OT: Hatfill Sues Over Anthrax Probe
Scientist Accuses Ashcroft, FBI of 'Smear Campaign'
By Carol D. Leonnig and Marilyn W. Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 27, 2003; Page B01
Former Army scientist Steven J. Hatfill sued Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and the FBI yesterday, alleging that the nation's top law enforcement officials have violated his privacy and ruined his chances of getting a job by insinuating publicly that he was behind the deadly anthrax-laced mailings.
The federal lawsuit accuses Ashcroft and the FBI of conducting a "coordinated smear campaign" dating to August 2002, when Ashcroft described Hatfill as a "person of interest" in the FBI's anthrax investigation. Authorities have not publicly identified Hatfill as a suspect in the anthrax-spore mailings, which killed five people and sickened 17 others in late 2001.
The harassment has continued for a year as federal authorities have followed Hatfill in his daily activities, wiretapped his telephone, demanded that he be fired from a university job, and leaked information to the media about searches of his former apartment and a pond in the Frederick area near his former office, the suit contends.
The motive, the suit argues, is to give the false appearance that the FBI is making progress in catching the people responsible for circulating weapons-grade anthrax through the postal system, which further frightened the public about terrorism in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"They wanted to show an anxious nation that they were making progress in their investigation . . . even though it was stalled," said Hatfill attorney Thomas G. Connolly. He said that Hatfill did nothing wrong and "deserves to get his life back, and the American public deserves a real investigation."
The lawsuit marked the latest attempt by the 49-year-old physician and bioterrorism expert to defend himself. A year ago, Hatfill summoned reporters to declare, "I am not the anthrax killer" and complain about FBI's tactics. Yesterday, his attorneys returned to those themes in a news conference outside U.S. District Court in Washington. Hatfill did not appear.
Connolly said that Hatfill has been "questioned, searched, tailed and bugged" by the FBI for more than a year but that the agency has not filed charges or produced evidence against him. The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of damages for his suffering and the violation of his constitutional rights and asks the court to curtail the FBI activity.
A Justice Department spokesman said that officials had no comment on the suit. The department previously defended its role in Hatfill's firing last year from a job training first responders in a biodefense program the agency funds at Louisiana State University, saying that it has a right to be concerned about personnel on federally funded projects.
In comments aired Aug. 3 on ABC News, Ashcroft said he was confident that the anthrax investigation had been handled professionally and that the case would be solved.
"We certainly have not organized a campaign of smears," he said on ABC-TV. "We're going to continue the investigation vigorously and pursue it. . . . We expect to get to the bottom of this."
The anthrax mailings -- to a media outlet in Florida, to broadcaster Tom Brokaw's offices at NBC News and other media outlets in New York, and to the Capitol Hill offices of Sens. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) -- coursed through various post offices and East Coast distribution centers. Two workers at the Brentwood Road postal facility in Washington, a Florida photojournalist, a New York hospital worker and a 94-year-old woman in Connecticut died.
The case has been one of the FBI's most expensive investigations, consuming the full-time work of 35 agents. The U.S. postal inspector's office has an additional 15 agents working on the probe.
Over the past year, the FBI has faced questions about the direction of the investigation. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) has been a vocal critic of the FBI's investigation.
"This is obviously a tough case," Grassley said recently. "Even so, it doesn't seem like any real progress has been made. . . . You just hope the FBI hasn't locked itself into a position where it can't consider new possibilities."
Grassley wrote Ashcroft in September asking him to define what is meant by a "person of interest."
Assistant Attorney General Daniel J. Bryant responded in a letter to Grassley 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 given Hatfill a polygraph examination and conducted a search, with Hatfill's consent, of the apartment where he lived at the time, near where he worked at Fort Detrick as a virus specialist from 1997 to 1999.
"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," Bryant wrote
No other person has been publicly identified as a "person of interest" in the anthrax case, but the FBI has investigated a number of other scientists and searched several homes.
U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton has been assigned to hear Hatfill's lawsuit.
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