Filed under: 9/11, 9/11 Mysteries, 9/11 Truth, anthrax, army, Bio Weapons, biochemicals, Biological Attack, biological warfare, Darpa, False Flag, FBI, Fort Detrick, inside job, lone nut, Media, Military, State Sponsored Terrorism, suicided, us army, War On Terror, Washington D.C. | Tags: Globe, Maureen Stevens, National Enquirer, Richard Schuler, robert stevens, Steven Hatfill, sun
Anthrax Victim’s Widow Blames U.S. Government
AP
August 5, 2008
The widow of a tabloid photo editor who died in the 2001 anthrax attacks insisted in a $50 million federal lawsuit filed years ago that the U.S. government was ultimately responsible for his death.
The widow of a tabloid photo editor who died in the 2001 anthrax attacks insisted in a $50 million federal lawsuit filed years ago that the U.S. government was ultimately responsible for his death.
Now that the FBI is pinning the blame on government scientist Bruce Ivins, the lawsuit brought by Maureen Stevens looks positively clairvoyant. And results of the FBI investigation could have a major effect on the outcome of her case.
“We were right all along,” Patrick Hogan, the son-in-law of Maureen and the late Robert Stevens, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “It seems to me it’s pretty much a slam dunk.”
Stevens was a photo editor at American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, Sun and Globe gossip tabloids, when he was exposed to anthrax that was mailed to AMI offices in Boca Raton. Stevens died Oct. 5, 2001, the first of five people to be killed and 17 others to be sickened in the anthrax attacks.
Two years later, Maureen Stevens filed her lawsuit. In it, she claims the U.S. government was negligent because it failed to safeguard strains of the deadly anthrax bacteria at the U.S. Army disease research center at Fort Detrick, Md.
The government, her lawsuit says, “owed a duty of care, the highest degree of care” in handling of anthrax and supervising employees who had access to it. Although she didn’t know it when the lawsuit was filed, Ivins was one of those employees, a microbiologist who was working on an anthrax antidote. Ivins committed suicide last week as he was being investigated.
“One of the real areas of satisfaction, if you can call it that, is that we’ve maintained all along this was an inside job,” said Richard Schuler, Maureen Stevens’ attorney.
The case is unique among the legal actions brought after the anthrax attacks, according to the lawyers involved. Employees of a postal facility in Washington, D.C., where two workers died, sued the Postal Service for allegedly failing to protect them, but a federal judge in 2004 ruled the service is immune.
If the federal government ultimately names Ivins as the anthrax attack perpetrator, Schuler said the government’s lawyers should drop their long battle and settle the lawsuit. He noted that another scientist wrongly implicated by the FBI in the plot, Steven Hatfill, recently was paid $5.8 million to settle his lawsuit against the Justice Department.
“It’s been a long road for this family,” Schuler said. “I hope somebody who has some authority will call us and make it right with this family.”
Maureen Stevens declined an interview request, deferring to her attorney. The lawsuit, also filed on behalf of the couple’s three grown children, seeks a maximum of $50 million in compensatory damages for the government’s alleged negligence in Stevens’ death. Schuler said that figure represents the upper reaches of a possible damage award or settlement.
Two of the Stevens children did not return phone messages or e-mails seeking comment Tuesday. Hogan, husband of daughter Heidi, said he’s hopeful that the FBI has its man in Ivins.
“It seems to me they botched this thing from the beginning. It was one of their own people,” Hogan said. “I’m just very happy that they actually found somebody.”
http://www.washingtonpost.co..icle/2008/08/13/AR2008081303731_pf.html
DARPA-linked Cycorp “Predicted” the Anthrax Attacks – 6 months before they happened.
http://www.911blogger.com/node/17033
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Comment by diana montoya June 30, 2009 @ 1:46 am