Fbi Won’t Investigate Own Lab Justice Department Inspector Looking Into Charges, Reno Says

Attorney General Janet Reno confirmed Thursday the Justice Department’s inspector general is looking into allegations the FBI wrongly failed to disclose an internal memo that questioned the testimony given by an FBI lab agent during an impeachment hearing for a federal judge.

Her announcement responded to complaints from two Republican senators who charged Wednesday that FBI Director Louis Freeh should not head an investigation into whether his own agents covered up misleading testimony by lab officials.

Reno’s aides say the inspector general, not the FBI director, already was looking into the allegations. Indeed, the probe by Inspector General Michael Bromwich into a whistle-blower’s allegation that the highly trusted FBI lab has provided misleading testimony in a number of instances has been going on for more than a year, the aides said.

“We’re trying to have the inspector general pursue every issue and make sure that we pursue it to its appropriate conclusion,” Reno told reporters.

The whistle-blower, FBI lab scientist Frederic Whitehurst, has charged the agency’s lab had grown sloppy in its work and had provided crime reports that failed to disclose uncertain test results. Instead, he said, agents sometimes reported the tests as confirming what prosecutors hoped to prove, he said.

Bromwich completed a 500-page draft report on the probe last month that was sent to select members of Congress and to several lawyers who are involved in key cases. Since then, parts of it have been leaked.

The report includes a 1989 memo from FBI lab examiner William Tobin that raised questions about the testimony given by another lab agent, Michael P. Malone, during a judicial hearing that led to the impeachment of U.S. District Judge Alcee Hastings, who now serves as a House member from Florida.

In 1981, Hastings was indicted for conspiring with a Washington lawyer to accept a $150,000 bribe to lower the sentences for two drug dealers. Though the Washington lawyer was convicted, Hastings won an acquittal from a Florida jury.

However, an ethics complaint led to a lengthy investigation by a judicial panel, which concluded Hastings lied. The strongest evidence against him consisted of a series of phone calls to the Washington lawyer and his behavior when the money was being transferred.

One item of evidence concerned a leather bag that Hastings had discarded. He testified that he had switched to a new bag because a strap on the old bag had torn. But prosecutors said the strap had been cut.

FBI lab technician Malone testified his tests showed the strap had been cut. But agent Tobin, in a memo, said his colleague failed to disclose the “crucial conditions, caveats, premises and assumptions” that went into that conclusion, a view that could have helped Hastings’ case.

Tobin told Bromwich his dissenting comments were ignored. Now, the issue has arisen as to whether this memo should have been disclosed to Hasting’s defense team.

Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said the latest revelations further taint the reputation of the FBI lab and raise doubts about the agency’s ability to get to the bottom of the problem.

“It raises questions about the integrity of the criminal justice process, especially the FBI’s role,” Grassley said.