From: Secret Squirrel <nobody@squirrel.owl.de>
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 10:29:04 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: FBI=LIE
Message-ID: <19970129175212.32434.qmail@squirrel.owl.de>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>From http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/washpol/fbi-lab.html:
> The World Trade Center bomb was made of urea-nitrate, a compound
> that can be confused with non-explosive mixtures of the same
> ingredients. In an informal internal check of lab procedures, some
> senior FBI lab workers mixed human urine with fertilizer and added
> samples of that non-explosive mixture to the flow of material being
> tested by the chemistry unit. A manager in the chemistry lab
> identified the urine-fertilizer mixture as an explosive.

Just coincidentally, these errors imprison the innocent instead of
freeing the guilty.

> Still, Joseph E. DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney in Washington,
> said the issues raised in the report would allow defendants to
> contest lab findings against them and would permit people convicted
> of crimes to attempt to reopen their cases, based on the possibility
> of flawed forensic evidence.

> "It's going to be a royal pain in the neck for federal judges and
> prosecutors and a godsend for defense attorneys looking for a means
> of getting their clients off," he said

Why not "proving their innocence"?  A prosecutor - and one who does
not respect our legal tradition of presumed innocence - is not a good
choice for a quote here.

Nowhere in the entire article is there evidence that the reporters
talked to anyone outside the FBI/Justice Department milieu.

> Scientists at the lab said they were often stifled in a lab run by
> non-technical field agents who had little knowledge of science and
> who regularly altered reports to help prosecutors. But law
> enforcement officials said there was little evidence that anyone had
> been wrongly convicted based on improper lab work.

Why isn't this the story?  FBI agents regularly committed perjury, and
we see a story about lab errors.

Elliot Ness