sure he's loyal and not too bright. Number 2 says to Bob Roth -- here, check out these scientists, and here's a book on microbiology -- have at it! Welcome to the real world of bureaucratic gamesmanship.
Maybe Roth got a little gung-ho. Maybe Hatfill's "anguish" is, shall we say, a little bit played up, because he's smart enough to understand what's likely going on. They're both cogs in a bureaucratic machine, but they are probably acting semi-autonomously. If things get out of whack, Bush will inject a little steering input from above, but he isn't going to micro-manage it.
This is really guesswork, BTW. I'm not privy to the inner goings on of the FBI. It could be that the FBI is simply completely incompetent and corrupt. There's plenty of evidence that that is true of at least parts of the FBI. My problem with the simplest version of that theory is that I cannot believe Bush would leave a matter of such grave importance in the hands of knaves & buffoons. He might leverage the knaves & buffoons for his larger ends... but that brings us back pretty close to the model I just outlined.
But there is a second issue here, which dovetails with this analysis quite well. The "rogue scientist" theory promulgated by leftwing activist Barbara Hatch Rosenberg has been, IMO, exploited by the Bush administration for its own ends, to wit, buying time in a game of chicken with Saddam Hussein. The Hatfill theory has become gospel among segments of the Left, and many hold to a version of the theory where Hatfill is not just a loose cannon, but is actually in cahoots with the CIA and/or Bush for their own nefarious ends (think "oil bidness"). Not all of those true believers are on the far-out fringes. The notion that Hatfill was carrying out the bidding of his CIA handlers was actually floated by Nicholas Kristoff in the editorial pages of the New York Times. If you do a web search on Hatfill's name, you'll see that the Hatfilll conspiracy is already well-entrenched in the European media. Thus, there is now a premium on "roughing up" Hatfill publicly before exonerating him, otherwise it might all look a little too cozy. But the "roughing up" he has received is, in the big picture, nothing. He will come out of this very well, with book deals, TV gigs, the works, if he wants it. So I wouldn't take it too seriously.
I’m not viewing him in the same context as Rosenberg, the media, et al are. They are trying to paint him as a lone, right wing, domestic nut case. Many here see him as the “Jewel” fall guy. I’m just looking at his background and his whereabouts more than anything else. He trained, worked and lived in Africa for a substantial portion of his life and didn’t return to the U.S. until 1995. Al Qaeda and other islamic radical Egyptian groups (with which Atta was tied) are known to have had a strong operational presence in Africa. I don't think it's unreasonable to surmise that he could have been sought out by them because of his expertise. There are theories that there was a McVeigh-Oklahoma City-Iraq connection. Why couldn’t the same line of thinking apply here? More than anything, I'm trying to figure out how the Ft. Detrick strain ended up in enemy hands.