The former Army scientist also sued Vanity Fair and the author of an article about the case in the magazine, Donald Foster, as well as Reader’s Digest, which published a condensed version. That case was settled last year on confidential terms.

The outcome differed significantly from the settlement of a similar case involving Wen Ho Lee, a former nuclear scientist once suspected of espionage. In that case, five news organizations joined the government’s settlement, agreeing to pay a total of $750,000 to prevent their reporters from having to testify about their sources.

Tony Locy who reported fiction in USA today and is still held in contempt facing fines for refusing to reval her sources (no doubt FBI and DOJ leakers) is proud of protecting her sources of fiction and her fictional reporting where she was too lazy to find any facts or evidence to substantiate her claims basically being used as a tool for the FBI, and is now going to teach this kind of bullshit to Washington and Lee journalism classes in Lexington, Virginia.

Somewhere in a journalism school or newspaper museum there should be an exhibit of charlatans and liars with Arena, and Locy, Judy Miller and now Eric Lichtblau given wax statues prominently displayed.

The article neglected to drill what happened to delay the treatment of the postal workers. FBI and DOJ delayed the testing and treatment by trying to hog samples. There was a delay of several days at the Express Mail handling facility near Baltimore-Washington International Airport days after it remained closed.

Workers have not been tested at every facility the letters passed through up to this second, i.e. tesing wasn’t done on all people who could have been fatally killed by Antrax.

After those episodes, in several of the largest cities in the US Cipro which is in a group of antibiotics, the Quinolones that notoriously elicit resistance and lose efficacy rapidly, was bought out of every pharmacy both large and small and many people asked physicians to “prophylactically Rx for them” which would have done nothing but helped promote resistance (we do that pretty well anyway with many antibiotics). The culprits who bought up the vast majority of Cipro in one city–physicians.

It’s interesting to me that in some large states where an anthrax vaccine program has been offered to “key medical personnel” that only a handful of docs and nurses, etc. were willing to take vaccine because of a mistaken perception of the severity and the frequency of side effects.

We also have states ridiculously purchasing Tamiflu because they believe falsely that Tamiflu would have a significant impact on a rapidly mutating H5N1 virus (it wouldn’t except to increase resistance to treatment and this has been reported in many of the most reputable medical journals repeatedly like NEJM, JAMA, Annals of Internal Med, and the ID lit.

Mueller’s conduct and lack of responsibility both in the leak investigations and the choices he made in investigating the anthrax mailings continuing to waste extraordinary resources focusing on Hatfill make him my candidate for the worst FBI director in the US not to mention the abuse of

the security act and National Security Letters

Behind the scenes, FBI agents chafed at their supervisors’ obsession with Hatfill, who in 2002 was publicly identified by then-Atty. Gen. John D. Ashcroft as “a person of interest.” The preoccupation with Hatfill persisted for years, long after investigators failed to turn up any evidence linking him to the mailings. Other potential suspects and leads were ignored or given insufficient attention, investigators said.

One official who criticized Ashcroft for singling out Hatfill was rebuked by the FBI director’s top aide.

When Hatfill, now 54, landed a government-funded university job, the Department of Justice forced his dismissal. Ashcroft and FBI officials testified in the lawsuit that they knew of no precedent for such intervention.

Investigators also questioned orders from their bosses to share confidential information with political leaders, a departure from normal procedure. The security of information within the probe was so lax that FBI agents found news helicopters racing them to the scenes of searches. One exasperated agent called the leaks to the media “ridiculous.”

When an official proposed using lie-detector tests to find the source of the leaks, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III dismissed the idea, saying it would be “bad for morale,” according to testimony by one of the lead agents on the case.
…
A federal judge who reviewed details of the investigation, including still-secret FBI summaries, declared earlier this year that there “is not a scintilla of evidence that would indicate that Dr. Hatfill had anything to do with this.”

Meanwhile, Roth and veteran agent Bradley Garrett reached out to Hatfill repeatedly from December 2001 through spring 2002. Hatfill was cooperative throughout, they testified. He told the investigators he would welcome a search of his apartment.

But as Hatfill was signing a search authorization June 25, 2002, at the FBI office in downtown Frederick, Roth spotted a media helicopter heading “right toward Steve’s house.” Within minutes after Hatfill had signed, droves of Washington and Baltimore-based camera crews and reporters descended on his apartment.

“How many people knew in advance that you intended to go to talk to Dr. Hatfill and try to get a consent to search?” asked Hatfill’s lawyer, Thomas C. Connolly, during a deposition.

“It was probably several hundred,” Roth replied, including the mayor of Frederick.

The government may have gotten out of this cheap at 5.8 million. I will bet dollars to donuts that somewhere tucked in all this was an attempt to plant evidence or to extort others to implicate Hatfill falsely and Connely was getting close to getting it firmed up enough to really hammer them.

Bob in HI

Ashcroft Defends Contract That U.S. Steered to Him

For appearances sake alone, none of this business should have been pitched to Ashcroft and his firm.

I’m going to guess though that the wrong timing isn’t part of the Arizona Gymnast Judges Association although bmaz is around here a lot. It’s not the America Junior Golf Classic either. So whatever it is the AG may be Attorney General and Judge Advocate? Naw. That would make no sense. I give up.

Seymour Hersh is said to have a piece out this weekend about U.S. clandestine operations in Iran.