Steven Hatfill’s Kafkaesque experience

Steven Hatfill won’t ever get over it, said David Freed in The Atlantic. For seven years, the FBI and the press considered Hatfill the lone suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks. Hatfill drew the FBI’s attention because he’d worked with bioweapons, and was known to be a flag-waving anti-communist of strong political views. When word of the FBI’s suspicions was leaked to the media, Hatfill says, he lost most of his friends and was turned down for nearly every job he applied for. “I couldn’t understand why it was happening to me,” he says. “The constant drip-drip-drip of innuendo. It’s like a death by a thousand cuts.” The FBI followed him constantly, trying to get him to break under the pressure. “People think they’re free in this country,” he says. “Don’t kid yourself. This is a police state. The government can pretty much do whatever it wants.”

In 2007, the FBI realized it had the wrong man, and set its sights on government microbiologist Bruce Ivins, who committed suicide after learning he had become the chief suspect. Hatfill received a $5.8 million settlement from the government, but takes little satisfaction from that victory. “I was a guy who trusted the government. Now I don’t trust a damn thing they do.”

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