If you have been following this case, then you know that the discovery of a makeshift glove box, anthrax spores and vials "wrapped in plastic" in a pond in a search ostensibly inspired by a scene in Hatfill's unpublished bioterrorism novel is incredibly incriminating. If taken at face value, I'd say, skip the trial -- let's go straight to the execution. This great discovery is supposed to have happened four months ago. And yet, no charges, no grand jury. What does that suggest to you about the veracity of this story? I suggest that it's all about as veracious as the story that a CIA operative "earprinted" Saddam Hussein entering a bunker on March 20, and spied him being med-evaced from the scene with an oxygen mask over his face after the US rained forty cruise missiles down on the bunker a few hours later. In other words, it's a complete fabrication -- window dressing to avoid the impression that Saddam Hussein whacked the United States and got off with his life by virtue of his threat to use WMD on the American public.
The FBI has been criticized by some conservative commentators for seeming to ignore the possibility that foreign terrorists or Iraq might have been responsible for the anthrax mailings. Some suggested the case might be solved by the discovery of biological weapons facilities in Iraq, but little evidence of recent Iraqi bioweapons activity has turned up.
The purpose of Amerithrax is to convince us that the origin of those anthrax threats has been a big mystery to the United States. In fact, it never was a mystery. At the highest level, we always understood perfectly well that those threats came from the state which attacked us using terrorist proxies on September 11, 2001. See Woodward, Bush at War, p. 248, for the real story.
They suddenly swooped down on a junk dealer in Enterprise, Alabama and began to search every inch of his business including the pleasant job of digging up the septic tank.
I was watching this on TV with another grad student and we both laughed. It was so obvious listening to the owner that he was not the mad bomber that it was literally funny. Of course it turned out he had nothing to do with it and the only evidence was that the typewriter used to write some letter had once been in his junk.
Of course they have to check out all leads but this was ridiculous. The really do appear to be incompetent sometimes.
Registered Works Database (Author Search)I would also recommend any journalists interested in the case call the FBI Washington Field Office, (202) 278-2000, and check if Pamela Lane and Jennifer Grant, the two FBI agents who Hatfill referenced in his August 2002 news conference, actually exist and can address Hatfill's claims that they mistreated his mysteriously shy girlfriend:
- Search For: HATFILL, STEVEN J., 1953-
Item 1 of 1
1. Registration Number: TXu-887-264 Title: Emergence. Description: 198 p. Claimant: acSteven J. Hatfill , 1953-, & acRoger Akers , 1947- Created: not given on appl.
Registered: 26Aug98
Author on © Application: text: Steven J. Hatfill; revisions & some text: Roger Akers. 1/B
It is definitely not good to be the girlfriend of a person of interest. My girlfriend was locked inside an FBI car and hauled off to FBI headquarters and interrogated for hours, without once being told she has the right to leave any time she wished. Her requests for a lawyer were delayed and made difficult. Her purse, although not on the search warrant, was taken from her and its contents examined after the interrogation process while she was being driven back to her residence.Of course, the big score for a journalist who wants to make a name for himself with this story would be to find Hatfill and his girlfriend, and get them on the record, up close and personal, about their treatment by the FBI. I mean, either this fellow is guilty of five murders and is the author of a plot which terrorized the whole country, cost us $2 billion, and was used by Colin Powell to justify attacking Iraq, or he's been the victim of a monstrous smear campaign. The public has a right to know which it is. It might also be interesting to see what kind of lifestyle Hatfill now enjoys, having supposedly been without his $150K/yr from the DOJ for the last eight months. Perhaps this will all have a happy ending and Hatfill will be shamed into tieing the knot, seeing as how his girlyfriend has presumably been making up the $150K/yr shortfall in their joint income for all this time -- perhaps by selling some of those $3,000 paintings that grace the walls of her lavish, sensuously oriental, ultra-feminine apartment:She was screamed at by FBI agents and told that the FBI had firm evidence that I had killed five innocent people. This was told to her by FBI agent Jennifer Grant and FBI agent Pamela Lane. Can you imagine that?
The FBI trumpets that I am not a suspect, and the woman I love is told the FBI -- told by the FBI that I am a murderer.
This is the life of a person of interest, Mr. Ashcroft. But that's not all. My girlfriend was told that she better take a polygraph examination and cooperate, or else. Her home checkbooks, computers, private papers and car were seized. As for her home, it was completely trashed, as is appropriate for the home of a girlfriend of a person of interest.
Some of her delicate pottery was smashed. The glass on a $3,000 painting was broken. This painting was wrapped in bubble wrap, by the way. Neatly stacked boxes awaiting shipment to her new home were ripped open, instead of opened with due regard to their contents.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have pictures of how FBI left this apartment, her apartment, which, at the time of the raid, was neatly prepared for a move to Louisiana, with all her belongings packed in nicely stacked boxes. This is one of the pictures.
I refuse to allow my girlfriend -- to this treatment, as the girlfriend of a person of interest. She is not here today. I love you. I will not state her name here. And I ask the news media, please, for common decency, if you know it, please leave her alone. She will not make a statement.
Have at it, boys!
I like the "drain the pond" angle. < /gag> Sounds like a way to burn up some budget and accrue overtime pay.