Christopher Ruddy
Monday, Aug. 26, 2002

I am frightened by what Phil Brennan calls the "crucifixion of Steven Hatfill."

I am frightened that a U.S. citizen can be tried and convicted, his life and reputation destroyed, by a coordinated effort of the FBI without due process of law.

I am frightened that there has been no censure from the federal government and, in fact, the Justice Department has acquiesced to the way the bureau has behaved in its apparent extrajudicial witch-hunt against Mr. Hatfill.

In America, we don't try people by innuendo and smears. If the FBI has evidence, it should present that evidence to a grand jury for indictment.

But since it apparently does not have the evidence, the FBI needs to divert attention from the fact it failed to protect America from 9-11 and the anthrax attacks, to justify its wild-goose-chase investigation into the anthrax attacks.

If this was just an isolated incident, it could be excused. But there was the case of Richard Jewell and a laundry list of abuses by the FBI over the past 10 years.

And since no one high up in the bureau was held responsible for the witch-hunt of Jewell, why not scapegoat Hatfill?

Since no one in the bureau was ever held accountable for the catastrophic failure of intelligence by the FBI (not to mention the CIA), why should they change anything they do?

I am frightened by what has been happening in this country – even more so in the wake of 9-11, where we have seen almost no accountability.

Shouldn't we all be alarmed when a senior aide to Sen. Grassley tells the New York Times that senators and congressmen are unwilling to vigorously question the FBI about its handling of 9-11 because they are afraid they will be blackmailed and smeared by the bureau?

This looks more like Nazi Germany than America.

The FBI is not suppose to behave like the Gestapo, but so far the treatment of Mr. Hatfill has all the hallmarks of a Gestapo operation. I, on the other hand, presume Mr. Hatfill to be innocent until evidence is presented to the contrary.

"Evidence" does not consist of barking dogs, a fictional claim repeated now by major media that Hatfill knew of a Greendale School in Zimbabwe (no such school ever existed in Zimbabwe) or that Mr. Hatfill is a political conservative who may be too patriotic for the Clintonistas that still run the FBI.

As Phil Brennan notes in a powerful series on NewsMax, the available evidence all points to the anthrax attacks emanating from foreign sources.

Consider:

• Fifteen of the 19 terrorists had a Florida connection; the first anthrax attacks took place at the American Media headquarters in Boca Raton, Fla. Two of the terrorists rented their apartments using a broker married to one of American Media's tabloid editors.

• Ringleader Atta lived within a few miles of American Media. He also made inquiries about using crop dusters to disseminate chemicals.

• A Florida doctor says that he treated one known terrorist for cutaneous anthrax. A pharmacist says Atta and another Arab suffered from red hands, a symptom of handling anthrax.

• Several of the anthrax letters were mailed from Trenton, N.J. - not far from Northeast New Jersey, another haven for Arab terrorists.

• The anthrax spores were new, not old, undercutting innuendo Mr. Hatfill stole the spores from an Army lab over a decade ago.

• The highly weaponized anthrax (remember when the feds were claiming that the anthrax was not weaponized?) was made in several batches, each more potent than the last, and all were made in sophisticated labs unavailable to Hatfill.

But the FBI believes its dogs and profilers. I remember FBI profilers with Richard Jewell and the Atlanta bombing. The FBI profilers said the bomber was a loner who wanted to show how much a do-gooder he was by saving lives before and after the explosion. Jewell was the perfect culprit.

Once again, the FBI profilers are saying the anthrax killer is a loner who is actually a do-gooder - he sent the anthrax to warn Americans about the threat of bioweapons.

Perhaps the FBI is wrong again, and Mr. Hatfill is not its "person of interest."

Perhaps the Hatfill case, like the Jewell case, demonstrates how all of our civil liberties are threatened by law enforcement agencies unaccountable to anyone.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Al-Qaeda
Bioterrorism
Health Issues
Homeland/Civil Defense
War on Terrorism

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