Posted on 09/05/2003 1:03:49 PM PDT by Princeton
D.A. Henderson believes FBI conduct will sour relations with US researchers |
The scientist who led the Bush administration's first emergency response program against bioterrorism attacks is harshly critical of the government's treatment of two biowarfare disease researchers on whom the US Department of Justice has focused as possible criminals. Claiming that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has "lost all perspective" in one case and is "out of control" in the other, internationally renowned professor Donald A. Henderson calls the agency's actions inappropriate in America's democracy.
Henderson said that he is limited in how much he could do to support the two scientists, Thomas C. Butler and Stephen J. Hatfill. "I'm not really in a position to go and directly confront the attorney general," he said.
But he predicted that the FBI's conduct in these two cases will sour its future dealings with all American scientists. "I think what the FBI will get from all this, I'm sure, is going to be a reaction on the part of anybody in the scientific community about being very reluctant to talk to the FBI on any number of issues."
Appointed in November 2001, a month after the first anthrax letter attacks, Henderson helped to reorganize the government's response to that crisis and developed a plan to deal with future attacks. He served the 6 months he had promised the administration and then returned to his professorship at Johns Hopkins University. Henderson has been a part-time consultant to the program and chair of its advisory council ever since. Henderson also served as associate director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Clinton White House. He is best known for leading the World Health Organization team that eradicated smallpox worldwide in the 1960s and 1970s.
In an interview Wednesday (September 3), Henderson said it was "unbelievable" that, according to colleagues who are familiar with the case, the FBI interrogated Thomas Butler for 10 hours overnight, and for several hours the following day, without a lawyer. "I can't believe that this is a procedure that would properly be followed by a law enforcement operation which is acting responsibly."
Butler, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Texas Tech University, was indicted earlier this year for illegally transporting plague bacteria from Tanzania into and within the United States and for lying to the FBI by claiming that 30 vials of the bacteria samples had been stolen, when in fact, the government alleges, he had destroyed them days earlier. On Wednesday, the Justice Department expanded the indictment to include embezzlement, tax evasion, and mail fraud, among other charges.
Butler, 62, has pleaded innocent to all charges and is scheduled to go to trial in November. One of his attorneys, professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University, has called the charges dishonest, claiming that the FBI decided a few days after announcing its investigation that Butler was innocent. But they won't back down, he said, because the case was immediately publicized worldwide.
Turley added that after an unreasonably long and grueling interrogation session, Butler agreed to say he had destroyed the vials because the FBI agents promised him that his written admission would end the case and he could go free. FBI spokesman Bill Carter today refused to comment on that allegation or on any other aspect of Butler's ongoing case.
"[The FBI has] lost all perspective on this," Henderson said. "The question is, what did he really do? He did bring back specimens, plague specimens. This has been going on for a long time. There have been very few restrictions on importing of isolates from different parts of the world, and when people are working on obscure diseases, they certainly do transport them.
"I can tell you that certainly I carried a lot of smallpox around for a great many years while we had the smallpox [eradication] program. When I was in a country, we'd have isolates and scabs or other material. You know, you put them in a little tin container, a double-sealed container, and put it in your luggage. If there were regulations at the time, they were pretty minimal. There really wasn't the level of concern," Henderson said.
He also considers the agency's conduct toward Steven J. Hatfill to be unacceptable.
Hatfill, 49, has never been indicted but has been described as a "person of interest" by Attorney General John Ashcroft in the case of the anthrax mailings that killed five Americans and sickened 23 others in 2001. For more than a year, Hatfill has complained that the FBI searches him, bugs him, and tails him whenever he leaves home for any reason. In May, an FBI agent ran over Hatfill's foot as the former Ebola researcher at the US Army's Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases was trying to take the agent's picture to prove he was following Hatfill's car too closely.
"I think there's no question about it, he's being harassed," Henderson charged. "I just don't think this is appropriate in this democracy. They're out of control."
Last week (August 26), Hatfill filed a lawsuit against the attorney general, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and several individual agents. One of his attorneys, Thomas Campbell, said at the time that "no evidence links Dr. Hatfill to the crime, yet the attorney general and a number of his subordinates have attempted to make him the scapegoat."
Henderson is also upset that in contrast with broad support from the scientific community for Butler, many people seem to have concluded that Hatfill is guilty after news stories claimed that he had falsified his PhD and lied extensively on his resume over the years, for instance, claiming that he belonged to a prestigious British medical organization, which in fact does not exist.
"I think it may be information," Henderson acknowledged. But "what does it say about his guilt or innocence? I don't think it says anything about his guilt or innocence."
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