* Former Amerithrax lead investigator Richard Lambert set to retire and become Senior Counterintelligence Officer at Oak Ridge National Lab; Agent Lambert advised FBI Director “compartmentalization within the Amerithrax task force would inhibit our ability to connect the dots … among the three squads investigating the case.”
Posted by Lew Weinstein on February 22, 2012
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Richard Lambert
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richard rowley said
I just realized something: Oak Ridge is ANOTHER Battelle facility. (much frowning, squinting of eyes, rolling of eyes, wiggling of nose, etc.) Don’t like this, AT ALL.
DXer said
Meet John Kiriakou
by Kelley B. Vlahos, January 31, 2012
http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2012/01/30/kiriakou-ivins/
Of course this administration is not to the first to persecute and ruin the lives of people before they are ever convicted of a crime. Just last weekend, The Washington Post reported that “deep” in the government’s files relating to its case against Bruce Ivins, the military scientist accused of single-handedly pulling off the 2001 anthrax attacks, are the justice department’s own doubts the man really did it.
Bruce Ivins
The unusual spectacle of one arm of the Justice Department publicly questioning another has the potential to undermine one of the most high-profile investigations in years, according to critics and independent experts who reviewed the court filings.
“I cannot think of another case in which the government has done such an egregious about-face. It destroys confidence in the criminal findings,” said Paul Rothstein, a law professor at Georgetown University.
Of course, Ivins will never be really vindicated, no matter what, because he committed suicide in July 2008, before any formal charges were filed but at the height of speculation and character assassination, all generated by the FBI, which openly fingered him as the lone anthrax killer. By the time he took his own life at 62, Ivins was known as a pill-popping neurotic gadfly who stalked women and therapists and held dangerous grudges.
Before that, in June 2008, the government paid Dr. Steven J. Hatfill $5.8 million dollars in a settlement over charges the FBI invaded his privacy and ruined his career. He, too, had been publicly targeted as the anthrax killer, and subjected to the same kind of media witch hunt and 24-hour surveillance for months before the charges were dropped.
“If anybody in the country really knew what it was like to be Steven Hatfill for the past six years, nobody would trade places with him,” said one of Hatfill’s attorneys, Mark Grannis, at the time. He faulted “a handful of credulous reporters,” who he said published or broadcast government leaks of “gossip, speculation and misinformation.”
A good policy when you see a whistle-blower like Kiriakou on the wrong side of the Justice Department: be incredulous.
Nevertheless, it’s examples like these, and of recent post-9/11 whistle-blowers, that serve as chilling reminders for anyone else thinking of coming forward against government wrongdoing or negligence, says Van Buren.
“The bureaucracies know this intimidation keeps people in line. Other employees watch and say, not me, not my mortgage, not my family and remain silent. Creative, thoughtful people see this and decide, correctly, to avoid government service,” said Van Buren.
“What’s that quote, all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to remain silent? That in fact is what the government’s aim is, for make good people remain silent, out of fear. They might as well translate that into Latin and carve it into the stone walls at Foggy Bottom, or at Langley, or out at Fort Meade.”
r. rowley said
This is a VERY interesting find. I’ve been curious as to whether everyone was in the same rowboat, so to speak, on the Task Force. I see the decision (or maybe it was SOP long before Amerithrax) to file away and basically ignore “hoax letters” to be one of the biggest errors of those early days/weeks/months of the investigation.
DXer said
I don’t know what Agent Lambert thinks in 2012. In September 2008 I don’t doubt that he was under the impression that they had the responsible person though he noted the case wasn’t airtight. He would have to be asked by reporters what he thinks in light of the NAS report and all the facts that have come out. Moreover, he of course is more free to speak once he retires.