Frustration at the FBI's lack of progress festered among senators and their staffs, who privately questioned the bureau's scientific competency and sense of urgency. The nine-story Hart Senate Office Building -- the Capitol Hill address of 50 senators and hundreds of staffers -- remained closed because of anthrax contamination.
FBI case agent Robert Roth testified that he found Daschle's staff "hostile." An aide to Leahy peppered the FBI with faxed questions about details of the case.
Meanwhile, Roth and veteran agent Bradley Garrett reached out to Hatfill repeatedly from December 2001 through spring 2002. Hatfill was cooperative throughout, they testified. He told the investigators he would welcome a search of his apartment.
But as Hatfill was signing a search authorization on June 25, 2002, at the FBI office in downtown Frederick, Roth spotted a media helicopter heading "right toward Steve's house." Within minutes after Hatfill had signed, droves of Washington- and Baltimore-based camera crews and reporters descended on his apartment.
"How many people knew in advance that you intended to go to talk to Dr. Hatfill and try to get a consent to search?" asked Hatfill's lawyer, Thomas G. Connolly, during a deposition.
"It was probably several hundred," Roth replied, including the mayor of Frederick.
Said Garrett: "I wouldn't have spoken to us after that event."
Admired investigator
Garrett, then 53, was among the FBI's most revered investigators. In 1997, he traveled to Pakistan to help apprehend a gunman who had killed two CIA workers outside agency headquarters in Langley, Va. He also obtained a confession from Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
Asked by Hatfill's lawyer if it was "appropriate" to disclose a planned search of a residence, Garrett replied:
"Absolutely not."
In addition to the risk of "forewarning people you are coming to search," Garrett testified, "it's clearly not appropriate or even responsible to do that in reference to the person you are searching. He's not been charged. He has not gone to court."
Garrett added, "Let's just say for the sake of argument that Dr. Hatfill did have something to do with the anthrax case, but he had three other people working with him to do it. You don't want them to know you are searching his place because then that alters their behavior. They can destroy evidence."
