Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, a biomedical researcher, is no longer a person of interest in the investigation of the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States.
And should anyone question his innocence, he will have $5.8 million to show that the government no longer considers him a suspect.
Hint: Click in map to explore connectionsStory continues below interactive map 
The Department of Justice agreed Friday to pay Hatfill $2.825 million in cash to settle his lawsuit against the attorney general and others. It will also provide him with an annuity of $150,000 a year for 20 years.
The settlement ends a tangled episode that began in 2002 when then-Attorney General John Ashcroft publicly described Hatfill as a “person of interest” in the attacks that began on Sept. 18, 2001, and saw five people die after being exposed to anthrax sent through the mail.
Hatfill, 54, who is American-born but a graduate of a medical school in what was then Rhodesia, had worked as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health.
He also was a researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases.
In 2003, Hatfill sued Ashcroft, the Department of Justice, the FBI and others for violating his constitutional rights and his privacy rights and for causing his dismissal from his new job in research at the University of Louisiana.
When he became attorney general, Michael Mukasey inherited the lawsuit last known as Hatfill vs. Mukasey.
Hatfill’s attorneys subpoenaed five reporters who had written about Hatfill to testify in the case.
Three of them cooperated after their sources released them to testify. A fourth had not testified on the grounds that the information he knew had already been revealed.
U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton held Toni Locy, a former reporter for USA Today, in contempt of court for refusing to testify and fined her up to $5,000 a day.
Locy’s attornies appealed Walton’s ruling and the fine has not yet been enforced.
Locy was on the faculty of the University of West Virginia and will begin teaching journalism at Washington and Lee University in the fall.
After the announcement of the Hatfill’s settlement with the government, she told The New York Times that she hoped the settlement of the case would remove the contempt citation.
The lawsuit against Ashcroft was one of three filed by Hatfill after he was linked in the news to the anthrax cases. A libel suit against Daniel Foster, Vanity Fair and Reader’s Digest was settled out of court.
Foster, an English professor at Vassar College, had written a story for Vanity Fair about Hatfill and the anthrax attacks. Reader’s Digest published the story in a condensed version.
As part of the settlement the magazines agreed to retract any suggestions that Hatfill was behind the attacks.
Hatfill also sued The New York Times Co. and Nicholas Kristof, over some columns Kristof had written about the anthrax attacks. That lawsuit was thrown out of court.
Click here to sign up for the Muckety Newsletter
0 Comments
There are no comments yet, be the first by filling in the form below.
Leave a Comment