NYTimes 8/9/08 - Anthrax Case Had Costs for Suspects

[Muttocracy]

Anthrax Case Had Costs for Suspects

By WILLIAM J. BROAD and SCOTT SHANE

Published: August 9, 2008

When Perry Mikesell, a microbiologist in Ohio, came under suspicion as the anthrax attacker, he began drinking heavily, family members say, and soon died. After a doctor in New York drew the interest of the F.B.I., his marriage fell apart and his practice suffered, his lawyer says. And after two Pakistani brothers in Pennsylvania were briefly under scrutiny, they eventually had to leave the country to find work.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s path to Bruce E. Ivins, the Army scientist who committed suicide late last month as federal officials moved closer to indicting him for the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, was long and tortuous. Before the investigators settled on Dr. Ivins — and his defenders still say the F.B.I. hounded an innocent man to death — they had focused on Steven J. Hatfill, another Army researcher, for several years.

But along the way, scores of others — terrorists, foreigners, academic researchers, biowarfare specialists and an elite group of Army scientists working behind high fences and barbed wire — drew the interest of the investigators. For some of them the cost was high: lost jobs, canceled visas, broken marriages, frayed friendships.

At the Army biodefense laboratory in Frederick, Md., where Dr. Ivins worked, the inquiry became a murder mystery, the cast composed of top scientists eyeing one another warily over vials of lethal pathogens.

“It was not pleasant,” recalled Jeffrey J. Adamovicz, a former official there. “There was a general sense of paranoia that they were going to get somebody no matter what.”

continues at link
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/washington/10anthrax.html

[Mabus]

1. The government is going around destroying lives

and reputations during their investigations.

I read an article the other day that was from late March of this year. At that time the FBI said they had four suspects they were looking at as being responsible for the anthrax letters. The article was from Fox News, you know the place, the one that Scotty McClellan admitted that the WH sent talking points to, and it claims it has e-mails from Ft. Detrick scientists who mention one of their colleagues. Fox asked the FBI about the e-mails but got no comment. What's interesting is that these e-mails weren't mentioned as part of their investigation. Or was this story a plant?

[Muttocracy]

2. that article also mentions handwriting samples, yet now they say

it isn't worth checking handwriting because Ivins would have just disguised his handwriting.

[peacetalksforall]

3. And after Hatfill's expensive lawsuit - some may be suicided so that 'they' can

avoid legal defense and payouts. To those who exist to maximize THEIR profits and control over us, suiciding is cheap, who cares about the desctruction of everything around the person. And the country.

[Mabus]

4. That would be Locy and Stewart who were held in contempt for not revealing govt. sources

As part of the government's settlement with Hatfill, the contempt charges against former USA today reporter Locy and former CBS reporter Stewart will not be pursued. Hatfill was suing the government to determine who identified him as a person of interest to the media. In other words, because the government settled with Hatfill so there is no longer any reason for Hatfill to compel testimony from these parties. And now, with Ivins dead, there is no reason to talk about why the media pointed the public's attention to, out of all the suspects that the FBI were pursuing and building cases on, Hatfill.

Feb. 19, 2008 · U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton today found former USA Today reporter Toni Locy in contempt of court for failing to cooperate in former Army scientist Steven J. Hatfill's Privacy Act suit against the government. Walton delayed judgment on Hatfill's companion motion to find former CBS news reporter James Stewart in contempt.

Locy was one of five reporters Hatfill subpoenaed while trying to track down anonymous government sources who had identified him as a "person of interest" in the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks. Without identifying the source of those disclosures, Walton said, Hatfill cannot proceed with his suit against the government for releasing information about the investigation.

Since being subpoenaed, Locy has maintained that she does not remember the specific sources who identified Hatfill, but rather only a catalog of those who offered her information about the investigation generally.

Wary of granting reporters a "convenient" method to avoid subpoenas by claiming that they did not remember the specific source for a story, Walton refused to concede that Locy's "faulty memory should be an excuse to not disclose her universe of sources."

http://www.rcfp.org/news/2008/0219-con-judgef.html