Hatfill's rights infringed by `new Gestapo'; media unmoved

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 30, 2002 | by Paul Craig Roberts

Is voting Republican voting for a police state? Those who saw Steven Hatfill's Aug. 25 Fox News press conference must be asking themselves this question.

Once again, the FBI and (the so-called) Department of Justice (DOJ) are displaying what former Scripps Howard News Service editor Dan Thomasson calls "a callous disregard for a citizen's rights."

Hatfill is getting the Richard Jewell treatment, only worse. Jewell was the security guard at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics who spotted the knapsack bomb and moved people away before it exploded. Lacking a suspect, the FBI theorized that Jewell planted the bomb himself in order to become a hero.

The FBI had no evidence whatsoever against Jewell, but neither ethics, professional integrity nor the lack of evidence prevented a steady stream of leaks to an obedient media insinuating that Jewell was the bomber.

The FBI never was held accountable for its abuse of power. Consequently, the FBI feels free to treat Hatfill more brutally. FBI agents told Hatfill's fiancee and associates that he was a murderer. They terrorized Hatfill's fiancee and ransacked her apartment, hoping fear would coerce her into going along with FBI charges against Hatfill. Anyone familiar with Stalinist and Gestapo methods recognizes the technique.

As in the Jewell case, the FBI has substituted a theory for evidence. The theory is that Hatfill, a patriotic American serving his country, sent the anthrax letters to demonstrate America's lack of preparedness against terrorists.

Hatfill evidently believes that taking his case to the media will protect him from a DOJ frame-up. In relying on the media, he has chosen a weak reed. The American media function primarily as government pimps. The liberal media will blast conservative Republicans but never the government. The small and dwindling conservative media refuse to "help criminals" by criticizing the "forces of law and order." Consequently, every prosecutor with a high-profile case relies on the media to pressure the target into a plea bargain.

Today, the media are unlikely to protest prosecutorial abuse of civil rights. Only members of victim groups can turn to the media for help. As recent best sellers by media insiders make clear, feminists, minorities and homosexuals now dominate the American media. Most are indebted to government-enforced quotas for their jobs and they view white heterosexual males, such as Hatfill, as members of a hegemonic "oppressor class." Why should they help one of their oppressors defend his rights?

Hatfill bravely challenged the (so-called) DOJ, but reporters who discussed his news conference on Fox News showed little inclination to investigate our government's abusive treatment of him. It would be work and unpopular, and the government might come after them. After all, prosecutors only need a theory.

Americans had better wake up! It can happen to you. No federal agent was held accountable for murdering a mother and her child at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. No federal agent was held accountable for the massacre of women and children at Waco, Texas. These same unaccountable and deadly forces now have been given unprecedented police powers in the name of the "war on terror."

Some conservatives will not believe that the FBI ever would lie. These conservatives should acquaint themselves with the recent ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the FBI has made 75 misrepresentations in order to obtain espionage and terrorism warrants. Attorney General John Ashcroft takes exception to the court, demanding an expansive interpretation of the FBI's new powers. Ashcroft views our civil rights as justifiable "collateral damage" in the "war on terror."

If the U.S. Congress had any sense, it would abolish the FBI, demolish the building and sow the ground with salt before it has a real Gestapo on its hands.