By ROGER FRANKLIN Herald correspondent
NEW YORK - When it comes to journalism, transplanted Fleet Streeter David Hayes makes no apologies for what used to be, up until about 12 months ago, the narrow focus of his expertise.
"It starts with the butt of Jennifer Lopez," he joked, "stops at the breasts of Britney Spears and ends with Michael Jackson's latest nose job."
Those professional passions are no surprise because Hayes is an editor with American Media, which publishes the National Enquirer and a stable of other shock-horror tabloids that cater to America's appetite for the secrets of its favourite stars.
The work pays well, Hayes admits, adding that the celebrity shenanigans he splashes on supermarket magazine racks also keep his mind off "all that stupid stuff". As a proud keyhole peeper, he means the politics, economics and social concerns that dominate more serious publications.
But just lately, Hayes' interests have expanded into unfamiliar territory. These days, when he's not delving into the garbage bins of starlets, he is following with rapt attention the FBI task force investigating the anthrax-laced letters that last year left five people dead.
The first casualty was fellow English expat Bob Stevens, who worked just feet from Hayes' desk in American Media's Florida headquarters. Three weeks after a mis-spelled note containing some clotted lumps of off-white powder arrived on the photo editor's desk, Hayes was buying a new suit to wear at his friend's funeral.
Three months ago, after the FBI leaked word that it had a suspect in its sights, Hayes was impatient to see justice done. "Why don't they just bust the bastard?" he said back then, referring to the doctor and microbiologist who was subsequently identified by a deluge of further leaks as Steven J. Hatfill, a former civilian researcher with the Pentagon's chemical warfare unit at Fort Detrick in Maryland.
The news that the lethal envelopes were the work of a "right-wing loner with a scientific background" elicited a sigh of relief from a nation still jumpy - as it remains today - after September 11. The first suspicion, naturally enough, had been that the letters were mailed by Islamic terrorists, the surmise being that they had obtained the lethal spores from one of Saddam Hussein's homicidal chemists. If the FBI was right about the perpetrator being a homegrown fanatic, then the threat seemed somehow more manageable.
Timothy McVeigh had been brought to justice. Surely the G-men would nail this suspect, too.
Over the following months, the "evidence" against Hatfill accumulated via whispered leaks from unnamed FBI probers, the latest scraps and snippets always finding their way to the bureau's favoured reporters and columnists.
Slowly, the trickle of details became a damning deluge: Hatfill had fought with Rhodesian forces, and when majority rule came he moved to South Africa, where he developed chemical weapons for that country's apartheid regime.
He had written an unpublished novel involving anthrax-laced letters.
He was one of the few people with access to the "weaponised" Ames strain of the microbe used in last year's mailings, which also sent 18 people to hospital, contaminated post offices and office buildings across the country and obliged 30,000 citizens to down daily doses of the potent antibiotic Cipro. For Hayes, the FBI's delay in arresting Hatfill was galling and inexplicable.
Last week, however, Hayes was no longer quite so sure.
"Hatfill looks like the new Richard Jewel, doesn't he?" he noted, referring to the security guard at the Atlanta Olympics, whom the FBI blamed for planting a bomb that killed two people at a midnight concert.
As with Hatfill, tame media outlets were fed a wealth of damning leaks about Jewel, who was said to have perfected his bomb-making techniques in the Georgia woods. The contents of his apartment were confiscated for forensic testing - the media having been summoned so that footage of grim G-men lugging away sofas and stereos would air on the nightly news.
Today, the FBI concedes the real bomber was an anti-abortion crusader called Eric Rudolph. As for the vilified Jewel, he is now a wealthy man, having collected several fortunes from the newspapers and TV networks that parroted the FBI's leaks and lies.
"The more I read, the more I think Hatfill won't ever have to work again," Hayes said. Like Jewel, FBI leaks have cost Hatfill his job and turned neighbours against him.
And the so-called evidence? As the Weekly Standard news magazine reported last week in a 3000-word review of the investigation, almost every leaked thread of the FBI's case is, when not entirely bogus, weak to the point of fatal frailty.
Far from being a racist, Hatfill actually went to Rhodesia as a volunteer with a religious charity that was inoculating rural blacks. When an anthrax outbreak erupted in the countryside, Hatfill was still a junior medical student at Harare University. The South African connection? None of the scientists who did work in that country's bio-war programme admit to having encountered him.
As for the "unpublished novel", the one the FBI leaks painted as a blueprint for last year's attacks, it was nothing more than an outline - and it made no mention of anthrax, instead employing plague and mad cow disease as the twin agents of destruction.
The best that could be said of the FBI is that it has made much - perhaps far too much - of some odd coincidences. In the meantime, other equally intriguing avenues appear to have been overlooked:
* What explanation can the FBI offer for the visit by September 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and a fellow terrorist to a Florida drug store? The chemist later reported that Atta's comrade not only displayed flu-like symptoms consistent with anthrax exposure but also had red, raw hands that looked as if they had been "soaked in bleach".
* What of the fact that Atta rented a Florida house from the wife of an American Media editor and lived at one stage just a few minutes from the company's headquarters? Or the memories of a Florida doctor who treated another of the hijackers for a large black spot on his leg? The patient attributed the injury to the sharp corner of a suitcase, but the physician now says it was a textbook illustration of anthrax exposure.
* Finally, why was Atta so keen to rent or buy a crop duster?
As a mere student of famous bosoms, Hayes is the first to admit he's no Sherlock Holmes. But he would like some answers. As the slogan of his employer's flagship publication puts it: "Enquiring Minds Want to Know."
Story archives:
Links: Bioterrorism
Timeline: Major events since the Sept 11 attacks
FBI rushing to judgment over anthrax
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