Steven Hatfill Vs. The Media
By Cliff Kincaid
June 30, 2008
Page 2 of 4
For the complete story, which we had less than a year after 9/11, of how the FBI went wrong in the Hatfill case, please read our August 2002 AIM Report, "Another Richard Jewell?" (web site)
Hatfill has now gotten his settlement from the government. But it took many years and he still needs to collect from the media. I have asked New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. at the last two Times annual meetings to settle with Hatfill and admit that Kristof's columns on the case were malicious and wrong. Sulzberger and the Times refuse and continue to fight in court. They spend millions of dollars on expensive lawyers when they should be giving Hatfill the money, in compensation for the Kristof columns suggesting he was the anthrax killer.
This case is also a big black eye for the Bush administration. President Bush should have cleaned out the FBI and the CIA when he took office. But he stuck with the bureaucrats and later inexplicably rewarded one of them, former CIA Director George Tenet, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The invasion of Iraq, launched in part on the basis of false information provided by Tenet, can be justified today by the argument that American troops are helping to build a democratic and lasting government in Baghdad that may, over the long term, stabilize the area and reduce the terrorist threat. But the handling of the Hatfill case can't be justified under any circumstances. Who has paid for this incompetence?
We frequently hear that the Bush administration has kept us safe since 9/11. But tell that to the families of the victims of the post-9/11anthrax attacks. Five people were killed and many others sickened by the anthrax that was mailed in envelopes featuring statements attacking Israel and praising Allah. Some FBI officials, operating on the basis of left-wing theories of the case, figured these statements were a diversionary tactic and an attempt to blame Muslims, even though other government officials were noting evidence of an actual al-Qaeda program to develop and use anthrax. It was worse than the Keystone cops because American lives had been lost and others were at risk.
Making a financial settlement to Hatfill doesn't solve the case. It only makes us acutely aware of how much time, money and resources were wasted. In its statement about the Hatfill settlement, the Department of Justice said that "we reassure the public and the victims that this investigation remains among the Department's highest law enforcement priorities." That's hardly reassuring at this late date.
As we pointed out (web site) in 2006, the evidence suggests that, in addition to the al-Qaeda operatives responsible for 9/11, there was another al-Qaeda cell that staged the anthrax attacks. The perpetrators fled the country, were deported for immigration law violations, or are still here. The FBI certainly doesn't know. And that means we are still vulnerable.
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