I don't disagree with the points you have made on this thread, but I do want to point out that I watched an interview with the lead FBI agent in charge of the recent sting out of Texas that lead to the arrest of Pete Townsend. He stated that after the FBI agents "scrubbed" the records and found the credit card numbers and names of the participants, they fowarded almost all of them to the LOCAL authorities to do the actual arrests.
The locals then decided how to proceed, they did not have to report back to the FBI.
I am totally speculating here, but this could be the same sort of case. A large sting was undertaken and then passed on to Scotts local law enforcement agency and they took it from there. As for the sealing of the prosecution, I don't know what the reason for that was.
Hmmm.....the person to ask would be that fired assistant district attorney in charge of the case. She might know, but I bet she's not going to talk. I wonder why she'd risk losing her job over Scott Ritter?
What I find amazing is that this was clamped down & clamped down (dare I say it?) hard. We didn't hear about it from June, 2001 until now. That means that the reporters who cover the courthouse (usually a fruitful source of leaks from gossipy court personnel) didn't hear about it--and possibly didn't know about it. If Ritter had a court appearance--and that's a big IF because his lawyer may have appeared in the case without his presence--the courtroom itself may have either been sealed or the case wasn't put on the court calendar or put on the court calendar with the name obscured or the court hearing set at a weird time, like 6 a.m. It means not one cop in that department said a word about busting Ritter.
Most interesting--but this raises more questions, doesn't it?