[1] His home was repeatedly raided by the FBI, his phone was tapped, and he was extensively surveilled for more than two years; he was also terminated from his job at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).
[1] He filed a lawsuit in 2003, accusing the FBI agents and Justice Department officials who led the criminal investigation of leaking information about him to the press in violation of the Privacy Act.
[9][10] In 2020, he became a coronavirus advisor to the Trump White House, where he strongly promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat the virus despite FDA objections to the drug.
After failing in 1983, he graduated in 1984 with a M ChB degree and, in 1984 to 1985, completed a one-year internship at a small rural hospital in South Africa's North West Province.
In January 1999 Hatfill transferred to a "consulting job" at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), which has a "sprawling campus" in nearby McLean, Virginia.
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg (director of the Federation of American Scientists' biochem weapons working group in 2002) said that the report was commissioned "under a CIA contract to SAIC".
[20] As soon as it became known, in October 2001, that the Ames strain of anthrax had been used in the attacks, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg and others began suggesting that the mailings might be the work of a "rogue CIA agent" and they provided the name of the "most likely" person to the FBI.
[21] In December 2001, she published "A Compilation of Evidence and Comments on the Source of the Mailed Anthrax" via the web site of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) suggesting the attacks were "perpetrated with the unwitting assistance of a sophisticated government program".
[23] On January 4, 2002, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times published a column titled "Profile of a Killer"[24] stating "I think I know who sent out the anthrax last fall."
Hatfill, who researched viruses, vehemently denied having any connection to the anthrax mailings and sued the FBI, the Justice Department, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, and others for violating his constitutional rights and the Privacy Act.
In September 2001, SAIC was commissioned by the Pentagon to create a replica of a mobile WMD "laboratory", alleged to have been used by Saddam Hussein, then President of Iraq.
The New York Times stated that Hatfill had obtained an anti-anthrax medicine (ciprofloxacin, which is an antibiotic medication) immediately prior to the anthrax mailings.
The newspaper won a summary judgment ruling in early 2007, squelching the libel suit that had been filed by Steven Hatfill against it and columnist Nicholas Kristof.
During an earlier round of discovery, Hatfill issued subpoenas to six reporters (Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman of Newsweek, Brian Ross of ABC, Allan Lengel of The Washington Post, Jim Stewart of CBS, and Toni Locy of USA Today).
[48] In January 2008, Walton ordered the parties to attempt mediation, and set a tentative trial date of December 2008 if settlement talks failed.
[51] After filing his complaint, Hatfill voluntarily dropped Kristof as a defendant because the federal district court lacked personal jurisdiction over the columnist.
[51] In January 2007, Judge Claude M. Hilton threw out Hatfill's defamation suit against The New York Times, granting summary judgment to the newspaper.
[53] The court additionally found that Hatfill could not, as a matter of law, meet his burden of proof that the allegedly defamatory statements were materially false; it also threw out his claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
[54] Donald Wayne Foster, an expert in forensic linguistics and a professor at Vassar College, advised the FBI during the investigation of the anthrax attacks.
Foster wrote that "When I lined up Hatfill's known movements with the postmark locations of reported biothreats, those hoax anthrax attacks appeared to trail him like a vapor cloud.
According to Newsweek, "Luigi Warren" had "operated a lurid rumor mill about Hatfill for more than a decade – promoting, in particular, hearsay about the years he lived and worked in southern Africa during the throes of apartheid.
"[59] In 2010, Hatfill's attorneys sent a letter to a stem-cell research scientist at Harvard Medical School whom they accused of authoring the "Luigi Warren" posts.
This craft, with a crew of military veterans and scientists, would ply the waters of "high-biodiversity areas" – the Amazon, or the great rivers of Borneo – seeking and studying rare plants and fungi as sources of new drugs.
Inside the vessel's aluminum hull, he envisioned a plexus of laboratories, with DNA microarrays and other "space-age zuzu" for analyzing the genetic compositions of plants.
An onboard chef from the ranks of Le Cordon Bleu would fuel a crew of scientists and trainees, and a 30-day supply of dehydrated food would hedge against disaster.
[63]Hatfill owns a colonial-style brick home in Marion County, Florida as well as a property in the El Yunque rain forest, in Puerto Rico, where he has run a military-style Outward Bound-like program.
Hatfill chairs the Asymmetrical Biodiversity Studies and Observation Group (ABSOG) in Malaysia, a not-for-profit trust he has established to support his drug discovery boat mission.
Hatfill has also established Templar Associates II, a for-profit corporation in Puerto Rico as a revenue-generator and as an "environmental testing ground for new tactics, techniques, equipment, and procedures for ABSOG's designated mission as well as for the U.S.
(EFP Tacmed has extensive Middle Eastern and African contracts; it operates a remote jungle-training facility to test new equipment in "high-biodiversity areas".)
[71] In February 2020, Hatfill became an unpaid "volunteer" advisor to White House trade director Peter Navarro on the subject of the coronavirus pandemic.