Word: bromwich
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This Whitehurst guy is Frederic Whitehurst, the FBI chemist who originally blew the whistle on the FBI lab in 1989 and helped launch an inquiry that finally resulted last week in a blistering report from the Justice Department's inspector general. Michael Bromwich released a 600-page doorstop charging that some FBI forensic operations had been sloppy and biased. But even before the verdict was reached, Whitehurst's treatment as a whistle-blower raised questions about the FBI's ability to manage dissent. At first, lab managers dismissed his complaints about colleagues' work as prickly perfectionism. They suspended...
...experts involved in the bombing investigation, particularly David Williams, who, according to the study, "reached conclusions that incriminated the defendants without a scientific basis," and Roger Martz, the chief of the chemistry-toxicology unit, who "improperly deviated from...protocol in his examination of some specimens." But Inspector General Michael Bromwich's study goes on to cite other cases that have the potential for coming undone in the legal system--or at least becoming embarrassing footnotes for the already red-faced bureau. Among them...
...federal cases are being prosecuted in connection with the 1993 attack. While one is set for trial this summer, four have already resulted in convictions--which are being appealed. Of these, it is the case of Mohammad Salameh and three other defendants that has come in for scrutiny. The Bromwich report castigated Williams, then a top explosives examiner, who managed the on-site investigation, saying he "began with a presumption of guilt upon which to build inferences." It excoriated him for offering his opinion that the bomb had consisted of urea nitrate, when no intact urea-nitrate crystals were found...
...dispatched hundreds of memos to the Justice Department, critiquing his colleagues' performance and accusing the FBI of a pro-prosecution slant in dozens of investigations. "Science," he says, "cannot be a whore to a political agenda." Last fall at Attorney General Janet Reno's request, Justice Inspector General Michael Bromwich assembled an international team of forensic scientists to conduct an exhaustive investigation of Whitehurst's charges. Though the report is not due until the end of this year, TIME has learned that it is likely to reject the most serious allegations, though it may cite instances of sloppy or hasty...
...arguments before the decision, Michael R. Bromwich, a lawyer for Walsh, said that publicity, while extensive, has often favored the defendants...