OT: bitter, cynical political rant

[Bill Campbell]

On Mon, Jun 07, 2004, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>On Mon, Jun 07, 2004 at 05:16:41PM -0400, Ron Kracht wrote:
>> >AFAIC, if the FBI spokesman was quoted *accurately*, then it's time;
>> >you can rant all you like.  :-)
>>
>> The quote is accurate. The attribution is not. That statement was made 
>> during a hearing in the case (as I remember it was a bail hearing) by a 
>> prosecutor in Portland.
>> 
>> At the time the statement was made the FBI knew (who knows about the 
>> prosecutor?) full well that the Spanish police did not consider the 
>> print to be a match. As a matter of fact the Spanish authorities told 
>> the FBI almost immediately that they considered that the print 
>> conclusively did _not_ match the Portland lawyer. As a result of that 
>> communication, two weeks before the lawyer was arrested, there was a 
>> meeting in Spain between the FBI (including the expert who made the 
>> match) and Spanish fingerprint experts. Although the FBI expert does not 
>> speak Spanish two other FBI official at the meeting are reportedly 
>> fluent. The Spanish experts pointed out that the print had only 7 of the 
>> 15 matching points of reference that they require for a match. They 
>> additionally pointed out that several aspects of the print were 
>> obviously different from those of the Portland lawyer. The FBI would not 
>> budge and at the conclusion of the meeting the Spanish authorities 
>> agreed to leave the issue marked as 'open' so as to, in their eyes, 
>> avoid embarrassing the FBI.
>
>So the FBI *consciously* mischaracterized the situation, and didn't
>want to hear about the evidence?

The FBI would never do something like that would they (perhaps Waco and
Ruby Ridge were somebody else :-).

Bill
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