FBI faulted for refusing to admit blunder

[icymist]

Wednesday, November 17, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.

FBI faulted for refusing to admit blunder

By Blaine Harden
The Washington Post

In their hurry to help find suspects in the March terrorist bombings in Madrid, FBI fingerprint examiners succumbed to top-down institutional intimidation and failed to correct an obvious blunder that led to the detention of an innocent Oregon lawyer, according to a panel of forensic experts.

"To disagree was not an expected response" within the FBI's bureaucratic culture, according to a report on the panel's findings. It said that once a supervisor in the agency's fingerprint unit had wrongly identified a print from the bombing investigation in Spain, "it became increasingly difficult for others in the agency" to tell him he had made a mistake.

(snip)

"All of the committee members agree that the quality of the images that were used to make the erroneous identification was not a factor," according to a synopsis of the panel's findings written by Robert Stacey, head of the quality-assurance unit for the FBI's laboratory division.

His report added that when Spanish officials said the FBI was wrong, the fingerprint unit "immediately entered into a defensive posture."

(more)

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002092873_mayfield17m.html

[lovuian]

1. Yes and they let Osama Bin Laudin family escape from the country

without being thoroughly interviewed just a few blunders!!!

[icymist]

2. Reminds me of how anyone in this administration....

refuses to admit that they could be wrong.

[Syncronaut Seven]

3. Tell it to Leonard Peltier.

n/t

[mazzarro]

4. This is ridiculiously hilarious

The administration never admits fault and someone is expecting an agency that the adminitration is in charge of to admit fault!
Wow-o-wow!

[libpunkmom]

5. Brandon Mayfield

This guys law practice went completely down the dumper when this happened...The only link they were able to find between him and the Taliban was the fact that he represented Battle (one of the "Portland 7") in a divorce. When the fed's raided his house, they took EVERYTHING even down to his kid's spanish homework... It was a mess. I met his wife a few times at protest (about this case) here in Portland.. She was so incredible nice. But,their kids had it pretty rough for awhile..

[petepillow]

6. Substitute any name in the Administration for "FBI" and you could have

publish a new story everyday for years and years... Why must we beat around the bush, so to speak?

[VegasWolf]

7. Fuck, bush* doesn't even know what a blunder is, you have to

be successful at least one time to know what failure is.

[NYC Liberal]

8. Now if only Bush would be faulted

for not admitting any of his "blunders."

[struggle4progress]

9. Well, Spain obviously did the right thing, turning down FBI offers ...

... to "help" investigate the bombing. The FBI clearly fingered Mayfield because a local "terrorist connection" to the bombing served Bushista political purposes. If the Spaniards had accepted FBI help, similar evidence would have been manufactured against the entire newly-elected government.