By Jay D. Homnick on 8.6.08 @ 12:07AM
The FBI always gets its fruitcake.
My late uncle was admittedly addicted to news, and television
programmers could hold him in thrall as long as they fed him a
steady diet of current events. Me, I can take it or leave it, and
can hardly take it at that, but I have to consume large quantities
of the stuff for a living. So while you folks can gad about on your
little weekends with your little barbecues and your little
recreational activities in your little neighborhoods, I am out here
faithfully wrestling with those big stories.
No weekend story has been bigger lately than the odd saga of the
anthrax probable-killer cheating the possible-hangman by taking
enough Tylenol to make all of life's headaches go away. After
government biologist Bruce Ivins took his own life, the FBI rushed
to proclaim that they had prepared a case against him in the
murderous anthrax mailings of late 2001. The leaks quickly
escalated into a cascade of information tending to suggest Mr.
Ivins was indeed the long-sought guilty party.
Too darned much information, in fact. Turns out the guy was such
a fruitcake his psychiatric social worker asked for a restraining
order after he laid out a detailed plot to murder all his
coworkers. Turns out the guy was such a wack-a-doodle that he had
been obsessively stalking branches of the Kappa Kappa Gamma
sorority for forty years, presumably since one sister spurned his
advances back in college days.
So why the hey was the FBI prodding this guy into high dudgeon instead of a
low dungeon, testing his endurance awhile instead of placing him in
durance vile? Why have they once again been using their subtle
investigative technique of parking right across the street from the
suspect's house 24/7? Why have they been closely casing him instead
of closing his case? Could it be because, oops, they have no
evidence placing him anywhere near the mailbox in Princeton whence
the mischief ensued? We leave these questions to the wisdom of the
duly constituted authorities and hope like heck that they know what
they are doing. And we would like to believe the matter can now be
laid to rest and there will not be a hundred books about the second
powderer on the grassy knoll.
The part that strikes me as offensive is the insider trading.
No, there were no civil servants going long on anthrax futures or
short on Efrem Zimbalist Jr. memorabilia. But what they did to
Steven Hatfill was insider trading just the same.
Consider. Hatfill was the Richard Jewell of the anthrax case,
the guy the investigators fixed -- and fixated -- on early.
Something about his surly demeanor set off one of his
interrogators, and a scientific paper he had published had been
eerily prescient in projecting how such an attack might be
prosecuted. Before you know it, prosecutors were attacking him,
including the Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcroft,
who held a wildly premature press conference declaring him a
"person of interest."
The public implication that he should be wearing a jumpsuit made
Hatfill jump to bring suit against the powers that be talkin' too
much. His claim dragged on for years and years until it was
suddenly settled for $5.8 million a month ago. Before the ink on
the deal was dry, we were treated to the Ivins escapade where the
FBI looks either heroic or bungling or a little of both. It does
not take much to connect the dots on the dotted line. It is a fair
inference that the newfound pliancy on the part of DOJ attorneys
was based in their knowledge that Hatfill was about to be
definitively exonerated.
This is a form of insider trading, government style. It
represents an abuse of power which is of a piece with the rest of
the ham-handed and high-handed handling of this case. Hatfill's
claim was about to multiply in value many times over by virtue of
his finally gaining proof of innocence. After torturing the guy for
years as long as they had a glimmer of hope that he may yet be
proved guilty, they offered a deal and scampered for the hills just
as the big bad news was about to hit.
I have argued here in the past that suing the government is an
absurd anomaly that should be excised from our jurisprudence.
Still, that check-and-balance remains in place and should be
honored. For the government to use its classified knowledge to
thwart, or temper, a citizen's claim is unjust. If I had a gavel in
my hand in place of this darned computer mouse, I would give
Hatfill the right to reopen his case and get a check with a bigger
balance.
topics:
Television, Books
