Kathy E <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Some of you may remember him from the OJ trials. ==================================================== The U.S. government said Wednesday it would pay whistleblower Frederic Whitehurst $300,000 in exchange for his dropping his lawsuits against the Justice Department under the Privacy Act. Whitehurst's attorney Stephen Kohn told Reuters the Justice Department would also provide Whitehurst, who alerted the public about shoddy work at the FBI crime lab, with some 200,000 pages of documents on 5,000 state and federal criminal cases handled by the lab. The FBI reached a separate settlement with Whitehurst in February that included payment of $1.16 million to cover the income he would have earned if he had kept working at the lab. In a statement about that settlement, the FBI acknowledged the significant role Whitehurst played in identifying problems at the crime lab, actions that led to ``vast improvements in its policies and procedures.'' Wednesday's settlement, which included attorneys' fees and damages, represented the highest amount ever awarded under the 1975 Privacy Act, a law that bars disclosure of confidential information without a person's consent, Kohn said. Under the settlement, the government did not admit liability on any of Whitehurst's claims. But Kohn said the government's agreement to settle the case showed that ``they knew they were wrong. They were desperate to stop Whitehurst and resorted to the circulation of either confidential personnel information or false information, and now they're paying for it,'' he said. Whitehurst had sued the government for allegedly releasing confidential data from his personnel records, and false information, in its attempt to discredit him after he started calling attention to wrongdoing and negligence at the lab. Whitehurst had complained about the alteration of reports, false testimony, inadequate attention to proper scientific procedures and other other problems at the lab. His charges led Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich to criticize the lab in a 500-page study released last April. Bromwich said shoddy work at the lab resulted in flawed testimony presented at the World Trade Center bombing trials in New York and the Oklahoma City bombing cases in Denver. Under Wednesday's settlement, the government agreed to post on the Internet Whitehurst's response to that report, which examined some 20 cases handled by the crime lab, and to flag Whitehurst's response in printed versions of the report. ``There is no doubt this has major national impact on the entire criminal justice system,'' Kohn said, noting the expedited release of new documents could lead to convictions being overturned in some cases. ``The nation's premier crime lab had systemic problems and now the government is acknowledging those problems and turning over the records,'' Kohn said. ``They're setting up a procedure so there can be final accountability.'' The government will turn over 15,000 documents a month to the Forensic Justice Project that Whitehurst will head at the National Whistleblower Center in Washington. Kohn, who heads the National Whistleblower Center, said the group would review the records and inform the Justice Department if problems were found in the way the cases were handled by the lab. -- Kathy E "I can only please one person a day, today is NOT your day, and tomorrow isn't looking too good for you either" http://members.delphi.com/kathylaw/ Law & Issues Mailing List http://pw1.netcom.com/~kathye/rodeo.html - Cowboy Histories http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2990/law.htm Crime photo's Subscribe/Unsubscribe, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the body of the message enter: subscribe/unsubscribe law-issues
