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Anthrax 'person of interest' sues Ashcroft, FBI
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Steven Hatfill, the former U.S. Army bioweapons scientist named a "person of interest" in the 2001 anthrax attacks, filed suit Tuesday against Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Justice Department and FBI saying his constitutional rights were violated. "Dr. Hatfill had nothing to do with the horrific anthrax attacks," said Hatfill attorney Thomas Connolly.
"No evidence links Dr. Hatfill to the crime, yet the attorney general and his subordinates have attempted to make him a scapegoat. In the process, they have trampled his constitutional rights and destroyed his life." The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, also names various lower level Justice Department and FBI officials. It asks for a declaration that government officials violated Hatfill's constitutional rights and seeks an injunction against future violations. It also seeks an undetermined amount of monetary damages. Hatfill's attorneys said the FBI tipped the news media to searches of Hatfill's home to deflect attention from what they characterize as a floundering anthrax investigation. They said 24-hour surveillance and wiretaps violated Hatfill's privacy. The suit alleges: • Violations of his Fifth Amendment rights by preventing him from earning a living • Violations of his First Amendment rights by retaliating against him after he sought to have his name cleared in the anthrax probe • Disclosure of information from his FBI file. Justice Department officials had no immediate response to Hatfill's lawsuit against the federal government, but promptly released an internal document showing the department's own ethics watchdogs fully cleared Ashcroft for calling Hatfill a "person of interest." Hatfill has steadfastly maintained he had no involvement in the anthrax attacks that came on the heels of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Beginning in October 2001, anthrax-laced letters arrived at offices of U.S. Sens. Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, and Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, and to TV network news offices in New York. Five people, including two postal employees in Washington, died of inhalation anthrax. Although officials have said they were looking at a list of about 20 people in the case, only Hatfill has been named as a "person of interest." No suspects have been named in the case, and no one has been arrested. Hatfill, a former Army bioweapons researcher, had his apartment searched three times and lost his job after the "person of interest" designation. He was fired last September from a position at Louisiana State University, where he was to help train people who would be first responders in the case of a bioterrorism attack. The firing came after a Justice Department official sent an e-mail to the program director in August directing him not to use Hatfill on any Justice Department-funded programs; the program Hatfill was working on was one such program. More recently, anthrax investigators drained a Maryland pond as part of their probe. Tests of soil samples taken after the draining yielded no evidence of anthrax. The pond is about eight miles from the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, where Hatfill once worked.
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