A Somewhat Gentler Statement, as Submitted to the Local Newspaper

Friday, May 28, 2004

Just what are the odds (that the FBI is telling the truth)?
The recent Brandon Mayfield incident in Portland explicitly exposes the FBI and the DOJ for the pack of deceitful liars they are. We are expected to believe that after a search of their fingerprint databases, which contain millions of fingerprints, Mr. Mayfield's fingerprint just happened to be the one which three FBI so-called "expert" examiners and a court-appointed examiner considered to be a "100 percent identification" and a match? Even though Spanish authorities almost immediately cast doubt on that judgment, the Justice Department sought Mr. Mayfield's detention anyway, based on the FBI's insistence that it had identified the right man. What a coincidence that Mr. Mayfield, a lawyer who practices immigration and family law, also:

Is an American citizen who converted to Islam and married and Egyptian in 1989

Is is a member of and was seen driving from his home to the Bilal mosque, his regular place of worship

Had represented a man in a custody dispute who later pleaded guilty to conspiring to help Al Qaeda fight American forces in Afghanistan

Placed ads for his law firm in a "Muslim yellow page directory," which was administered by "Jerusalem Enterprises, Inc.," and registered to Farid Adlouni, a Portland resident who had business dealings with Osama bin Laden's former personal secretary, Wadih El Hage, who was convicted by a New York federal court of conspiring to murder U.S. citizens

Was connected to an alleged "telephonic contact" on September 11, 2002, placed between his home and a phone number assigned to Pete Seda, the director of a local Islamic Charity, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, who is on a federal terrorism watch list.

The United States attorney in Portland insists that religion had nothing to do with the investigation because Mr. Mayfield was not under suspicion when the FBI first analyzed the prints. It was the fingerprint match alone that led the FBI to Mr. Mayfield, prosecutors have asserted. Mr. Mayfield "was not under investigation and federal law enforcement authorities had no reason to believe that Mayfield had any information about the Madrid bombings."

FBI officials seemed so confidant of the "100 percent" match that they never bothered to look at the original print while in Madrid on April 21 to meet with Spanish investigators. This meeting was necessary after "it became apparent that the preliminary findings of the forensic science division of the Spanish National Police concluded that the fingerprints were not consistent with those of the FBI laboratory", according to an affidavit used to support Mayfield's arrest. However, at the end of the Madrid meeting, FBI officials concluded, the Spaniards "felt satisfied" with the FBI's analysis.

After Mr. Mayfield's release on May 20, two FBI examiners traveled to Madrid to investigate the prints again. This time, after the agents returned, they concluded that the latent print originally linked to Mr. Mayfield was "of no value for identification purposes," and it withdrew its finding of a match.

Bureau officials have said that his status as a Muslim had nothing to do with the case against him. "The people in the lab looking at the fingerprint had no idea what Mr. Mayfield's background was," said an FBI official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "That had absolutely no role in any of this."

The lab people may not have known Mr. Mayfield's background, but others in the bureau certainly did. I believe they wanted to have a "closer look" at Mr. Mayfield and jumped at the chance to use a bogus fingerprint identification to obtain the warrants allowing covert and overt searches and Mr. Mayfield's detention as a material witness. Mr. Mayfield was surely a "person of interest" to the FBI well before the Madrid bombings, and would have been high on the FBI's list of "persons to really investigate the first chance we get to have an excuse or plausible deniability".

It is time we true American's, the ones who really understand why this country is great, stop accepting the acts, lies and deceit that our Federal Government, and particularly this administration, dish out in the name of "fighting terrorism". Mr. Mayfield has said it best, "You can't trade your freedom for security, because if you do, you're going to lose both."

Bill Dawson