Reference no: EM131702507

Question: Beginning a mere week after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, envelopes packed with anthrax spores started turning up in people's mailboxes. Two of those people were sitting U.S. Senators Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Patrick Leahy of Vermont. The National Enquirer in Florida and TV network offices in New York also were targeted. The envelopes were all postmarked in the Trenton/ Princeton (NJ) area. The FBI visited the biology labs on every college campus along the Route One corridor between New York and Philadelphia. The bureau also intensely investigated Uncle Sam's own bio-weapons facilities, including Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland. The investigation proved to be one of needles and haystacks.

Eventually, FBI suspicions focused on a bio-weapons researcher named Steven Hatfill. Indeed, after years of investigating, the agency's only "person of interest" was this Fort Detrick alumnus. Although never indicted, Hatfill's POI status was enough to make him a leper to his profession, essentially unemployable. Hatfill eventually was cleared and suspicion shifted to another scientist at the same government facility. That suspect actually committed suicide before being indicted and tried. Should Hatfill be permitted to sue his former employer, the federal government? If so, what legal theories presented in this chapter might apply? On balance, whose interests were more important here, Hatfill's or Uncle Sam's? Did both parties have important privacy interests in this case? At some point in the FBI's investigation, did the balance shift from one of them to other?