WASHINGTON - Fighting back after more than a year as a public target of the FBI's anthrax investigation, Dr. Steven J. Hatfill filed a federal lawsuit yesterday accusing Attorney General John Ashcroft and other officials of harassing him with relentless surveillance, wrecking his reputation and preventing him from finding work to cover up their failure to find the real bioterrorist behind the 2001 attacks.
Hatfill's 40-page lawsuit asks the federal court to declare that the Justice Department and FBI have violated the Constitution, the Privacy Act and their own regulations by labeling him a "person of interest" and effectively putting him under "roaming house arrest."
It seeks a court order to stop the surveillance and alleged leaks to the media, as well as asking for unspecified monetary damages.
"Dr. Hatfill had nothing to do with the horrific anthrax attacks," Thomas G. Connolly, Hatfill's lead attorney, told reporters outside the federal courthouse here.
"No evidence links Dr. Hatfill to the crime, yet the attorney general and a number of his subordinates have attempted to make him the scapegoat. In the process they have trampled Dr. Hatfill's constitutional rights and destroyed his life."
Hatfill, 49, a physician who worked at the Army's biodefense research center at Fort Detrick from 1997 to 1999 and has trained FBI agents and Special Forces troops on bioterrorism, did not attend the news conference. Connolly noted that he had declared his innocence in two impassioned public statements a year ago and seeks only "the right to be left alone."
The lawsuit adds a few new details to the public knowledge of investigators' pursuit of Hatfill, which the suit says has involved "tens of thousands of man-hours and tens of millions of dollars."
In March, it says, Hatfill went to a job interview in a McLean, Va., hotel. Hatfill's hopes "were dashed, however, when at the conclusion of his meeting, he and his prospective employer walked out of the meeting room and were met by FBI special agents conspicuously videotaping the encounter," the suit says.
"After being subjected to this invasion," it says, "the prospective employer no longer had any interest in hiring Dr. Hatfill and thus, the FBI's harassment had its intended effect."
Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra declined to comment on the suit. He noted that an internal inquiry by the department's counsel, H. Marshall Jarrett, concluded in January that Ashcroft's labeling Hatfill as a "person of interest" in the anthrax case "did not violate any law, regulation or Department of Justice policy or standard."
