FBI在炭疽病探針使用了進取的戰術
Ap | 華盛頓-在殺害上星期之前，軍隊科學家布魯斯Ivins告訴了朋友政府事務官偷偷了靠近他和他的家庭幾個月，為鼠提供了他的兒子$2.5百萬他并且設法與他的住醫院的女兒反目為仇他與死的炭疽病受害者的相片。
壓力在Ivins是極端的，以前發生了故障FBI的一個高風險戰略。 政府在2001年炭疽病攻擊被確定找到惡棍; 它是許多歲月沒有解答到衝擊并且害怕崗位9/11國家的案件。
最後事需要的FBI是另一窘態。 超越在惹人註目的調查損壞了FBI的名譽： 錯誤地指責理查Jewell的百年奧林匹克公園轟炸探針; 核秘密偷竊和科學家Wen Ho李的被拙劣地修補的起訴; 并且，在這根同樣炭疽病探針，抹上一個無辜的人- Ivins』同事史蒂文Hatfill。
在當前案件， Ivins根據前美國私下抱怨聯邦調查局特工提供了他的兒子， Andy， $2.5百萬，加上「他的挑選」上半年跑車，如果在炭疽病攻擊的他會移交證據牽連他的父親。 自我描述作為Ivins的朋友的科學家。
Ivins也說FBI面對的Ivins』女兒， Amanda，與炭疽病攻擊的受害者的相片和告訴了她， 「這是什麼您的父親做了」，根據科學家，只不願透露姓名講話，因為他們的交談是機要的。
科學家說Ivins由FBI的宣稱的行動憤怒，他在購物旅行說包括跟隨Ivins』家庭。
華盛頓律師巴里Coburn，代表Amanda Ivins，拒绝評論調查。 一位律師為Andy Ivins也拒绝評論。
FBI拒绝描述Ivins它的調查技術。
FBI正式約翰・米勒認為那「什麼我們看見了在過去幾天期間是部份信息不正當的透露的混合混合與不精確的信息然後被引入無理由的結論。 那都不為受害者、他們的家庭或者公眾服務」。
The FBI “always moves aggressively to get to the bottom of the facts, but that does not include mistreatment of anybody and I don’t know of any case where that’s happened,” said former FBI deputy director Weldon Kennedy, who was with the bureau for 34 years. “That doesn’t mean that from time to time people don’t make mistakes,” he added.
Dr. W. Russell Byrne, a friend and former supervisor of Ivins at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., said he had heard from other Ivins associates that investigators were going after Ivins’ daughter. But Byrne said those conversations were always short because people were afraid to talk.
“The FBI had asked everybody to sign these nondisclosure things,” Byrne said. “They didn’t want to run afoul of the FBI.”
Byrne, who retired from the lab four years ago, said FBI agents interviewed him seven to 12 times since the investigation began — and he got off easy.
“I think I’m the only person at USAMRIID who didn’t get polygraphed,” he said.
Byrne said he was told by people who had recently worked with Ivins that the investigation had taken an emotional toll on the researcher. “One person said he’d sit at his desk and weep,” he said.
Questions about the FBI’s conduct come as the government takes steps that could signal an end to its investigation. On Wednesday, FBI officials plan to begin briefing family members of victims in the 2001 attacks.
The government is expected to declare the case solved but will keep it open for now, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. Several legal and investigatory matters need to be wrapped up before the case can officially be closed, they said.
Some questions may be answered when documents related to the case are released, as soon as Wednesday. For others, the answers may be incomplete, even bizarre. Some may simply never be answered.
It is unclear how the FBI eliminated as suspects others in the lab who had access to the anthrax. It’s not clear what, if any, evidence bolsters the theory that the attacks may have been a twisted effort to test a cure for the toxin. Investigators also can’t place Ivins in Princeton, N.J., when the letters were mailed from a mailbox there.
Richard Schuler, attorney for anthrax victim Robert Stevens’ widow, Maureen Stevens, said his client will attend Wednesday’s FBI briefing with a list of questions.
“No. 1 is, ‘Did Bruce Ivins mail the anthrax that killed Robert Stevens?’” Schuler said, adding, “I’ve got healthy skepticism.”
Critics of the bureau in and out of government say that in major cases, like the anthrax investigation, it can be difficult for the bureau to stop once it embarks on a single-minded pursuit of a suspect, with any internal dissenters shut out as disloyal subordinates.
Before the FBI focused on Ivins, its sights were set on Hatfill, whose career as a bioscientist was ruined after then-Attorney General John Ashcroft named him a “person of interest” in the probe.
Hatfill sued the agency, which recently agreed to pay Hatfill nearly $6 million to settle the lawsuit.
Complaints that the FBI behaved too aggressively conflict with its straight-laced, crime-fighting image of starched agents hunting terrorists.
During its focus on Hatfill, the FBI conducted what became known as “bumper lock surveillance,” in which investigators trailed Hatfill so closely that he accused agents of running over his foot with their surveillance vehicle.
FBI agents showed up once to videotape Hatfill in a hotel hallway in Tyson’s Corner, Va., when Hatfill was meeting with a prospective employer, according to FBI depositions filed in Hatfill’s lawsuit against the government. He didn’t get the job.
One of the FBI agents who helped run the anthrax investigation, Robert Roth, said FBI Director Robert Mueller had expressed frustration with the pace of the investigation. He also acknowledged that, under FBI guidelines, targets of surveillance aren’t supposed to know they’re being followed.
“Generally, it’s supposed to be covert,” Roth told lawyers in Hatfill’s lawsuit.
In the 1996 Atlanta Olympic park bombing that dragged Jewell into the limelight, the security guard became the focus of the FBI probe for three months, after initially being hailed as a hero for moving people away from the bomb before it exploded.
The bomber turned out to be anti-government extremist Eric Rudolph, who also planted three other bombs in the Atlanta area and in Birmingham, Ala. Those explosives killed a police officer, maimed a nurse and injured several other people.
In another case, the FBI used as evidence the secrets that a person tells a therapist.
In the Wen Ho Lee case, Lee became the focus of a federal probe into how China may have obtained classified nuclear warhead blueprints. Prosecutors eventually charged him only with mishandling nuclear data, and held him for nine months. In what amounted to a collapse of the government’s case, prosecutors agreed to a plea bargain in which Lee pleaded guilty to one of 59 counts.
In 2004, the FBI wrongly arrested lawyer Brandon Mayfield after the Madrid terrorist bombings, due to a misidentified fingerprint. The Justice Department’s internal watchdog faulted the bureau for sloppy work. Spanish authorities had doubted the validity of the fingerprint match, but the U.S. government initiated a lengthy investigation, eventually settling with Mayfield for $2 million.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 7:51 pm and is filed under War & Terrorism News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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