"You die now".Those cryptic words will echo forever in the minds of the relatives of the victims of the 2001 anthrax attacks, the first WMD attack on America. The killer(s) have never been found. Many theories exist about who perpetrated this heinous crime but the FBI has seemingly been about as successful as OJ in finding the real killers.
The main person of interest, Army scientist Steven Hatfill was fingered in 2001 as the possible culprit after stories surfaced linking the powder to Iraq or Russia, or Fort Detrick, Maryland. He claimed innocence, he sued for defamation, and today he won the lottery. Can't say it wasn't predicted, ahem.
It really was an amazing story--the same judge who adjudicated the Scooter Libby case was presiding over this case and was fining former USA Today reporter Toni Locy thousands per week for her failure to give up government sources. One might think the media would have been all over such a story with one of their former comrades under the screws but for some reason quiet calmness reigned. Ah, but all's well that ends well--Ms. Locy is now off the hook.
Meanwhile Hatfill, like Charlie Brown's sister in the Christmas cartoon, was only seeking his fair share based on what the government had previously given Wen Ho Lee to buy his silence after he sued former Clinton officials who erroneously accused him of giving nuclear secrets to the Chinese. The leakers in that case have never been identified but odds are some of them are still rather active politically in this election cycle. Hatfill's lawyers no doubt saw that as enough precedent to set their client for life.
Oddly, at least one website in the blogosphere predicted this from the beginning. It's no longer operating, but this particular blogger opined that Hatfill was really a spy--and a useful distraction for Bush, who didn't want Americans to know the real culprit(s). That's certainly looking better by the minute.
2 comments:
On occasions, I have honestly tried to put some thought into this whole scenario. Every time I think this may be what happened, I look at the other possibilities. Until more is known, I really cannot say what happened.
It's one of the most frustrating parts of this war against terror: Knowing there may be some things we may never know.
This may be one of them.
For instance, let's say Hatfill was a dupe, approached by the govt as a fall guy to take the heat off a possible scenario with unknown numbers of sleeper cells who might be planning more attacks. With him as the person of interest Bush then went headlong into his TSP program in an attempt to ferret out these cells. Now years later, Hatfill gets his reward, which sounds positive under that scenario. You never know..
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