Steven Hatfill

Last updated

Steven Hatfill
Born
Steven Jay Hatfill

(1953-10-24) October 24, 1953 (age 71)
Education Southwestern College (BS)
University of Zimbabwe (MChB)
University of Cape Town (MS)
University of Stellenbosch
Rhodes University (PhD candidate, 1992–95)

Steven Jay Hatfill (born October 24, 1953) is an American pathologist and biological weapons expert. He became the subject of extensive media coverage beginning in mid-2002, when he was a suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks. [1] His home was repeatedly raided by the FBI, his phone was tapped, and he was extensively surveilled for more than two years; he was also terminated from his job at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). [2] At a news conference in August 2002, Hatfill denied that he had anything to do with the anthrax letters and said "irresponsible news media coverage based on government leaks" had "destroyed his reputation". [1] He filed a lawsuit in 2003, accusing the FBI agents and Justice Department officials who led the criminal investigation of leaking information about him to the press in violation of the Privacy Act. [1]

Contents

In 2008, the government settled Hatfill's lawsuit with a $4.6 million annuity totaling $5.8 million in payment. [3] The government officially exonerated him of any involvement in the anthrax attacks, and the Justice Department identified another military scientist, Bruce Edwards Ivins, as the sole perpetrator of the anthrax attacks. [1] Jeffrey A. Taylor, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote in a letter to Hatfill's lawyer that "we have concluded, based on laboratory access records, witness accounts and other information, that Dr. Hatfill did not have access to the particular anthrax used in the attacks, and that he was not involved in the anthrax mailings." [1]

In 2004, Hatfill filed lawsuits against several periodicals and journalists who had identified him as a figure warranting further investigation in the anthrax attacks. He sued the New York Times Company and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof for defamation, defamation per se, and intentional infliction of emotional distress in connection with five of Kristof's columns in 2002. The courts dismissed this suit, finding that Hatfill was a limited purpose public figure. [4] [5] [6] In 2007, Hatfill settled a similar libel lawsuit against Vanity Fair and Reader's Digest for an undisclosed amount, after both magazines agreed to formally retract any implication that Hatfill was involved in the anthrax mailings. [7]

In 2010, Hatfill was an independent researcher and an adjunct assistant professor of emergency medicine at the George Washington University Medical Center. [8] He has criticized the response of health authorities to the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa and suggested that it is possible that Ebola could be transmitted by aerosol, a position which other experts have criticized. [9] [10]

In 2020, he became a coronavirus advisor to the Trump White House, where he strongly promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat the virus despite FDA objections to the drug. After the 2020 election he became part of[ clarification needed ] Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the election results. [11]

Early life

Hatfill was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, and graduated from Mattoon Senior High School, Mattoon, Illinois (1971), and Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas (1975), where he studied biology.

Hatfill was enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army from 1975 to 1977. [12] (In 1999, during an interview with a journalist, he claimed to have been a "captain in the U.S. Special Forces", but a subsequent investigation revealed that, according to the Army, he had never served with the Special Forces. [13] ) Following his Army discharge, Hatfill qualified and worked as a medical laboratory technician, but soon resolved to become a doctor. He worked as a medical missionary in Kapanga, Zaire under a mentor, Dr. Glenn Eschtruth, who was murdered there in 1977. A brief marriage, from 1976 to 1978, to Eschtruth's daughter, Caroline Ruth Eschtruth, produced one daughter.

Medical education

In 1978, Hatfill settled in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and entered the Godfrey Huggins Medical School [14] at the University of Rhodesia in Salisbury (now Harare). (His claimed military associations during this period included assistance as a medic with the Selous Scouts and membership in the Rhodesian SAS, but according to one journalist [15] the regimental association of the latter is "adamant Hatfill never belonged to the unit".) After failing in 1983, he graduated in 1984 with a M ChB degree and, in 1984 to 1985, completed a one-year internship at a small rural hospital in South Africa's North West Province. The South African government recruited him to be medical officer on a 14-month tour of duty, from 1986 to 1988, in Antarctica with the South African National Antarctic Expedition (SANAE). In 1988, he completed a master's degree in microbiology at the University of Cape Town. Two years later, he worked toward a second master's degree—in medical biochemistry and radiation biology—at the University of Stellenbosch, while employed as a medical technician in the university's clinical hematology lab. A three-year hematological pathology residency at Stellenbosch from 1991 to 1993 followed. Hatfill also conducted research toward a Ph.D. between 1992 and 1995—under the supervision of microbiology professor Ralph Kirby at Rhodes University—on the treatment of leukemia with thalidomide. [15]

Hatfill submitted his Ph.D. thesis for examination to Rhodes University in January 1995, but it was failed in November. [15] Hatfill later claimed to have completed a Ph.D. degree in "molecular cell biology" at Rhodes, as well as a post-doctoral fellowship (1994–95) at the University of Oxford in England and three master's degrees (in microbial genetics, medical biochemistry, and experimental pathology), respectively. Some of these credentials have been seriously questioned or disputed. During a later investigation, officials at Rhodes maintained that their institution had never awarded him a Ph.D. [16] In 2007, Hatfill's lawyer Tom Connolly [17] – in his lawsuit against former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and the FBI – admitted that his client had "[p]uffed on his resume," falsely claiming he had earned a PhD and had "[f]orged a diploma" for the PhD. [18]

Back in the United States, another of Hatfill's post-doctoral appointments commenced at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1995. He then worked in 1997 to 1999 as a civilian researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), the U.S. Department of Defense's medical research institute for biological warfare (BW) defense at Fort Detrick, Frederick, Maryland. There, he studied, under a National Research Council fellowship, new drug treatments for the Ebola virus and became an authority on BW defense.

Anthrax attacks

In January 1999 Hatfill transferred to a "consulting job" at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), which has a "sprawling campus" in nearby McLean, Virginia. The corporation did work for a multitude of federal agencies. Many projects were classified. Hatfill designed BW defense training curricula for government agencies.

By this time there had been a number of hoax anthrax mailings in the United States. Hatfill and his collaborator, SAIC vice president Joseph Soukup, commissioned William C. Patrick, retired head of the old US bioweapons program (who had also been a mentor of Hatfill) to write a report on the possibilities of terrorist anthrax mailing attacks. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg (director of the Federation of American Scientists' biochem weapons working group in 2002) said that the report was commissioned "under a CIA contract to SAIC". But SAIC said Hatfill and Soukup had commissioned it internally  there was no outside client.

The resulting report, dated February 1999, was subsequently seen by some as a "blueprint" for the 2001 anthrax attacks. Amongst other things, it suggested the maximum amount of anthrax powder 2.5 grams  that could be put in an envelope without making a suspicious bulge. The quantity in the envelope sent to Senator Patrick Leahy in October 2001 was 0.871 grams. [19] After the attacks, the report drew the attention of the media and others, and led to their investigation of Patrick and Hatfill. [20]

Assertions by Rosenberg

As soon as it became known, in October 2001, that the Ames strain of anthrax had been used in the attacks, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg and others began suggesting that the mailings might be the work of a "rogue CIA agent" and they provided the name of the "most likely" person to the FBI. On November 21, 2001, Rosenberg made similar statements to the Biological and Toxic Weapons convention in Geneva. [21] In December 2001, she published "A Compilation of Evidence and Comments on the Source of the Mailed Anthrax" via the web site of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) suggesting the attacks were "perpetrated with the unwitting assistance of a sophisticated government program". [22]

Rosenberg discussed the case with reporters from the New York Times. [23] On January 4, 2002, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times published a column titled "Profile of a Killer" [24] stating "I think I know who sent out the anthrax last fall." For months, Rosenberg gave speeches and stated her beliefs to many reporters from around the world. She posted "Analysis of the Anthrax Attacks" to the FAS web site on January 17, 2002. On February 5, 2002, she published an article called "Is the FBI Dragging Its Feet?" [25] At the time, the FBI denied reports that investigators had identified a chief suspect, saying "There is no prime suspect in this case at this time." [26] The Washington Post reported that "FBI officials over the last week have flatly discounted Dr. Rosenberg's claims." [27]

On June 13, 2002, Rosenberg posted "The Anthrax Case: What the FBI Knows" to the FAS site. Five days later, Rosenberg presented her theories to senate staffers working for Senators Daschle and Leahy. [28] On June 25, the FBI publicly searched Hatfill's apartment, turning him into a household name. "The FBI also pointed out that Hatfill had agreed to the search and is not considered a suspect." [29] Both The American Prospect and Salon.com reported that "Hatfill is not a suspect in the anthrax case, the FBI says." [30] On August 3, 2002, Rosenberg told the media that the FBI asked her if "a team of government scientists could be trying to frame Steven J. Hatfill." [31]

Person of interest

In August 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft labeled Hatfill a "person of interest" in a press conference, although no charges were brought against him. Hatfill, who researched viruses, vehemently denied having any connection to the anthrax mailings and sued the FBI, the Justice Department, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, and others for violating his constitutional rights and the Privacy Act. On June 27, 2008, the Department of Justice announced it would settle Hatfill's case for $5.8 million. [32]

Hatfill later went to work at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In September 2001, SAIC was commissioned by the Pentagon to create a replica of a mobile WMD "laboratory", alleged to have been used by Saddam Hussein, then President of Iraq. The Pentagon said the trailer was to be used as a training aid for teams seeking weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. [33]

His lawyer, Victor M. Glasberg, stated: "Steve's life has been devastated by a drumbeat of innuendo, implication and speculation. We have a frightening public attack on an individual who, guilty or not, should not be exposed to this type of public opprobrium based on speculation." [34]

In an embarrassing incident, FBI agents trailing Hatfill in a motor vehicle ran over his foot when he attempted to approach them in May 2003. Police responding to the incident did not cite the driver, but issued Hatfill a citation for "walking to create a hazard". [35] He and his attorneys fought the ticket, but a hearing officer upheld the ticket and ordered Hatfill to pay the requisite $5 fine. [36]

FBI Director Robert Mueller changed leadership of the investigation in late 2006, and at that time another suspect, USAMRIID bacteriologist Bruce Ivins, became the main focus of the investigation. [37] Considerable questions were raised about the credibility of the case against Ivins, as well. [38]

60 Minutes interview

Hatfill's lawyer, Tom Connolly, was featured in a CBS News 60 Minutes interview about the anthrax incidents on March 11, 2007. [18] In the interview Connolly revealed that Hatfill faked his Ph.D. degree: "It is true. It is true that he has puffed on his resume. Absolutely. Forged a diploma. Yes, that's true." He went on to state, "Listen, if puffing on your resume made you the anthrax killer, then half this town should be suspect."

The New York Times stated that Hatfill had obtained an anti-anthrax medicine (ciprofloxacin, which is an antibiotic medication) immediately prior to the anthrax mailings. Connolly explained, "Before the attacks he had surgery. So yes, he's on Cipro. But the fuller truth is in fact he was on Cipro because a doctor gave it to him after sinus surgery." Hatfill had previously said the antibiotic was for a lingering sinus infection. [39] The omission in the Times' article, of the reason why he had been taking Cipro, is one reason Hatfill sued the newspaper. The newspaper won a summary judgment ruling in early 2007, squelching the libel suit that had been filed by Steven Hatfill against it and columnist Nicholas Kristof. [40]

Lawsuits

Hatfill v. John Ashcroft, et al.

In August 2003, Hatfill sued U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, FBI Supervisory Special Agent Van Harp, two DOJ employees, and an unknown number of FBI agents, alleging that the government denied his constitutional rights and attempted to scapegoat him for the anthrax attacks. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. [41] [42]

In March 2007, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton allowed Hatfill to re-subpoena various reporters, seeking the names of government sources who had told reporters that Hatfill was under investigation. During an earlier round of discovery, Hatfill issued subpoenas to six reporters (Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman of Newsweek , Brian Ross of ABC, Allan Lengel of The Washington Post , Jim Stewart of CBS, and Toni Locy of USA Today ). [43] In the second round of subpoenas, Hatfill subpoenaed eight news outlets, including three not previously subpoenaed. The federal government opposed Hatfill's move as an impermissible expansion of discovery. [43] [44]

In March 2008, Walton held Toni Locy of USA Today in contempt of court for declining to identify her sources, fining her $500 per day, escalating to $5,000 a day, until she identified her sources. [45] On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit suspended the fines against Locy, [46] and in November 2008 threw out the order because the case had settled. [47] Locy's position was supported by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press [47] and Reporters Without Borders, [46] and she received the National Press Club's John Aubuchon Freedom of the Press Award for her stance. [48]

In January 2008, Walton ordered the parties to attempt mediation, and set a tentative trial date of December 2008 if settlement talks failed. [49] In June 2008, a settlement was announced, in which the Justice Department agreed to pay $4.6 million (consisting of $2.825 million in cash and an annuity paying $150,000 a year for 20 years) to Hatfill. The settlement did not include an admission of liability by the government. [50]

Hatfill v. The New York Times

In June 2003, Hatfill sued The New York Times Company and Nicholas D. Kristof for defamation in Virginia state court. [51] Hatfill alleged that Kristof had published columns implying that he was responsible for the anthrax mailings, and thus defamed him. [51] He refiled the suit in federal court in July 2004, alleging defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. [51] After filing his complaint, Hatfill voluntarily dropped Kristof as a defendant because the federal district court lacked personal jurisdiction over the columnist. [51]

The federal district court initially granted the newspaper's motion to dismiss, holding that the language in Kristof's columns could not reasonably read as accusing Hatfill of responsibility for anthrax attacks, and that the columns reported information on the federal investigation into Hatfill, without accusing him of guilt. [51] The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in July 2005, reversed this ruling (holding that "Kristof's columns, taken together, are capable of defamatory meaning under Virginia law") and returned the case to the district court for further proceedings. [51]

In January 2007, Judge Claude M. Hilton threw out Hatfill's defamation suit against the The New York Times, granting summary judgment to the newspaper. [52] [53] The court held that Hatfill was either a "public figure" or "public official" and thus could only prevail in a defamation suit if the defendants acted with actual malice, and that Hatfill could not demonstrate that Kristof had acted with actual malice. [53] The court additionally found that Hatfill could not, as a matter of law, meet his burden of proof that the allegedly defamatory statements were materially false; it also threw out his claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress. [53]

In July 2008, the Fourth Circuit, in a unanimous decision, affirmed the district court's ruling. [54] [55] In December 2008, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal, leaving the newspaper's win intact. [54]

Hatfill v. Foster

Donald Wayne Foster, an expert in forensic linguistics and a professor at Vassar College, advised the FBI during the investigation of the anthrax attacks. He later wrote an article for Vanity Fair about his investigation of Hatfill. In the October 2003 article (entitled ""The Message in the Anthrax"), Foster described how he had tried to match up Hatfill's travels with the postmarks on the anthrax letters, and analyzed old interviews and an unpublished novel by Hatfill about a bioterror attack on the United States. Foster wrote that "When I lined up Hatfill's known movements with the postmark locations of reported biothreats, those hoax anthrax attacks appeared to trail him like a vapor cloud." [56] [57]

In 2004, Hatfill sued Foster and Condé Nast Publications, alleging defamation. [56] He also sued The Reader's Digest Association (which had published a condensed version of the articleentitled "Tracking The Anthrax Killer"in the December 2003 issue of Reader's Digest ). [57] In 2007, the defendants settled the case before trial on undisclosed terms. [58] A statement by Vanity Fair issued after the settlement was announced read: "To the extent any statements contained in the article might be read to convey that Condé Nast and Professor Foster were accusing Dr. Hatfill of perpetrating these attacks, Condé Nast and Professor Foster retract any such implication." [57]

Hatfill case against blogger

Hatfill obtained from Google the IP address behind the blog of one "Luigi Warren" hosted by Google's Blogspot web-hosting service. According to Newsweek , "Luigi Warren" had "operated a lurid rumor mill about Hatfill for more than a decade – promoting, in particular, hearsay about the years he lived and worked in southern Africa during the throes of apartheid." [59] In 2010, Hatfill's attorneys sent a letter to a stem-cell research scientist at Harvard Medical School whom they accused of authoring the "Luigi Warren" posts. [59] The Harvard researcher, however, did not make the posts in question, and instead maintained a different blog, in which he wrote that "the campaign to promote Steven Hatfill as a 'person of interest' ... was a bureaucratic ruse or diversion to maintain a useful strategic ambiguity." [59] The Harvard researcher believed that someone was impersonating him. [59] Google revealed the IP address for the blog, which was traced to a computer at Stellenbosch University in South Africa (Hatfill's alma mater); the university identified a radiation oncologist as the user of the computer in question, and the blogger later agreed to an undisclosed settlement. [59]

Post-settlement life

2010s

Since the settlements of his legal cases, which included receiving $5.8 million (less legal costs) from the Justice Department (2008) and undisclosed sums from Condé Nast (2008) and the South African medical researcher (2010), Hatfill has pursued activities as an independent researcher. He was appointed an adjunct assistant professor of emergency medicine at the George Washington University Medical Center in 2010. [60] In 2011, he added additional affiliations at GW in "Clinical Research and Leadership" and "Microbiology, Immunology, and Tropical Medicine". [61] (His BA degree and one MS degree — but not his other previously claimed medical degrees — appear on the GW Faculty Directory. [62] ) He oversaw construction of a "state-of-the-art boat" on which to conduct his own scientific trials. He has allocated more than $1 million of his own money to construct a full-scale prototype of what he calls Beagle III. This craft, with a crew of military veterans and scientists, would ply the waters of "high-biodiversity areas" – the Amazon, or the great rivers of Borneo – seeking and studying rare plants and fungi as sources of new drugs. A Newsweek interviewer has described ...

...Hatfill's unbuilt, twin-diesel-powered boat. Inside the vessel's aluminum hull, he envisioned a plexus of laboratories, with DNA microarrays and other "space-age zuzu" for analyzing the genetic compositions of plants. Bedrooms would be equipped with video-conferencing systems and DVD players, and the executive cabin was modeled after the president's quarters on Air Force One.... Hatfill had also thrown in a roof-mounted cosmic ray detector, which would switch on near the equator to capture data on "high-energy cosmic ray showers". An onboard chef from the ranks of Le Cordon Bleu would fuel a crew of scientists and trainees, and a 30-day supply of dehydrated food would hedge against disaster. [63]

Hatfill owns a colonial-style brick home in Marion County, Florida as well as a property in the El Yunque rain forest, in Puerto Rico, where he has run a military-style Outward Bound-like program. Hatfill chairs the Asymmetrical Biodiversity Studies and Observation Group (ABSOG) in Malaysia, a not-for-profit trust he has established to support his drug discovery boat mission. Hatfill has also established Templar Associates II, a for-profit corporation in Puerto Rico as a revenue-generator and as an "environmental testing ground for new tactics, techniques, equipment, and procedures for ABSOG's designated mission as well as for the U.S. military". [63]

Hatfill is also medical director of EFP Tactical Medical Group, a London-based company that provides integrated training, security and tactical medical support services to government agencies, private corporations, and NGOs worldwide. (EFP Tacmed has extensive Middle Eastern and African contracts; it operates a remote jungle-training facility to test new equipment in "high-biodiversity areas".) He is also a board member of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, a politically conservative Arizona-based non-profit [64] described by some journalists as a "political fringe group". [65] He claims status as a fellow of the Explorers Club.

In 2014, Hatfill publicly criticized the response of U.S. public health authorities to the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa and suggested that it is possible that Ebola could be transmitted by aerosol, an assertion which other experts have disputed; [66] his views on this have been characterized as misrepresentations of the primary scientific literature by other experts. [67]

In November 2019, Hatfill and two other authors self-published Three Seconds Until Midnight. The book examines current preparedness and unpreparedness for a devastating future influenza pandemic. [68]

2020s

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Hatfill was interviewed on several right-wing media outlets including Stephen Bannon's War Room: Pandemic, [69] The Epoch Times , and Sinclair Broadcast Group's Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson . [70] He opposed the U.S. response to the pandemic, particularly the exclusion of hydroxychloroquine for early treatment of COVID-19, making unproven claims that the low fatality rate experienced by some nations is the result of their early use of the drug. [71]

In February 2020, Hatfill became an unpaid "volunteer" advisor to White House trade director Peter Navarro on the subject of the coronavirus pandemic. He interacted directly with senior officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the White House, and he represented the administration in dealings with health care companies. Early in the pandemic he urged Navarro to quickly acquire tests and supplies, although he said such supplies should come only from U.S. sources. In an email to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows he said the president was being "grossly misadvised" by the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and recommended that the virus should be fought by widespread proactive administration of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug which the FDA had declared ineffective and potentially harmful to use for coronavirus. [11] [72] He repeatedly attacked Anthony Fauci and FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn, at one point telling Fauci that he was "full of crap". Although the two were not removed from the task force as he urged, they were increasingly sidelined by Donald Trump. [11]

Following the November 2020 election, Hatfill became an active participant in Trump's efforts to overturn the election results, flying to Arizona to help challenge its election results, writing proposals for "Trump's Legal Fight", and sharing anti-Biden rumors. [11] According to House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) who chairs the House Select subcommittee investigating the COVID-19 crisis, "Dr. Hatfill has refused to provide documents and misleadingly downplayed his involvement in the pandemic response in communications with Select Subcommittee staff". [73]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fort Detrick</span> Military base and biological laboratory in US

Fort Detrick is a United States Army Futures Command installation located in Frederick, Maryland. Fort Detrick was the center of the U.S. biological weapons program from 1943 to 1969. Since the discontinuation of that program, it has hosted most elements of the United States biological defense program.

Donald Wayne Foster is a retired professor of English at Vassar College in New York. He is known for his work dealing with various issues of Shakespearean authorship through textual analysis. He has also applied these techniques in attempting to uncover mysterious authors of some high-profile contemporary texts. As several of these were in the context of criminal investigations, Foster was sometimes labeled a "forensic linguist". He has been inactive in this arena, however, since Condé Nast settled a defamation lawsuit brought against one of his publications for an undisclosed sum in 2007.

A non-denial denial is a statement that, at first hearing, seems to be a direct, clearcut and unambiguous denial of some allegation or accusation, but after being parsed carefully turns out not to be a denial at all, and is thus not explicitly untruthful if the allegation is in fact correct. It is a case in which words that are literally true are used to convey a false impression; analysis of whether or when such behavior constitutes lying is a long-standing issue in ethics. British newspaper The Sunday Times has defined it as "an on-the-record statement, usually made by a politician, repudiating a journalist's story, but in such a way as to leave open the possibility that it is actually true".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Buffalo Six</span> American citizens accused of aiding terrorism

The Lackawanna Six is a group of six Yemeni-American friends who pled guilty to charges of providing material support to al-Qaeda in December 2003, based on their having attended an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan together in the Spring of 2001. The suspects were facing likely convictions with steeper sentences under the "material support law".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicholas Kristof</span> American journalist and political commentator (born 1959)

Nicholas Donabet Kristof is an American journalist and political commentator. A winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, he is a regular CNN contributor and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times.

"Person of interest" is a term used by law enforcement in the United States, Canada, and other countries when identifying someone possibly involved in a criminal investigation who has not been arrested or formally accused of a crime. It has no legal meaning, but refers to someone in whom the police and/or domestic intelligence services are "interested", either because the person is cooperating with the investigation, may have information that would assist the investigation, or possesses certain characteristics that merit further attention.

Anthrax hoaxes involving the use of white powder or labels to falsely suggest the use of anthrax are frequently reported in the United States and globally. Hoaxes have increased following the 2001 anthrax attacks, after which no genuine anthrax attacks have occurred. The FBI and U.S. postal inspectors have responded to thousands of "white powder events" and targets have included government offices, US embassies, banks and news organizations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Jewell</span> American law enforcement officer (1962–2007)

Richard Allensworth Jewell was an American security guard and law enforcement officer who alerted police during the Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. He discovered a backpack containing three pipe bombs on the park grounds and helped evacuate the area before the bomb exploded, saving many people from injury or death. For months afterward he was suspected of planting the bomb, resulting in adverse publicity that "came to symbolize the excesses of law enforcement and the news media".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Death of Robert Stevens</span> American journalist

Robert K. "Bob" Stevens was a British-born American photojournalist for the Sun, a subsidiary of American Media, located in Boca Raton, Florida, United States. He was the first journalist killed in the 2001 anthrax attacks when letters containing anthrax were mailed to multiple media outlets in the United States. The anthrax attacks also killed four others in the United States and sickened seventeen others.

<i>The Demon in the Freezer</i> 2002 nonfiction book by Richard Preston

The Demon in the Freezer is a 2002 nonfiction book on the biological weapon agents smallpox and anthrax and how the American government develops defensive measures against them. It was written by journalist Richard Preston, also author of the best-selling book The Hot Zone (1994), about ebolavirus outbreaks in Africa and Reston, Virginia and the U.S. government's response to them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases</span> U.S. Army counter-biological warfare research institution

The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases is the U.S Army's main institution and facility for defensive research into countermeasures against biological warfare. It is located on Fort Detrick, Maryland, near Washington, D.C., and is a subordinate lab of the United States Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC), headquartered on the same installation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reggie Walton</span> American judge (born 1949)

Reggie Barnett Walton is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He is a former presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Jersey in the 21st century</span>

New Jersey in the 21st century has been deeply affected by terrorism and political controversy.

The Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program (AVIP), is the name of the policy set forth by the U.S. federal government to immunize its military and certain civilian personnel with BioThrax, an anthrax vaccine manufactured by Emergent BioSolutions Inc. It was set up by the Clinton administration.

Mark "Mordechai" Levy is a U.S.-based political activist and founder of the militant Jewish Defense Organization (JDO), a breakaway faction of the Jewish Defense League. David Tell of the Weekly Standard wrote that the group is "located at the farthest, shadowy margins of American public life." Levy has organized a paramilitary training camp located in Upstate New York, named after Revisionist Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky.

Ayaad Assaad is an Egyptian-American microbiologist and toxicologist. He has worked for the US Environmental Protection Agency testing pesticides since 1997.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Edwards Ivins</span> American microbiologist and vaccinologist suspected for 2001 anthrax attacks

Bruce Edwards Ivins was an American microbiologist, vaccinologist, senior biodefense researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Fort Detrick, Maryland, and the person suspected by the FBI of the 2001 anthrax attacks. Ivins died on July 29, 2008, of an overdose of acetaminophen (Tylenol/paracetamol) in a suicide after learning that criminal charges were likely to be filed against him by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for an alleged criminal connection to the attacks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2001 anthrax attacks</span> Bioterrorist attacks in the United States

The 2001 anthrax attacks, also known as Amerithrax, occurred in the United States over the course of several weeks beginning on September 18, 2001, one week after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, killing five people and infecting 17 others. Capitol Police Officers and staffers working for Senator Russ Feingold were exposed as well. According to the FBI, the ensuing investigation became "one of the largest and most complex in the history of law enforcement".

David Freed is an American author, educator, journalist and screenwriter. Freed has written on criminal justice issues for Los Angeles Times. Freed shared the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Reporting with fellow writers at the newspaper for reportage on the Rodney King riots in 1992.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carter Page</span> American oil industry consultant

Carter William Page is an American petroleum industry consultant and a former foreign-policy adviser to Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential election campaign. Page is the founder and managing partner of Global Energy Capital, a one-man investment fund and consulting firm specializing in the Russian and Central Asian oil and gas business.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Lichtblau, Eric. "Scientist Officially Exonerated in Anthrax Attacks". The New York Times . August 8, 2008.
  2. David Freed, The Wrong Man, The Atlantic, May 2010.
  3. Shane, Scott; Eric Lichtblau (June 28, 2008). "Scientist Is Paid Millions by U.S. in Anthrax Suit". New York Times .
  4. Jerry Markon, Former Army Scientist Sues New York Times, Columnist, Washington Post, July 14, 2004.
  5. Timothy J. Connor, Fourth Circuit Throws Out Hatfill Libel Claim Against The New York Times, Holland & Knight, September/October 2008.
  6. Bill Mears, High court tosses scientist's libel suit against New York Times, CNN, December 15, 2008.
  7. Gerstein, Josh (February 27, 2007). "Hatfill Settles $10M Libel Lawsuit". New York Sun. Archived from the original on June 17, 2023.
  8. Bird, Cameron (June 18, 2014). "Steven Hatfill's Strange Trip From Accused Terrorist to Medical Adventurer". Newsweek .
  9. Hamblin, James (October 26, 2014). "21 Days: An expert in biological warfare warns against complacency in public measures against Ebola". The Atlantic .
  10. Goldstein, Stephen (October 28, 2014). "Assessing the Science of Ebola Transmission: The research on how the virus spreads is not as ambiguous as some have made it seem". The Atlantic .
  11. 1 2 3 4 Diamond, Dan (September 23, 2021). "Trump's election challenges distracted from covid response, White House adviser told colleagues". The Washington Post. Retrieved September 25, 2021.
  12. Cooper, Simon "The Lesson of Steve Hatfill", Seed magazine, May/June 2003.
  13. Preston, Richard (2002), The Demon in the Freezer , New York: Random House, pp. 206–07.
  14. "Zimbabwe Medical Graduates Worldwide". Archived from the original on August 14, 2010. Retrieved January 31, 2007.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  15. 1 2 3 Cooper (2003), Op. cit.
  16. Preston, Op. cit., pp. 207–08.
  17. "Thomas G. Connolly".
  18. 1 2 "Tables Turned In Anthrax Probe". www.cbsnews.com. March 9, 2007.
  19. Broad, William J.; Johnston, David (May 7, 2002). "Anthrax Sent Through Mail Gained Potency by the Letter". The New York Times.
  20. Multiple sources
  21. Couzin, J. (2002). "PROFILE: BARBARA HATCH ROSENBERG: Unconventional Detective Bears Down on a Killer". Science. 297 (5585): 1264–1265. doi:10.1126/science.297.5585.1264. PMID   12193766. S2CID   176721295.
  22. "A Compilation of Evidence and Comments on the Source of the Mailed Anthrax".
  23. Broad, William J. (December 14, 2001). "F.B.I. Queries Expert Who Sees Federal Lab Tie in Anthrax Cases". The New York Times.
  24. Kristof, Nicholas D. (January 4, 2002). "Profile of a Killer". The New York Times.
  25. "The Anthrax Culprit". The New Yorker. March 11, 2002.
  26. Miller, Judith; Broad, William J. (February 26, 2002). "U.S. Says Short List of 'Suspects' Is Being Checked in Anthrax Case". The New York Times.
  27. "FBI Still Lacks Identifiable Suspect in Anthrax Probe".
  28. "I'm ready for my close-up, Sen. Daschle - Salon.com". Archived from the original on June 7, 2011. Retrieved September 12, 2011.
  29. Dave Altimari; Jack Dolan & David Lightman (June 28, 2002). "The Case Of Dr. Hatfill – FBI Anthrax Mail Suspect Or Pawn". Hartford Courant.
  30. "Who is Steven Hatfill?". The American Prospect. June 2, 2002. Archived from the original on September 13, 2012. Retrieved July 16, 2010.
  31. "Scientist Says FBI Asked about Setup; Anthrax Researcher in the spotlight." - the Washington Times (Washington, DC), 2002".[ dead link ]
  32. Shane, Scott; Lichtblau, Eric (June 28, 2008). "U.S. to Settle Lawsuit of Man Investigated in Anthrax Case". The New York Times . Retrieved June 28, 2008.
  33. Broad, William J.; Johnston, David (July 2, 2003). "After the War: Biological Warfare; Subject of Anthrax Inquiry Tied to Anti-Germ Training". The New York Times .
  34. Jackman, Tom (August 11, 2002). "Ex-Army Scientist Denies Role in Anthrax Attacks". The Washington Post via ph.ucla.edu.
  35. Arena, Kelli (May 19, 2003). "Hatfill ticketed in altercation with FBI agent". CNN .
  36. "Scientist Loses Latest Round". www.ph.ucla.edu.
  37. Willman, David (August 1, 2008). "Apparent suicide in anthrax case". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved August 1, 2008.
  38. Lengel, Allan (February 25, 2010). "Some Doubt FBI Line That Scientist Sent Anthrax Letters". The Huffington Post . Archived from the original on January 25, 2011.
  39. "The Pursuit of Steven Hatfill". www.ph.ucla.edu.
  40. Adler, Roger (April 23, 2007). "Newspaper of Record Involved in Extraordinary Cases". National Law Journal . Archived from the original on September 30, 2007 via law.com.
  41. "Steven J. Hatfill, M.D. v. Attorney General John Ashcroft" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on February 21, 2007. Retrieved March 14, 2007.
  42. "Anthrax 'person of interest' sues Ashcroft, FBI". CNN . August 27, 2003.
  43. 1 2 Schwartz, Emma (May 1, 2007). "The Media's Strange Ally". The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times.
  44. "DOJ's Motion" (PDF).
  45. Johnson, Kevin (March 7, 2008). "Reporter held in contempt for anthrax case". USA Today. Retrieved February 20, 2010.
  46. 1 2 Last-minute decision by appeal court suspends fines for journalist refusing to name sources, Reporters Without Borders (2008).
  47. 1 2 Jesse J. Holland, Judges throws out contempt order against reporter, Associated Press (November 17, 2008).
  48. Sarah Tschiggfrie, Journalism Professor Toni Locy Receives Press Freedom Award (July 18, 2008).
  49. Willman, David (January 12, 2008). "U.S. attorney's office accused of anthrax case leaks". LA Times. Retrieved August 3, 2010.
  50. Shane, Scott; Lichtblau, Eric (June 28, 2008). "Scientist Is Paid Millions by U.S. in Anthrax Suit". The New York Times . Retrieved May 24, 2010.
  51. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Hatfill v. New York Times Co. , 416 F.3d 320 (4th Cir. 2005).
  52. Neil A. Lewis, Judge Rejects Defamation Suit Against The Times, New York Times (January 13, 2007).
  53. 1 2 3 Hatfill v. New York Times Co. , 488 F. Supp. 2d 522 (E.D. Va. 2007).
  54. 1 2 David Stout (December 15, 2008). "Justices Reject Appeal in Anthrax Libel Suit". New York Times.
  55. Hatfill v. The New York Times Co. , 532 F. 3d 312 (4th Cir. 2008).
  56. 1 2 Jim Popkin, Hatfill strikes back in anthrax case, NBC News (October 4, 2004).
  57. 1 2 3 Hatfill settles with Vanity Fair, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (February 26, 2007).
  58. Josh Gerstein (February 26, 2007). "Hatfill Settles $10M Libel Lawsuit". The New York Sun.
  59. 1 2 3 4 5 Bird, Cameron, Steven Hatfill's Strange Trip From Accused Terrorist to Medical Adventurer, Newsweek, June 18, 2014.
  60. Bird, Op. cit.
  61. "Joint Appointment | The Department of Microbiology, Immunology, & Tropical Medicine". smhs.gwu.edu.
  62. "Steven Hatfill", GW School of Medicine & Health Sciences Faculty Directory. Accessed October 22, 2019.
  63. 1 2 Bird, Op. cit.
  64. Hamblin, James,21 Days: An expert in biological warfare warns against complacency in public measures against Ebola, The Atlantic, October 26, 2014.
  65. Hickman, Leo (June 4, 2010). "Climate sceptics and fringe political groups are an unhealthy cocktail". The Guardian .
  66. Hamblin, Op. cit.
  67. Stephen Goldstein, Assessing the Science of Ebola Transmission: The research on how the virus spreads is not as ambiguous as some have made it seem, The Atlantic, October 28, 2014.
  68. Hatfill, Steven J., Robert J. Coullahan and John J. Walsh, Jr (2019), Three Seconds Until Midnight; Asymmetric Biodiversity Studies and Observation Group, 932 pp.
  69. Media Matters Staff (14 February 2020), "Virologist tells Steve Bannon his coronavirus conspiracy theory is from 'crackpot websites' and is a 'load of crap' "
  70. Sharyl Attkisson (May 31, 2020), "WATCH: Pandemic readiness and Dr. Steven Hatfill"
  71. "An Effective COVID Treatment the Media Continues to Besmirch | RealClearPolitics". www.realclearpolitics.com. Retrieved August 5, 2020.
  72. "FDA cautions against use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for COVID-19 outside of the hospital setting or a clinical trial due to risk of heart rhythm problems". COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines. National Institutes of Health . Retrieved February 14, 2021.
  73. Diamond, Op. cit.

Further reading