MSNBC’s Today Show had Steven Hatfill on the other day for his first interview since he settled with the Department of Justice over persecution and harassment. While informative, the interview didn't cover many topics. Hence, I've transcribed the MSNBC interview and added some commentary - plus a personal note at the end.The photo collage, I hope, explains what Dr. Hatfill went through and the levels of stress and intimidation he suffered as a result of the FBI's effort to respin the anthrax attacks as the work of a "lone wolf". From the top left clockwise, you have the Oct 9 Daschle letter, the five victims of the anthrax attacks (Joseph Curseen, Thomas Morris, Ottie Lungren, Robert Stevens, Kathy Nguyen), an autopsy photo of the effects of anthrax on the human brain (from Sverdlovsk), two images of the FBI media circus at Hatfill's home on June 25, 2002.
From the bottom right, we have images from the August 1 2002 press conference labeling Hatfill a "person of interest." First is FBI Director Mueller and DHS Secretary Chertoff, a more recent picture of Mueller being grilled before Congress, Ashcroft leading the press conference, and the 2002-2006 FBI lead on the case, Richard Lambert (now at Oak Ridge TN). The two people above Lambert were also at the press conference, not sure who they are, would very much like to know. Finally, we have the two of the reporters who went after Hatfill based on "secret sources"- Nicolas Kristoff of the New York Times, and Toni Locy of USA Today.
The MSNBC interview did not touch on the issue of media culpability in the harassment of Dr. Hatfill, however. This is a curious omission by MSNBC, as Hatfill also brought cases against these and other reporters. The federal judge in those cases, Reggie B. Walton, said in 2008 that "There's not a scintilla of evidence to suggest Dr. Hatfill had anything to do with it." In the end, the reporters were not required to reveal their sources on their Hatfill allegations - and no federal official has ever been held accountable for the Hatfill witch hunt.
The MSNBC interview also did not mention the fact that the FBI team that went after Hatfill was not the original FBI team assigned to the case - that team was dismissed early in 2002, and the head of the investigation was forced into early retirement. Immediately afterwards, the new FBI team headed by Lambert apparently dropped all investigations into Battelle Memorial Institute and Dugway Proving Ground, and instead focused on harassing Dr. Hatfill - with, as evidence has shown, no real cause whatsoever.
Not only that, the MSNBC report glosses over the multi-faceted evidence that also exonerates the FBI's final suspect, Dr. Bruce Ivins - namely, the fact that anthrax spores from Detrick were shipped to other locations, including Dugway Proving Ground and Battelle Memorial Institute, and more importantly, that the high-tech spore processing method used to create the powdered spores was not available to anyone at Fort Detrick. The technical details clearly show that neither Ivins nor anyone else at Detrick had the means to create this material - and certainly, neither did Saddam Hussein nor Al Qaeda. This only leaves the biological threat assessment program run by the DIA, the CIA and Battelle Memorial Institute in the late 1990s (into 2001?) as the only plausible source of the attacks. Regardless, Here is the transcript of the interview:
-begin segment-
MATT LAUER: We're back now at 7:40 with the man wrongly pursued by the FBI in connection with the anthrax attacks that terrified this nation in the weeks and months after 9/11. Several members of Congress and media outlets including NBC received tainted letters. Five people died, seventeen others were sickened.
Now, for the first time, Dr. Steven Hatfill is speaking out about what he was forced to endure. Dr Stephen Hatfill had worked as a scientist at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick Maryland, which holds stores of anthrax.
When the FBI started investigating the deadly attacks, it looked at more than a thousand people. He wasn't surprised to be one of them.
MATT LAUER: Did you volunteer to take the polygraph, or did they ask you to?
STEVEN HATFILL: They asked if I would - I said sure.
MATT LAUER: You had no - that would be a moment that would get my blood going a little bit, or at least my heartbeat going.
STEVEN HATFILL: No, I think this is just standard...
MATT LAUER: No reservations about it whatsoever?
STEVEN HATFILL: No, why?
MATT LAUER: What kind of questions did they ask you - any of them jump out at you?
STEVEN HATFILL: Sort of mundane things, really.
MATT LAUER: They didn't come right out and say, "Did you kill people with anthrax?"
STEVEN HATFILL: No, actually I got upset with them - with all these mundane, you know, "Did you ever cheat on a test?" type things - why don't you just ask me? And they said, yeah, okay, and that was the end of it.
Actually, that's normal polygraph technique - they have to establish a baseline. However, any trained person can beat a polygraph test, and they are also inadmissible in courts.
But unlike the others, he became the focus of the investigation after two outside sources said he fit the profile of the anthrax killer. For the next five years, his life would be turned upside down.
DAVID FREED [Atlantic Monthly] : Imagine being the fox chased by the hounds, and I think you begin to get an idea of what it was like for Steven Hatfill.
On June 25th 2002, Hatfill's name became very public. The FBI said they wanted to take some tests at his home. Thinking he had done nothing wrong and had nothing to fear, he agreed.
STEVEN HATFILL: Well [said the FBI], we'd like to do some swabs. It will be very discreet, quiet...
MATT LAUER: You signed the consent form?
STEVEN HATFILL: Sure.
MATT LAUER: You got home later that day?
STEVEN HATFILL: No, I walked out in the parking lot and there were already news cameras - filming me walking to the car - and they were taking me back to the apartment, and the whole news thing was out there, and the helicopters and all this.
MATT LAUER: Didn't you say to one of the FBI agents, "How did this get leaked?" and then that person said to you, "Someone must have leaked this to the media?"
STEVEN HATFILL: I can't remember the exact comment but I said "You know, what's going on here?" and [the FBI replied] "Well, it got leaked." What a performance.
MATT LAUER: When you say, "What a performance" they were lying to you?
STEVEN HATFILL: I'm watching this on television and there are guys in HazMat suits. This is - what a show. And apparently that's what it was - a show.
Note here that the goal of this "show" was to distract attention away from the FBI's previous work, which had pointed towards the involvement of private contractors linked to the U.S. biological threat assessment program. As noted, the first thing FBI agent Richard Lambert did when he took over the case was to drop all such investigations, and instead focus on Hatfill and Fort Detrick.
A show that was watched by Americans on live TV - with no concrete evidence. Steven Hatfill was now public enemy number one.
MATT LAUER: Can you try to explain to me what happens over the next several years? You are now under surveillance constantly by the FBI and under the scrutiny of the media.
STEVEN HATFILL: It just never seemed to end.
MATT LAUER: When they say they're following you everywhere you go, is it like in a bad movie where they're in a van peeking out of a side window - or are they just obviously...
STEVEN HATFILL: No, they're right behind you.
MATT LAUER: Making it clear to you, "We are watching every move you make."
STEVEN HATFILL: It just became a way to harass. You would go into a restaurant and they'd sit down on either side of you.
MATT LAUER: How did you react to that?
STEVEN HATFILL: You keep thinking, well this will end. Somebody will, you know, come to their senses.
In August 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft took the unprecedented step of naming Hatfill a "person of interest" in the anthrax killings.
As the news conference images indicate, by that time the Amerithrax 1 / Amerithrax 2 FBI team was out of the picture, and the new team had taken over. Days later, the first real break in the anthrax case appeared - the identification of the Princeton mail box where the spores were sent from.
ASHCROFT: "He's a person that - that the FBI's been interested in..."
The scrutiny cost Hatfill his job and every aspect of his privacy.
MATT LAUER: You can't go anywhere without them following you. You can't have a candid phone conversation because you have to assume they are listening to every word you say...
STEVEN HATFILL: I think that by the time the FBI come and see you, I think your phone's already been done. Which - you know - if the law says they can do that, then fine.
MATT LAUER: How long did this disaster last for you?
STEVEN HATFILL: It lasts forever.
MATT LAUER: What about friends? When the spotlight was the brightest on you, did you lose friends, were people afraid to associate with you?
STEVEN HATFILL: No, what upsets me is that I don't know of any law that permits the FBI to go by your closest friends and say, "You're not to associate with Dr. Hatfill. You're not to see him, or talk to him - you know, what they're trying to do is socially isolate you as part of the stress.
MATT LAUER: Trying to make you snap?
STEVEN HATFILL: Yeah - essentially.
This was the exact technique that the third FBI team used to harass Bruce Ivins and his family, although they never named him a "person of interest" until after his alleged suicide. Richard Lambert had been removed from the case in 2006, after failing to drive Hatfill over the edge.
In 2007, the FBI was able to track the deadly strain of anthrax used in the attacks to a supply kept by Dr. Bruce Ivins, who worked at the same Army lab as Dr. Hatfill. As investigators closed in, Ivins took his own life. His family maintains his innocence. "Case closed" says the FBI.
MATT LAUER: Given what you've told me, Steven, about your now complete lack of confidence in the Justice Department and the investigation they conducted surrounding you - do you think they got it right now?
STEVEN HATFILL: I have no way - I haven't seen the data, obviously the FBI haven't felt it necessary to share anything with me. I have talked to some senior scientists that I trust and respect, I have to take their opinion that, uh, yeah. Other than that I, I can't say.
Not very convincing at all - why no discussion of the chemical additives, the high purity, and the fact that the "unique genetic fingerprint" from the Detrick Ames spore repository was found at several other institutions that had received spores from Detrick for use in testing the U.S. military's anthrax vaccine in research animals? As far as I can determine, all such "Ames anthrax vaccine challenges" were done at Battelle Memorial Institute in West Jefferson Ohio - or possibly at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah.
MATT LAUER: What's your feeling about the way the Justice Department treated you?
STEVEN HATFILL: I learned a couple things. The government can do to you whatever they want. They can break the laws - federal laws - as they see fit - and you can't turn laws on and off... and the privacy act laws were put in place specifically to stop what happened to me. I used to be somebody who trusted the government, and now I really don't trust anything.
MATT LAUER: You settled with the Justice Department - a legal settlement - for a lot of money. This may sound trivial to you, but did they ever apologize?
STEVEN HATFILL: Somebody phone me up and say, "We're sorry?"
MATT LAUER: "Yeah - we screwed up?"
STEVEN HATFILL: No, they don't do that.
MATT LAUER: The falsely accused have often asked the MATT LAUER, where do I go to get my reputation back? Where does Steven Hatfill go?
STEVEN HATFILL: I was fortunate that about halfway through this mess, I had a band of brothers, and they never left my side. I still work with them to this day. Patriots, soldiers, highly decorated men. And that gives you the strength, just to be in their company, to carry on.
MATT LAUER: Sounds to me like you wouldn't have made it without them.
STEVEN HATFILL: No, I doubt it.
While he was never formally cleared after being labeled a person of interest, the government's multimillion-dollar settlement seems to speak for itself. You can read more about Hatfill's story in the May issue of the Atlantic Monthly.
MEREDITH VIEIRA: So chilling, how easily that can happen.
MATT LAUER: He said he used to drive his car, they would be right behind him and just follow him everywhere, and they would even pull him over for routine traffic stops, just give him tickets for ridiculous things. His life was really turned upside down.
MEREDITH VIEIRA: Well you can see it still is - when he talks about it, there's the pain in his face...
MATT LAUER: It's true.
-end segment-
Hatfill was hardly the only person subjected to surveillance and harassment over this case. Soon after I began looking into the details of the anthrax attacks and possible government malfeasance related to the biological threat assessment program, I found quite a few odd characters tailing my every move. My approach, however, was to attempt to engage these characters in conversations, and to follow them around as well, surreptitiously eavesdrop on their cell phone conversations and so on. On one occasion I listened while a co-worker at a job instructed his associate on the phone to get all of my email records (he thought I was doing something else, but I had snuck back to the office and heard the whole thing). This same character later offered to sell me cocaine & LSD, and attempted to engage me in a discussion about the feasibility of assassinating President Bush - I kid you not. At the same time, another old acquaintance began begging me to find someone who had LSD for sale! Needless to say, I put two and two together and immediately quit that job, and cut off contact with those acquaintances.
I haven't bothered to conduct a further investigation into such matters, but I did take several further protective steps - I cut off all contact with old friends, I severely limited all family contacts, and began more direct engagement with various political, law enforcement and military agencies. This was not the expected response, I imagine - but believe me, it was quite effective in getting these creeps off my back. It has changed my life a bit, however... but that's something I can deal with.
Of course, it's no comparison to the kind of public drubbing Hatfill was given - but I know how he feels. I more or less expected the harassment, once I decided I had to warn people about the government's biowarfare programs, and was in some sense prepared for it. I didn't expect people to try and set me up with criminal charges, however - that was a surprise.
Certain individuals, who I will not name, also played their part by tipping me off to what was going on - and to them, I owe a great deal of confidential thanks. There are plenty of decent people in this country, I can assure you.
In all fairness to these snoops, I am a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Student Fellowship in microbiology, and as a result of my investigations I probably know as much about the manufacture of biological weapons as anyone who hasn't seen all the classified documentation. For example, I'm quite certain that if given the equipment and materials I requested, I could produce biological weapons identical to those in the Daschle letter. That would however require a full-scale BSL3/4 laboratory - something better than anything Saddam Hussein could come up with, millions of dollars in highly specialized equipment, and a lot of time and money. That's what it would take to produce the material employed in these attacks.
Obviously, this creates a certain problem - how much should I tell people? In this regard, I follow in the footsteps of the Ted Taylor, the nuclear weapons scientist who set out to warn the world about diversion of nuclear materials for homemade bombs - he only used information that was already available in the public domain. This seems to me to be the responsible approach.
However, if our scientific institutions are going to support this kind of thing - if our government is going to refuse to sign on to an updated Biological Warfare Convention - and if the biological threat assessment programs are going to escape scrutiny for their role in these attacks - well, that's a problem.
It's a lot bigger problem than many people suspect, I'm afraid. These attacks were conducted with what is essentially "old-school" technology - meaning no genetic manipulation of the strain employed, the nanotech spore processing system aside. If antibiotic resistance genes had been incorporated, for example, far more people would have died - and if they had put smallpox in with the anthrax? We'd have had a major epidemic on our hands.
There's only one conclusion here, however: The U.S. government cooked up illegal biological weapons in defiance of the Biological Warfare treaties we signed on to, and then, somehow, those biological weapons were turned against the American public in a deliberate (and successful) effort to create fear and terror.
That's not acceptable, and neither is the FBI's coverup of this astonishingly flagrant criminal behavior. It is even looking like our National Academy of Sciences is participating in this - and that's even more outrageous. The FBI can at least claim scientific ignorance - but the National Academy?
I'd have expected this behavior from the Soviet Academy of Sciences, who worked overtime to cover up the Sverdlovsk anthrax incident in the old Soviet Union - but is that what we've become?
