TheAgitator.com
Hatfill Vindicated
Monday, July 14th, 2008Late last month, the U.S. government announced a $5.82 million settlement with Steven Hatfill, the man maligned as a “person of interest” in the the Anthrax investigation.
Typically, the government “admits no wrongdoing,” though the settlement rather speaks for itself.
Good for Hatfill. The man’s life was destroyed in a public smear that proved to be based on little more than a profile.
The media has yet to adequately come to terms with how it allowed itself to be used by the government in the Hatfill case (just as it was in the Richard Jewell case, and the Wen Ho Lee case). This this USA Today editorial on the settlement is typical:
Hatfill wasn’t the only victim. To further his suit, Hatfill demanded that several journalists, including former USA TODAY reporter Toni Locy, divulge their sources for stories about him. Locy, one of whose stories quoted an anonymous official suggesting that investigators had little evidence against Hatfill, refused to comply. Her reasoning was principled: If sources can’t speak to journalists with the privacy afforded to conversations with lawyers or clergy, whistle-blowers will be discouraged. But in an attempt to force Locy’s hand, a judge levied fines of as much as $5,000 a day. Now that the case is ended, the threat should be removed.
We’d hope, though, that this sorry story can still bring two useful results.
It should push the Senate to pass a bill now under consideration that would protect reporters in circumstances like Locy’s. Confidential sources recently have exposed airline safety violations, sleeping guards in a nuclear plant and appalling conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
More broadly, the Hatfill case should put an end to the use of the “person of interest” tactic, which has been widely imitated by other agencies. If prosecutors want to punish someone, they can go to court.
Locy wasn’t a victim, here. She was an enabler. What the editorial fails to mention is that Locy was initially duped by government officials. They used her (and other reporters) to smear a man against whom they had little evidence, in the hopes that publicizing his name might help their investigation. Locy and USA Today uncritically ran with an unsubstantiated tip from a government investigator with an agenda, and in the process, aided in the destruction of Hatfill’s reputation.
The editorial glosses over all of this by noting that one of Locy’s later articles cast doubt on the evidence against Hatfill. But by then, he’d already been ruined.
I don’t have much sympathy for Locy at all.
I do think confidential sources can be useful and important in helping expose government corruption and abuse of power, and I think that in some circumstances, the use of those sources should be protected.
That’s not what happened here.
The problem isn’t journalists reporting what the government says or does. The problem is the government leaking the information. What this case needs is an independent prosecutor with unlimited investigative powers who can find out who authorized the leak and charge (or impeach) them under criminal law. And that should happen independently of any civil suit. A credible and honorable government would be demanding that (which is, of course, why will never see it happen).
I don’t understand why reporters would want to protect a source like Locy’s. He betrayed her by lying to her… she printed those lies in good faith, which destroyed her credibility and got her stuck in a mess of legal trouble.
I think once a reporter learns that their source lied they have no obligation to protect the source. Otherwise they’re just encouraging future lying from future sources. If the reporter isn’t going to out them, what reason to off-the-record sources have to ever tell the truth?
What is clearly an issue here is that her ability to maintain source-confidentiality is a risk to Hatfill’s due process rights. His need to secure justice against the government is far greater than her need to keep the source confidential.
“Hard cases make bad law.”
How do we draw a principled distinction between this case and the good whistleblower cases that will make a short, readable law?
I have no evidence that the informant lied to Locy, as Hatfield was being actively investigated. The problem is the tactic of using the press to cause 3rd-party intimidation of someone under investigation. Locy was every bit a part of that process.
This is unrelated to whistleblowing. There’s no government problem being exposed. The informant was doing this as an integral part of the investigation, and there’s no reason he/she shouldn’t be subjected to the same scrutiny as Hatfield.
I’ll also say that the judge was spot-on in his rulings against Locy, forcing *her* to pay rather than her employer. Good. Make the responsible people, um, responsible. Same needs to go for her informant, which is where the judge was/is heading.
Coincidentally, Absence of Malice was on last weekend. Great movie - a plot you just wouldn’t see out of Hollywood these days.
It’d be nice if Locy was as contrite as Sally Fields’s character was at the end of the movie.
This is an all too common practice of police agencies, releasing false or misleading reports to news media to “criminalize” persons viewed by police as “suspects”. This tactic was used in the Jon Benet Ramsey case and also the Scott Peterson case.
Frankly, these sources usually have an axe to grind and the public (or at least the criminal justice system) should have a right to evaluate a source’s motives.
Sometimes the feds are interested in leaks:
TSA launches leak investigation
Exactly.