WORMSCAN: LABSCAM
Falsification and fabrication of evidence in police laboratories.
NOTES: I made a few corrections to spellings but left the original document mainly untouched. I am printing the LABSCAM (lab + scam) file of WORMSCAN in its entirety.
[REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION]
LABSCAM
By David P Beiter
LABSCAM is a collection of items concerning the falsification of evidence in police laboratories.
(c) Copyright 1996, 1997 by David P Beiter, proliferate freely.
This is a part of the WORMSCAN collection.
What had at first appeared to be merely a can of worms has, upon closer examination, proven to be a barrel of vipers.
No attempt has been made to note every news item. These are simply those cases which have come to my attention in the everyday news. Note that many sources are radio news reports, and thus the spelling of many names is undoubtedly bogus.
Disclaimer: I am not trying to sell you any political agenda here. I am not even suggesting a conspiracy theory. I don't care if you don't believe that anything like this could happen here. I won't ask you to construct a testable hypothesis (whatever THAT is). All I need is for you to see it as an interesting conjecture. That is sufficient.
Additions, comments, criticisms, clarifications, or corrections (even misspellings and typographical errors) should be directed to:
David P Beiter, [REDACTED ADDRESS]
[REDACTED PHONE NUMBER]
[REDACTED EMAIL]
[REDACTED EMAIL]
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870322, Richmond?, KY, WBKY, 11PM. Kentucky State Police crime lab director Glen Morgan Baxter is accused of falsifying hundreds of tests, including his own qualifications.
861020. U. S. News & World Report p70. Drug tests are inaccurate. In a control test of 13 labs and 34 spiked samples the results were; 1 completely correct, 5 detected no drugs. There were 6% false positives for cocaine, 37% false positives for amphetamines.
Date: Thu Sep 14, 1995 1:00 pm CST
From: snet l
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TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: FBI (fwd)
^*1110 WIREREADY NEWSWIRE SYSTEMS INC.
_________________________________________
Copyright 1995, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved
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950915. FBI chemist claims that FBI evidence is falsified. Special Agent Frederic Whitehurst claims that evidence is rigged or slanted to produce the desired results.
Personal observation of David Perry Beiter, Analytical Chemist, US Army, 1966. The way that it was done in my lab was that The Boss (a psychic chemist) would re-analyze some of the tests in the privacy and security of his office. The offending bench chemist never saw these new and improved results. This falsification of chemical analyses was defended on grounds that it assured the uninterrupted supply of petroleum products to The Army of The Government of The United States of America.
"And the Ends shall justify the Means."
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951209, Fairmont, WV, AP. State Police crime lab chemist Fred Zain is cleared of felony perjury charges of fabrication of evidence. Texas wants to try him now, again on evidence fabrication.
Ex-Crime Lab Head Acquitted
FAIRMONT, W.Va. (AP) - A former police chemist accused of botching dozens of cases that sent at least six innocent men to prison was cleared Friday of the last of three felony perjury charges.
Circuit Judge Rodney Merrifield found a lack of evidence to support a retrial on the charge related to Fred Zain's testimony in a 1991 double-murder trial.
Zain was previously acquitted of two other perjury charges, but a jury deadlocked on this charge last March. He was to be retried in January.
Officials said they don't believe they can further prosecute Zain, although he still faces charges in two Texas cases.
"It's always horrible when any of us feel that justice hasn't occurred, particularly in a case like this where the allegations are so sensational and so horrifying," said Bill Forbes, a prosecutor whose office appointed a special counsel for the case.
A 1993 state Supreme Court report concluded that Zain's work as head of the state police crime lab could not be trusted. A panel examined 36 of the thousands of cases he handled and found evidence of fabrication in all.
The four innocent men have been freed by retrials or dropped charges. Judges across the state continue to look at more than 70 cases to determine whether Zain's work was relevant to their convictions.
Two men also have been freed in Texas, where Zain worked in the Bexar County medical examiner's office from 1989 to 1993. He continued to assist West Virginia authorities even after he left. Zain was not in the courtroom Friday and did not immediately return a message left through his attorney, Arthur Ciccarello. "This whole matter has cost him his job, his career, his home and it almost cost him his family, and to have three counts of an indictment not supported by evidence, it's pretty hard to take," Ciccarello said.
Ciccarello said the whole process has been a "witch hunt" for a person who is not a "DNA expert and never held himself out to be one."
Questions about Zain's work arose in 1992 after the convictions of a man in two sexual assaults were overturned based on genetic testing. He was only charged in the 1991 case because of a three-year statute of limitations on perjury.
AP-NY-12-08-95 2224EST
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960213, San Jose, CA, LA Times. Joseph D. McNamara, 35 year
Date: Fri Feb 16, 1996 11:48 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
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TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Why Cops Lie in Dope War
From: Bob Witanek
Posted dadoner@chesco.com Tue Feb 13 13:42:42 1996
http://www.phillynews.com/inq/opinion/MCN13.htm
[The Philadelphia Inquirer]
Opinion
Tuesday, February 13, 1996
Why cops lie about drug evidence
They don't feel lying under oath is wrong because politicians tell them they are engaged in a "holy war" fighting evil.
By Joseph D. McNamara
Are the United States' police officers a bunch of congenital liars?
Not many people took defense attorney Alan M. Dershowitz seriously when he charged that Los Angeles cops are taught to lie at the birth of their careers at the Police Academy. But as someone who spent 35 years wearing a police uniform, I've come to believe that hundreds of thousands of law-enforcement officers commit felony perjury every year testifying about drug arrests.
These are not cops who take bribes or commit other crimes. Other than routinely lying, they are law-abiding and dedicated. They don't feel lying under oath is wrong because politicians tell them they are engaged in a "holy war" fighting evil. Then, too, the "enemy" these mostly white cops are testifying against are poor blacks and Latinos.
The federal government reports that more than 1.3 million drug arrests were made in 1994, 480,000 of which involved marijuana. About 1 million of the total drug arrests were for possession, not selling.
Despite government drug-war propaganda that big-time dealers are its targets, only 24 percent of the total drug arrests were for selling. Almost all those arrested for selling are small-timers, in large part supporting their own drug use. Often they are inveigled by undercover police to up the ante. Many of the arrests for selling are made without search warrants and almost all the possession arrests are without warrants.
In other words, hundreds of thousands of police officers swear under oath that the drugs were in plain view or that the defendant gave consent to a search. This may happen occasionally, but it defies belief that so many drug users are careless enough to leave illegal drugs where the police can see them or so dumb as to give cops consent to search them when they possess drugs. But without this kind of police testimony, the evidence would be excluded under a 1961 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Mapp vs. Ohio.
I became a New York City policeman five years before the Mapp decision. We were trained to search people who appeared suspicious. I questioned the apparent contradiction posed by the Fourth Amendment, which guaranteed that people would be secure in their person and house from a search without a warrant. The instructor said not to worry. A suspect could sue in a civil action but no jury would find against a cop trying to stop dope from being sold. He went on to say that if the courts really meant it, they wouldn't allow such evidence into a criminal trial.
In its Mapp decision, the Supreme Court cited this police attitude and the routine violations of the Fourth Amendment as reasons enough to establish a national rule to exclude illegally obtained evidence.
Gradually, as police professionalization increased, police testimony became more honest. But the trend reversed in 1972, when President Nixon declared a war against drugs and promised the nation that drug abuse would soon vanish. Succeeding presidents and Congresses repeated this false pledge despite evidence that drug use, drug profits and drug violence increased regardless of expanded enforcement and harsher penalties. Because the political rhetoric described a holy war in which evil had to be defeated, questioning police tactics was equivalent to supporting drug abuse.
Leaders of the drug war dehumanize their "enemy" -- not just foreign drug traffickers but also American users. This mentality pushes the police into making ever more arrests, arrests that can only survive in court because of perjured police testimony. The fact that enforcement falls most heavily on people of color also encourages illegal police tactics. Non-whites are arrested at four to five times the rates whites are arrested for drug crimes, regardless of the fact that 80 percent of drug crimes are committed by whites. The "war" dehumanizes the cops as well as those they pursue.
The eroding integrity of law enforcement officers and the resulting decrease in public credibility are costs of the drug war yet to be acknowledged. Within the last few years, police departments in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco, Denver, New York and in other large cities have suffered scandals involving police personnel lying under oath about drug evidence.
Some officers in the New York City police and New York State police departments were convicted of falsifying drug evidence. Yet, President Clinton appointed the heads of those agencies to be drug czar and chief of the Drug Enforcement Agency, respectively, and they were confirmed in the Senate. The message that politicians seem to be sending to the nation's police chiefs is that we understand that police perjury is a part of the drug war.
But recently a number of police leaders have conceded that racially disparate arrest rates and illegal police searches and testimony are a problem. Last year, for example, New York Police Commissioner William J. Bratton warned his officers not to lie about how they obtained evidence, saying that he would rather they lose the case than commit perjury. Last month, Baltimore Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier ordered his cops to stop arresting drug users and to concentrate on criminals committing gun crimes and other violence.
The vast majority of police forces are still being pushed into waging a war against drugs by politicians who ignore history and mislead the public into believing such a war can be won. Consequently, hundreds of thousands of illegal police searches take place and are lied about in court while drug-war hawks pontificate about the immorality of people putting certain kinds of chemicals into their bloodstream.
[Image]
Joseph D. McNamara, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the former police chief of San Jose, wrote this article for the Los Angeles Times.
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960226, FBI, Wash DC, Star Ledger. US attorney's offices
Date: Sun Feb 25, 1996 10:48 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
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TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: FBI - All Lab Cases Under Review
Posted: Bob Witanek 2/25/96
SEARCH UNDER WAY FOR TAINTED ANALYSIS AND INCOMPETENCE IN FBI CRIME LAB
(Star Ledger, 2/22/96 - Excerpted)
By ROBERT RUDOLPH
US attorneys' offices throughout the nation have been directed by the Justice Department to weed through cases in their files in an effort to identify cases that could be tainted by allegations of misconduct involving the FBI crime lab in Washington. The allegations - which involve charges of slanted results, incompetence and improper testing procedures could have an impact on a number of criminal prosecutions throughout the country in which FBI lab results were used, including cases that already have been closed.
The charges were made by a veteran employee of the crime lab, long regarded as the top forensic law enforcement facility in the country. A memorandum, issued by acting Assistant U.S. Attorney General John C. Keeney and obtained by The Star Ledger, reveals that a special Justice Department task force has been established to review the allegations.
"As this memorandum makes apparent." the document states, the legal issues raised by the allegations are "nationwide in scope, affecting a substantial number of criminal cases in districts throughout the country."
Federal authorities in New Jersey said yesterday that a preliminary review indicates only a few cases that have a potential of being tainted.
According to the memo, US attorney's offices across the nation have been asked to supply information relating to such cases. The memo was sent to all U.S. attorneys in the country last month.
US authorities in New Jersey said they are conducting their own independent, in-house review as well.
"The review has not been completed," said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Cleary. Cleary said yesterday that although New Jersey has a large number of cases in which the FBI lab has performed services, it has "very few cases handled by those people" named or working in units specified in allegations by Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, a supervisory special agent who has served as an examiner in the FBI crime lab. Cleary also said it doesn't appear that any of the specific cases cited by Whitehurst involve New Jersey prosecutions
The existence of Whitehurst's allegations were first spotlighted during the trial of O.J. Simpson, when a defense attorney unsuccessfully sought to have Whitehurst testify.
The Justice Department memo outlines the nature of Whitehurst's charges. Specifically, the memo states, Whitehurst contends that certain FBI. lab examiners have slanted their conclusions to favor the prosecution; that certain FBI examiners who testify in criminal proceedings are not qualified to analyze the evidence involved in those cases; and that certain key units within the lab maintain insufficient scientific controls over the testing procedures. The memo states that the Justice' Department "is in the process of evaluating the validity of the wide-ranging allegations raised by Dr. Whitehurst."
At the same time, Justice Department spokesman Carl Stem confirmed yesterday, the department is "attempting to survey what cases are, out there" that could be affected. Stem said the survey is part of an effort to determine if legal obligations will require the department to notify defense attorneys of the fact that Whitehurst's charges could affect their cases.
"While the scope of this may be unusual," Stem said, he called the inquiry "fairly routine." To date, he said, some one-third of the nation's 93 U.S. Attorney's offices have responded to the survey. The results, however, were not immediately available. The Justice Department official stressed, however, that the survey is independent of the separate investigation into the validity of Whitehurst's charges.
According to the Justice Department memo, "that evaluation will be time-consuming and will require substantial legal and scientific resources."
The memo revealed that among the charges made by Whitehurst are allegations relating to specific criminal investigations in which he alleged improprieties may have occurred in the presentation or analysis of evidence. The memo said it plans to notify the U.S. Attorney's offices directly involved about those charges and has requested that those offices assign an attorney to review written materials provided by Whitehurst.
The memo says the individual U.S. Attorney's offices will be asked to analyze the significance of the laboratory evidence used in those cases to determine whether it will be necessary to alert defense attorneys in those matters.
In addition, the memo contains a list of 20 employees who Whitehurst contends lack the proper qualifications, are not competent to perform required procedures or who slant opinions to favor the prosecution. The U.S. Attorney's offices have been asked to determine if any of the 20 employees were involved in ongoing cases in their districts - either pending trial, on appeal or in the grand jury stages.
The memo notes that Whitehurst has made specific allegations involving the FBI lab's Explosives Unit and Chemistry and, Toxicology Units in which he says these units slant results to favor the prosecution.
As a result, the Justice Department has asked U.S. Attorney's offices to identify any pending cases that could have been affected by those allegations. The FBI crime lab is involved in thousands of cases each year. FBI analysts often wind up in court, and spent 1,470 days testifying in various trials nationwide last year alone.
One Justice Department official noted that if Whitehurst's charges are upheld, not only could pending and closed cases be affected, but even cases in which defendants have pleaded guilty.
According to the Justice Department official, some 90 percent of all federal cases result in guilty pleas, but Whitehurst's allegations could raise questions whether those pleas were induced as a result of tainted test results.
The Washington-based FBI lab has 557 employees and operates on a budget of $63.6 million. In addition to its work in federal prosecutions, the lab spends about half its time performing studies for state & local law enforcement agencies that lack their own labs or need additional expertise. It has experts in chemistry and toxicology, hair and fiber, explosives, documents, photography, paint, tire tracks, ballistics and even feathers, among other specialties.
As a result of Whitehurst's allegations, the FBI already has reviewed 250 cases in search of any rigged or slanted testimony. "To date, no evidence tampering, evidence fabrication or failure to report exculpatory evidence have been found," the FBI said in a statement issued last year.
============
COMMENT - It would appear to me that the approach of asking US Attorneys to look through their own cases, which they were involved in prosecuting, to see if any of their own prosecutions were tainted by this misconduct is a sham. This situation screams for an INDEPENDENT review. There should be no question that information about Whitehurst's charges, the names of the 20 employees he fingers, the list of cases he cites, and EVERYTHING about this situation MUST be made available to defense attorneys universally! Do we really expect that US Attorneys will voluntarily throw out their successful convictions if they inspect and find that the evidence, its presentation and analysis were tainted? Yeah right!
- Bob
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Date: Sun Mar 17, 1996 9:26 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
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TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: NYST Accuses Paper of Libel
Posted: Ronnie Dadone
New York State Trooper Accuses Newspaper of Libel
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/ny-cop-libel-lawsuit.html
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March 16, 1996
New York State Trooper Accuses Newspaper of Libel
[A] former New York state police lieutenant has sued The Syracuse Post-Standard for libel, saying the newspaper unfairly linked him to an evidence-tampering scandal involving troopers that he supervised.
The former lieutenant, Joseph Begley, now works for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration
in New York City and says his career has suffered because of the article published on Feb. 14, 1995.
Begley was in charge of the identification unit at the Troop C barracks in Sidney from 1984 until he retired from the force in 1989. Former troopers who worked in the unit during that period have admitted faking fingerprint evidence in at least six cases. The tampering continued into the 1990s and has resulted in the convictions of five troopers.
The suit comes as the special prosecutor, Nelson Roth, looking into the evidence-tampering scandal is completing his investigation of more than three years. He has promised a final report by the summer.
Begley's lawsuit against The Post-Standard and its owner, Newhouse Newspapers, seeks $500,000. His lawyer, Ronald Zinzheimer of Albany, said Begley was placed on modified duty by the Drug Enforcement Administration because of his association with the scandal. Legal experts have called it the largest evidence-tampering scandal in the history of U.S. law enforcement.
The suit stems from a conversation between two of the troopers who have pleaded guilty. In the conversation, which one of them secretly recorded, the troopers discussed ways to present a false defense to evidence-tampering charges to a jury and how Begley could help with that effort.
The Post-Standard article described a judge's ruling that the recorded conversation was admissible in court because it was part of a "continuing criminal enterprise."
But Begley contends that the article attributed to the judge some statements about him that had originally been made by the trooper who recorded the conversation. The statements in question involve a trooper's assertion that on a visit to his house, Begley had crawled along a line of bushes, presumably to avoid being seen.
Reached by telephone at the enforcement agency's New York City office, Begley said he was not optimistic about winning the suit, because libel is "possibly the most difficult area in the law."
He referred specific questions to Zinzheimer, who said Begley had filed the suit because "this has been so damaging to his career." Zinzheimer said neither he nor his client had asked The Post-Standard for a correction.
Michael Connor, The Post-Standard's executive editor, declined to comment on the suit.
Although troopers from Troop C began faking evidence in 1984, the evidence-tampering scandal did not come to light until a trooper boasted, during a job interview with the CIA in 1992, of faking evidence.
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Date: Fri, 22 Mar 1996 10:50:26 +0000
From: Peter Webster
To: drctalk@drcnet.org
Subject: Tainted Truth
Message-ID: <199603221109.MAA24989@ZEUS.MONACO.MC>
Been looking thru a book, *Tainted Truth* (1994) by Cynthia Crossen, a reporter and editor at the Wall St Journal. The dust-jacket blurb:
In this age of information, sponsored studies have become America's most powerful and popular tool of persuasion.
However, in *Tainted Truth*, we find out that much of what we learn from them is false. Although the studies and surveys wear the guise of objective science, their findings almost invariably reflect their sponsors' intentions. Most such research is designed with a certain outcome in mind, and it is all but guaranteed to achieve that outcome. The result is a corruption of information --- the information used every day by voters, consumers and leaders.
Manufactured truths dominate the American discourse in Congress, courtrooms, offices, newspapers, magazines and television. Studies have become the vehicle for polishing corporate images, influencing juries, shaping debate on public policy, selling commercial products and satisfying the media's---and the public's---voracious appetite for information. In this blistering expose, Cynthia Crossen shows how deeply this research world has been pervaded by artfully crafted deception --- and how it affects us all...
As information continues to lose its link to truth, we are all losing our ability to make informed decisions. *Tainted Truth* is an enormously important and provocative book that will change the way we make our decisions --- decisions that have endangered our minds and, in some cases, our lives. CYNTHIA CROSSEN has been a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal since 1983. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and son.
UNFORTUNATELY the book is only moderately inflammatory, and contains NOTHING about the tainted truths of drug "research" and other issues concerning us. But maybe we should try to contact the author supplying our web pages SIG with a mention that the WSJ, which has been quite interested to publish such exposes on other subjects, is neglecting perhaps the most important arena where tainted truth not only persists, but dominates. But it looks like a snail mail job, unless someone can locate an e-address for Ms Crossen?
Peter Webster
e-mail: [REDACTED]
------------------------------
Date: Thu Apr 04, 1996 10:39 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
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TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Philly Cops Sloppy Handling
From: Bob Witanek
/* Written 4:34 PM Apr 4, 1996 by bwitanek in igc:njspeakout */
/* ---------- "Philly Cops Sloppy Handling" ---------- */
Posted: Ronnie Dadone
http://www2.phillynews.com/daily_news/96/Apr/03/local/POLI03.htm
Local
[Philadelphia Online]
THE PHILADELPHIA
Wednesday, April 3, 1996
DAILY NEWS
Saidel sees evidence of laxity
Gives examples of cops' sloppy handling of seized property
by Dave Davies
Daily News Staff Writer
A city controller's audit reported that the Police Department's handling of evidence and confiscated property has been sloppy and vulnerable to abuse.
"When you're dealing with things like large quantities of narcotics that are kept around for a long time, you can leave yourself open to dishonesty," said Controller Jonathan Saidel in an interview yesterday. "We haven't found people being dishonest, but these things have to be tightened up."
Saidel said he was pleased with police Commissioner Richard Neal's response to the findings and said steps are underway to remedy weaknesses.
When city auditors began reviewing the Police Department's handling of evidence and confiscated property, they noticed that some items apparently taken into custody in police districts hadn't been transferred to department storage units.
It was only after the auditors asked questions that a number of items, including a Rolex watch confiscated years before, were properly shipped to an evidence custodian.
Even after the audit, the report said, the police couldn't locate about 20 items that district police logs showed had been taken into custody.
Among their most troubling findings, Saidel said, auditors discovered that the department keeps far larger quantities of confiscated narcotics for longer periods than necessary.
Sixty-eight percent of the narcotics that could have been destroyed from cases since 1990 were still around the department, the report says.
Among other findings:
[ * ]Two motorcycles had been stolen from the police impoundment lot, which was poorly lit and unkempt.
[ * ]Uniformed officers were observed walking through the Chemical Lab, where narcotics are tested, without escorts as required by police policy. In addition, security logs on the lab were not always used.
[ * ]Conditions at the crime lab at the Police Administration Building were so crowded that evidence was stored under and around tables. Conditions were so chaotic that paperwork for boxes of evidence on 10 different suspects was lost.
[ * ]Envelopes, bags, and boxes of narcotics in police storage facilities were not protected with evidence seals.
[ * ]The police computer system for tracking evidence couldn't provide information on the status and/or location of property under custody for 6,000 of the department's property receipts issued in fiscal year 1994.
In a detailed response, Neal outlined new procedures for evidence rooms and labs, improvements in computerized record keeping and construction of a new auto impoundment lot.
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Date: Sun Jun 02, 1996 4:02 am CST
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Subject: Agent Criticizes FBI Probe of Okla. City Blast (fwd)
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Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 22:07:44 -0700 (MST)
From: Free Speech
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Subject: [FreeSpeech-NewsWire] Agent Criticizes FBI Probe of Okla. City Blast
Saturday June 1 12:50 AM EDT
Agent Criticizes FBI Probe of Okla. City Blast
DENVER (Reuter) - An FBI agent charged Friday that the federal government's investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing case "has been seriously compromised" by what he called FBI misconduct.
The allegation was made by veteran FBI crime lab chemist Frederic Whitehurst, who testified against the FBI in the World Trade Center bombing case and submitted a deposition in the O.J. Simpson murder trial that was critical of the agency.
Whitehurst made his written allegations to U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch, who moved the case to Denver after ruling defendants Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols could not get a fair trial in Oklahoma.
The two are accused of the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that claimed 168 lives. No date has been set for a trial, but it is expected to get under way late this year or early in 1997.
A spokeswoman for prosecutors said they would not comment, because the Justice Department had not completed an investigation of various allegations Whitehurst had made.
Whitehurst said the alleged improper conduct in the bombing case involved "scientific fraud, misconduct and gross negligence in the administration of the FBI crime lab in general, and with respect to this case in particular."
Whitehurst said he had been "unfairly and publicly maligned" by prosecutor Beth Wilkinson, who he said "smeared" him at an April 9 pre-trial hearing after McVeigh's attorneys disclosed they might use Whitehurst as a defense witness.
Whitehurst also asked the judge to unseal documents about him and his allegations that prosecutors filed. The documents corroborate many of his allegations, he said.
The documents are "central to protecting the American people from future tragedies like the Oklahoma City bombing or the World Trade Center bombing disaster," Whitehurst said.
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Date: Wed Sep 18, 1996 7:51 pm CST
From: bigred
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TO: Conspiracy Nation
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Subject: Prosecutors Say Law Allows Interview with Fbi Scientist (fwd)
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Date: Wed, 18 Sep 96 11:52:52 EDT
From: Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxx
Subject: Prosecutors Say Law Allows Interview with Fbi Scientist
Prosecutors Say Law Allows Interview with Fbi Scientist
By Sandy Shore, 09/18/96; 06:52
DENVER (AP) - Oklahoma City bombing prosecutors have told a judge they have the right to speak privately with an FBI whistleblower who believes some evidence in the case is tainted.
U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch blocked the prosecution-only session after defense attorneys for suspects Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols claimed prosecutors threatened to have FBI scientist Frederic Whitehurst fired if he didn't meet with them before giving a deposition.
In papers filed Tuesday, prosecutor Joseph Hartzler asked Matsch to let the interview proceed.
"Federal prosecutors have the unilateral right to interview FBI agents outside the presence of defense counsel," Hartzel wrote, adding that the session was never considered mandatory.
He said Whitehurst himself requested the session months ago, but later canceled because of one prosecutor's presence and a requirement that Whitehurst's attorney sign a confidentiality agreement.
Whitehurst contends that a pro-prosecution bias and mishandling of evidence may have tainted FBI crime lab work or testimony in the bombing as well as several other high-profile cases.
McVeigh and Nichols face the death penalty if convicted of murder and conspiracy in the April 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, which killed 168 and injured more than 500 people.
Prosecutors also filed a brief Tuesday opposing a media request to attend the closed-circuit telecast of the trial in an Oklahoma City courtroom. No trial date has been set.
_____________________________________________________________
970208, Syracuse, NY, NPR. Continuing repercusions of State Police evidence prestidigitation. One technique was to take their fingerprint evidence from objects handled at the Police Station by the criminal.
Date: Mon Feb 03, 1997 2:55 pm CST
From: ledewriter
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TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: labscam fyi
FBI Whistle blower target of bugs, wiretaps
By Jeff Stein
from SALON, the online magazine [http://www.salon1999.com]
January 31, 1997
The home of a top FBI bomb expert who has accused senior lab officials of slanting evidence in over 1,000 cases has been wire-tapped and burgled, according to sources close to the probe.
Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, the FBI whistleblower who was stripped of his badge and escorted from the bureau's Washington headquarters last Friday, has complained to close colleagues that his home files have been rifled by unknown intruders in recent months and hidden wiretaps installed in his house.
The FBI gave no reasons for suspending Whitehurst, who holds a PhD in chemistry from Duke University, but sources said he was under a criminal probe for allegedly leaking documents to Playboy magazine. Three other senior FBI lab officials, who Whitehurst has repeatedly accused of incompetence and slanting evidence in the lab, were also suspended last week.
Whitehurst complained that "persons unknown" entered his house on a couple of occasions last fall and rifled his files, according to investigative sources. He also believes that the FBI has installed hidden listening devices in his house and wire-tapped his telephone.
Whitehurst, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran who was described as the FBI's "unrivaled" expert on bomb residues in a fitness report last year, did not make a formal complaint with local police.
The Justice Department's investigation of Whitehurst's complaints, detailed in over 125 memos and sworn statements he has made to the Inspector General, could prompt appeals in over 1,000 federal prosecutions, according to probe documents.
As Salon reported last year, an internal review of lab data in 13 bombings attributed to the accused Unabomber Theodore Kacyznski was either "incomplete or missing."
In another, previously undisclosed case, Whitehurst has also accused a federal prosecutor of pressuring him not to write down his contradictory findings in an airline bombing case, because they would impugn the court testimony of other FBI agents.
The case in question was an appeal by Colombian narco-terrorist Dandenny Munoz-Mosquera, convicted of planting a bomb on an Avianca airliner which exploded over Bogota in 1989, killing 107 people. Munoz-Mosquera, jailed, was appealing his sentence.
Cheryl Pollak, then an Assistant U.S. Attorney prosecuting Munoz-Mosquera, "said that my report directly contradicted [FBI] statements ... made earlier in court, and that now I would probably be called by the defense as an expert and the government would be embarrassed because the government's own experts could not agree," Whitehurst complained in a memo to the FBI Inspector General. In effect, he was charging her with suppressing evidence that, under U.S. law, had to be made available to the defense.
Pollak, now a federal magistrate in New York, responded in a telephone interview that Whitehurst "might have blown the whole thing way out of proportion."
"It really didn't matter how the plane was bombed," Pollak went on. "The only issue was whether Munoz-Mosquera was involved .... The evidence that tied him to the plane was the 25 witnesses who said he did it. There were a half dozen witnesses who tied him to it.....That was the critical evidence."
Whitehurst's complaints have already prompted the government to withdraw the planned testimony of two senior FBI lab officials in the high-profile Oklahoma bombing case. Roger Martz and David Williams, whom Whitehurst accused of mishandling evidence in the investigation of Timothy McVeigh, were suspended by the FBI last week. Whitehurst has also accused Williams of rewriting his reports in the World Trade Center bombing prosecution.
The Inspector General's investigation, meanwhile, has looking far beyond the bomb lab into practices by FBI blood experts, paint examiners, and polygraph procedures. It's expected to make a half dozen recommendations that will upgrade the lab, some of which the FBI has already instituted, which Whitehurst began complaining about more than a decade ago.
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, has complained to FBI Director Louis Freeh that Whitehurst is being punished for blowing the whistle on questionable practices in the lab. Sources said "a strong possibility" exists that Grassley will hold hearings on the FBI lab.
endit
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970216
Thanx for the update in the latest, greatest, etc, incident of evidence "mishandling" that you sent me a couple weeks ago. It leads off with:
FBI Whistle blower target of bugs, wiretaps
By Jeff Stein
from SALON, the online magazine [http://www.salon1999.com]
January 31, 1997
The home of a top FBI bomb expert who has accused senior lab officials of slanting evidence in over 1,000 cases has been wire-tapped and burgled, according to sources close to the probe.
Can't have The Public mistrusting Their Government. Let's have more Education in singing patriotic songs. Let's have more Education in American History on TV.
We need more education. I am the Education Politician!
I can tell you how the LABSCAM worked (in part) in my laboratory, The Petroleum Products Laboratory of the Army of The United States of America. My lab report as a bench chemist would go to the Chief Chemist who would re-analyze some of samples from the safety and comfort of his office. One got to be Chief Chemist by showing a talent for psychic chemistry.
Here's the latest entry in LABSCAM.
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970208, Syracuse, NY, NPR. Continuing repercussions of State Police evidence prestidigitation. One technique was to take their fingerprint evidence from objects handled at the Police Station by the criminal.
WORMSCAN
corruption of officials in the War on Drugs
http://www.pantless.com/~pdxnorml/WS_01_cover.ltr.html
* This .sig best when viewed with a fixed spaced font, such as Fixedsys.
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Consulting Alethiologists & Venture Eschatologists
When the elephants and the jackasses fight over the turf, it is the grass which loses.
--Jack Ascii
P.S. What's with all the "equals twenty"s? 8^)
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970322, Oklahoma City, OK, LA Times via ABC. The FBI admits as how maybe its labs had somewhat slanted the evidence a little bit against Timothy McVeigh in the bombing.
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970324, Kentucky, KNN. Kentucky State Trooper James Sinnitt is convicted of submitting a false blood sample. This was in a paternity suit against him.
* The Associated Press says that according to sources, a Justice Department report has concluded FBI lab supervisor David Williams made unscientific conclusions in the Oklahoma City bombing case.
- William was withdrawn from a list of planned expert witnesses in January.
INTELLIGENCE AROUND THE WORLD
Intelligence, N. 56, 24 March 1997, p. 18
U.S.A.
SLOPPY FORENSIC PROCEDURES BLOWBACK ON FREEH
The FBI has not improved its luck! In a strange turn of fate, one of FBI Director, Louis J. Freeh's major accomplishments as a Justice Department lawyer -- the 1991 conviction of Walter Leroy Moody for the murder of U.S. Circuit Judge Robert S. Vance and Georgia civil rights lawyer Robert E. Robinson -- has been put into question by sloppy FBI forensic laboratory procedures. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich examined the actual test results and concluded that they "appear to preclude the firm conclusion that the samples came from the same source or manufacturer" as laboratory supervisor James Thurman had testified concerning all four bombs allegedly built by Moody. According to Bromwich, Thurman is not at fault, since he was relying on the results of tests by laboratory examiner Robert Webb, who interpreted his tests in a manner that clearly reinforced the FBI's case. These tests involved gas chromatography of the paint on the bombs and infrared spectroscopy analysis of the tape adhesive used for packaging.
These blunt comments by the inspector general were soon followed by accusations by Bromwich that Freeh was responsible for three inaccuracies in his 5 March testimony to a House subcommittee about Bromwich's investigation into allegations made by suspended FBI scientist Frederic Whitehurst of mismanagement, sloppy work and bias at the forensic laboratories (see "U.S.A. - FBI's Scientific & Technological "Waterloo"; INT, n. 53 24).
FBI director Freeh soon admitted giving incomplete testimony to Congress, but, on 17 March, Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee that oversees the FBI, released an exchange of letters between Bromwich and Freeh and stated that "Freeh is playing damage control" and "misleading the public" about the severity of the lab's problems. According to Grassley:
"The bureau is more worried about its image than its product (...) The bureau is now doing a mad scramble to control the problems. At the heart of its damage control operation is an effort to mislead, and that effort comes right from the top of the FBI. Right from the director himself -- Louis Freeh."
The dispute arose because Freeh testified that Whitehurst was suspended with pay in January "solely and directly on the basis of the recommendation by the inspector general and their findings with respect to Mr. Whitehurst."
COMMENT -- According to some specialists, FBI "damage control" is also probably behind the recent National Institute of Justice (NIJ) report lauding the capabilities of "Smokeless Powder Residue Analysis by Capillary Electrophoresis". This report begins with a very a propos recommendation for the FBI:
"Staying aware of current information and technology is essential for law enforcement agencies, especially in the area of forensics, where a new method of investigation may mean the difference between conclusive and inadmissible evidence."
Capillary electrophoresis (CE) involves separating the chemical components of explosive powder residue, collected from the hand of shooters, clothing, spent shell casings, and other objects, as the chemicals move through a buffer liquid under the influence of a high-voltage electric field. The separation is caused by differences in size and positive or negative charge. The study was made available on 22 March at the Justice Department web site.
It also seems the FBI is learning quickly. As soon as "Time" magazine's on-line news service recently reported FBI investigators had linked the bombings in Georgia at Centennial Olympic Park, an abortion clinic and a nightclub to the same bomber or bombers, Bureau spokesman, Jay Spadafore, quickly replied that no such conclusion had been drawn:
"We're saying there are similarities but there are also differences [between the bombs]. Consequently, it's not possible to conclude that any of the devices were made by the same person or persons."
Investigators have not yet completed forensic testing of the 16 January bomb against the abortion clinic in suburban Atlanta or the 21 February bomb used against the gay and lesbian nightclub.
Local press reports also mentioned that the FBI agent, David Tubbs, responsible for the interrogation of Richard Jewell, the onetime suspect in the Olympic park bombing, now heads the FBI's Kansas City office, and was supposedly notified of proposed disciplinary action including possible suspension without pay for 15 days. Tubbs, reportedly the only agent involved in the Jewell interrogation to be notified of disciplinary action, stated that he would fight such disciplinary action.
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* The Justice Department has issued a report criticizing operations at the FBI's crime labs.
- report suggests that some lab personnel be removed and that some procedures be overhauled.
- states that faulty evidence was produced for both the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombing cases.
Good grief, there is incompetence and deliberate malfeasance EVERYWHERE! How blind we have been…