FBI, Ashcroft Sued in Anthrax Probe
Steven Hatfill Claims Law Enforcement Officials Violated His Privacy
By Carol D. Leonnig and Marilyn W. Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 26, 2003; 4:54 PM
Former army scientist Steven Hatfill sued Attorney General John Ashcroft and the FBI today in federal court claiming that the nation's top law enforcement officials have violated his privacy and ruined his chance of getting a job by insinuating publicly that he was behind the 2001 anthrax-laced mailings.
Hatfill's lawyers said in the 40-page lawsuit that Ashcroft and the FBI have conducted a "coordinated smear campaign" against Hatfill, starting when Ashcroft named Hatfill as a "person of interest" in the FBI's anthrax investigation and continuing for a year as Justice officials demanded that Hatfill be fired from a university job and leaked information to the press about searches of Hatfill's apartment and a pond nearby.
Their motive, Hatfill argues in his suit, is to give the false appearance of making progress in catching the people responsible for circulating weapons-grade anthrax through the postal system, which frightened the public and led to the deaths of five people.
"They wanted to show an anxious nation that they were making progress in their investigation . . . even though it was stalled," said Hatfill's attorney, Thomas G. Connolly. "In the process, they have trampled on Steven Hatfill's constitutional rights . . . and made him endure a year of hell."
Connolly said Hatfill has been "questioned, searched, tailed and bugged" by the FBI for more than a year, yet the agency has not filed any charges against him or produced any evidence that he is linked to the anthrax mailings.
"Dr. Hatfill deserves to get his life back and the American public deserves a real investigation," said Connolly. "He's been a target of a publicly-coordinated campaign to implicate him in a crime he did not commit and for which he has not been charged."
Hatfill's suit claims that the Justice Department violated his constitutional rights and seeks an unspecified amount of compensation for his suffering.
A spokesperson at the Department of Justice said today that neither Ashcroft nor the FBI would have any comment on the lawsuit. His department has defended its role in Hatfill's firing by saying that it has a right to be concerned about personnel on department-funded programs. In recent remarks on television, Ashcroft said he's confident the anthrax case will be solved.
"We certainly have not organized a campaign of smears," Ashcroft told ABC News. "We're going to continue the investigation vigorously and pursue it. It is an ongoing investigation. We expect to get to the bottom of this. We expect to find the truth and we'll stay after it until we do."
The anthrax mailings -- to media outlets in Florida, to Tom Brokaw's offices at NBC News in New York, and to the Capitol Hill offices of Sens. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) -- led to five deaths and severe illness for 13 other people. The letters passed through various post offices and postal distribution centers along the East Coast. Two postal workers at the Brentwood postal facility in Washington, a Florida photojournalist, a New York hospital worker and a 94-year-old woman in Connecticut died from exposure.
The anthrax case has been one of the FBI's most expensive investigations, consuming the full-time work of 50 federal law enforcement agents -- 35 from the FBI and 15 from the U.S. Postal Inspector's Office.
Hatfill's suit complains that because of public comments by Justice officials and orchestrated leaks, he's been the face and the name that the public has been led to believe is a criminal. Hatfill has compared himself to Richard Jewell, the man that the FBI repeatedly linked to the bombing of the Olympics in Atlanta and later conceded was not involved.
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has been a vocal critic of the FBI's "Amerithrax" investigation and said not much has improved in the months since he first questioned its methods.
"This is obviously a tough case," Grassley said. "Even so, it doesn't seem like any real progress has been made. Draining the pond was a dead end. The FBI made statements early on about suspects and profiles, but those judgments haven't been backed up with evidence. You just hope the FBI hasn't locked itself in to a position where it can't consider new possibilities as the investigation continues."
After Sen. Grassley questioned Ashcroft's use of the term last summer, Assistant Attorney General Daniel J. Bryant wrote that the phrase originated with unnamed FBI sources who were describing Hatfill to news reporters. By the time Ashcroft used it, the FBI had already polygraphed Hatfill and conducted a June consensual search of his Frederick, Md., apartment.
"The phrase was never used by the FBI or the Department of Justice to draw media attention to Dr. Hatfill," Bryant wrote. "On the contrary, the phrase was used to deflect media scrutiny from Dr. Hatfill and explain that he was just one of many scientists who had been interviewed by the FBI and who were cooperating with the anthrax investigation."
No other person has been publicly identified as a "person of interest" in the anthrax case, although the FBI has pursued a number of other scientists and searched several homes. In the months after the anthrax letters surfaced, the FBI executed a search warrant for the Milwaukee home of a former Battelle Memorial Laboratories scientist who had told local police that he was concocting anthrax in his basement. The bureau later dismissed the claim as a drunken boast.
It focused considerable attention on a former Fort Detrick anthrax researcher who lives near Trenton, N.J., and now works for a large pharmaceutical company. Many other current and former Fort Detrick scientists were interrogated, and a few were asked to take polygraph tests. FBI sources say that investigators continue to look at a short list of potential suspects and that Hatfill is not the only one under scrutiny. Although the bureau trailed Hatfill around-the-clock for months, parking outside his girlfriend's Wisconsin Avenue condominium, law enforcement sources contend that the surveillance has tapered off in recent weeks. According to several of Hatfill's friends, he has said he feels some of the pressure is off and that he can move a bit more freely.
Last month, Hatfill allowed a reporter for Washington's City Paper to accompany him and his friend, Pat Clawson, on a drive about town as they were purportedly pursued by FBI agents. The men joked about FBI incompetence as they tried to duck the agents. Law enforcement sources found the article amusing because they say the FBI was not following Hatfill at that time.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton has been assigned to hear Hatfill's lawsuit, and a hearing could be scheduled as early as next month. Walton, appointed by President Bush to the bench in 2001, was a D.C. Superior Court judge since 1981, appointed to that bench by President Ronald Reagan.
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