Head of the FBIs Anthrax Investigation Says the Whole Thing Was a Sham

Global Research, April 17, 2015

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/head-of-the-fbis-anthrax-investigation-says-the-whole-thing-was-a-sham/5443516

Agent In Charge of Amerithrax Investigation Blows the Whistle

The FBI head agent in charge of the anthrax investigation Richard Lambert has just filed a federal whistleblower lawsuit calling the entire FBI investigation bulls**t:

In the fall of 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, a series of anthrax mailings occurred which killed five Americans and sickened 17 others. Four anthrax-laden envelopes were recovered which were addressed to two news media outlets in New York City (the New York Post and Tom Brokaw at NBC) and two senators in Washington D.C. (Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle). The anthrax letters addressed to New York were mailed on September 18, 2001, just seven days after the 9/11 attacks. The letters addressed to the senators were mailed 21 days later on October 9, 2001. A fifth mailing of anthrax is believed to have been directed to American Media, Inc. (AMI) in Boca Raton, Florida based upon the death of one AMI employee from anthrax poisoning and heavy spore contamination in the building.

Executive management at FBI Headquarters assigned responsibility for the anthrax investigation (code named AMERITHRAX) to the Washington Field Office (WFO), dubbing it the single most important case in the FBI at that time. In October 2002, in the wake of surging media criticism, White House impatience with a seeming lack of investigative progress by WFO, and a concerned Congress that was considering revoking the FBIs charter to investigate terrorism cases, Defendant FBI Director Mueller reassigned Plaintiff from the FBIs San Diego Field Office to the Inspection Division at FBI Headquarters and placed Plaintiff in charge of the AMERITHRAX case as an Inspector. While leading the investigation for the next four years, Plaintiffs efforts to advance the case met with intransigence from WFOs executive management, apathy and error from the FBI Laboratory, politically motivated communication embargos from FBI Headquarters, and yet another preceding and equally erroneous legal opinion from Defendant Kelley all of which greatly obstructed and impeded the investigation.

On July 6, 2006, Plaintiff provided a whistleblower report of mismanagement to the FBIs Deputy Director pursuant to Title 5, United States Code, Section 2303. Reports of mismanagement conveyed in writing and orally included: (a) WFOs persistent understaffing of the AMERITHRAX investigation; (b) the threat of WFOs Agent in charge to retaliate if Plaintiff disclosed the understaffing to FBI Headquarters; (c) WFOs insistence on staffing the AMERITHRAX investigation principally with new Agents recently graduated from the FBI Academy resulting in an average investigative tenure of 18 months with 12 of 20 Agents assigned to the case having no prior investigative experience at all; (d) WFOs eviction of the AMERITHRAX Task Force from the WFO building in downtown Washington and its relegation to Tysons Corner, Virginia to free up space for Attorney General Ashcrofts new pornography squads; (e) FBI Directors Muellers mandate to Plaintiff to compartmentalize the AMERITHRAX investigation by stove piping the flow of case information and walling off task force members from those aspects of the case not specifically assigned to them a move intended to stem the tide of anonymous media leaks by government officials regarding details of the investigation. [Lambert complained about compartmentalizing and stovepiping of the investigation in a 2006 declaration. See this, this and this]

This sequestration edict decimated morale and proved unnecessary in light of subsequent civil litigation which established that the media leaks were attributable to the United States Attorney for the District of the District of Columbia and to a Supervisory Special Agent in the FBIs National Press Office, not to investigators on the AMERITHRAX Task Force; (f) WFOs diversion and transfer of two Ph.D. Microbiologist Special Agents from their key roles in the investigation to fill billets for an 18 month Arabic language training program in Israel; (g) the FBI Laboratorys deliberate concealment from the Task Force of its discovery of human DNA on the anthrax-laden envelope addressed to Senator Leahy and the Labs initial refusal to perform comparison testing; (h) the FBI Laboratorys refusal to provide timely and adequate scientific analyses and forensic examinations in support of the investigation; (i) Defendant Kelleys erroneous and subsequently quashed legal opinion that regulations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) precluded the Task Forces collection of evidence in overseas venues; (j) the FBIs fingering of Bruce Ivins as the anthrax mailer; and, (k) the FBIs subsequent efforts to railroad the prosecution of Ivins in the face of daunting exculpatory evidence.(See URL)