Justice Department Told LSU Not To Use Hatfill
Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com
Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2002
When Louisiana State University (LSU) fired Dr. Steven Hatfill Tuesday it failed to disclose that the University had been told over a month ago that it could not use the germ warfare expert on projects funded by the Department of Justice (DOJ).
LSU spokesman Gene Sands admitted that Hatfill’s boss on the project he’d been hired to help oversee, Steven Guillot, said that on August 1 he got an e-mail telling him to "cease and desist from employing Hatfill on any projects funded by the DOJ.
In response to the DOJ order, the next day Guillot put Hatfill on a 30-day paid administrative leave from his new job as director of the University’s National Center for Biomedical Research and Training. Since the Center gets most of its funding from DOJ for all intents and purposes, LSU was barred from employing Hatfill fully a month before they fired him, but never bothered to tell him he wouldn’t be coming back to the $150,000-a-year job.
Incredibly, LSU spokesman Sands alleges that Guillot did not even convey the DOJ demand to University officials until Tuesday – the day LSU chancellor Mark A. Emmert announced Hatfill's dismissal without explaining the reasons for his action beyond saying it was in LSU’s best interests.
Hatfill’s friend and spokesman Pat Clawson told reporters that neither he nor Dr. Hatfill knew about the DOJ e-mail until today. He said he regarded it as an attempt to force Hatfill to confess to something he insists he did not do.
DOJ and the FBI both admit they have absolutely no evidence connecting Hatfill to the anthrax letter crimes. Attorney General John Ashcroft says that Hatfill is "a person of interest,” along with other U.S. scientists, none of whom, however, has been subjected to the kind of public harassment Hatfill has received at the hands of the FBI.
"We're stunned to learn of this," Clawson told reporters. "We're outraged. Blacklisting by the government is offensive and un-American. Obviously, Ashcroft wants to bring blacklisting back to the federal scene. Where was the due process?"
He added that LSU officials gave Hatfill no explanation for the firing.
