June 05, 2004

Bias And Profiling At The FBI

More From The Brandon Mayfield Case

Returning once more to the Brandon Mayfield case, tomorrow's today's New York Times offers the most extensive look at the fingerprint controversy we've yet seen, including what appear to be some new revelations:

Much of the disagreement between the two countries continues to center on the fingerprints lifted from a blue plastic bag discovered near the scene of the March 11 bombing, which killed 191 people and left 2,000 injured in the deadliest terrorist attack in Europe since World War II. F.B.I. officials once maintained the prints matched those of the American lawyer, Brandon Mayfield, who was jailed for two weeks, and the F.B.I. at one point told federal prosecutors that Spanish officials were "satisfied" with their conclusion.

But in interviews this week, Spanish officials vehemently denied ever backing up that assessment, saying they had told American law enforcement officials from the start, after their own tests, that the match was negative. The Spanish officials said their American counterparts relentlessly pressed their case anyway, explaining away stark proof of a flawed link -- including what the Spanish described as tell-tale forensic signs -- and seemingly refusing to accept the notion that they were mistaken.

"They had a justification for everything," said Pedro Luis Melida Lledo, head of the fingerprint unit for the Spanish National Police, whose team analyzed the prints in question and met with the Americans on April 21. "But I just couldn't see it."

In fact, the article reports, according to a commissioner of the Spanish National Police's science division, the FBI appeared as if "they had something against" Mayfield. What's coming together in terms of the timeline tends to suggest to us that however the FBI managed to misidentify the fingerprints, once they had Mayfield's name, nothing existed for them but their new Muslim boogeyman.

The bizarre tale began days after the attack, when the F.B.I., after receiving several fingerprint images from Spain, said it had found a match to the digital image of a print from the blue bag, which held seven copper detonators like those used on the train bombs. Mr. Mayfield's prints were in the F.B.I.'s central database of more than 44 million prints because they had been taken when he joined the military, where he served for eight years before being honorably discharged as a second lieutenant.

The F.B.I. officials concluded around March 20 that it was a "100 percent match," to Mr. Mayfield, according to court records and prosecutors in Portland. They informed their Spanish counterparts on April 2 and included Mr. Mayfield's prints in a letter to them.

At least as early as April 13, the Spanish authorities had notificed the FBI that they believed conclusively that the prints did not match Brandon Mayfield's. During this time, the FBI was putting together it's case against Mayfield. Later in April, FBI agents met with Spanish authorities, who repeated their objections to the FBI's analysis, while the FBI decliend to ask to see better evidence than the second-generation (or more, as it turns out) copies of the prints they had examined.

Mayfield was under investigation from March 20 until his arrest on May 6 -- while all of the above was transpiring. During this time, as the FBI was being told by Spanish authorities that the U.S. was chasing the wrong man, the FBI was putting together its now infamous (here on COMMUNIQUE, anyway) affidavit:

They included that Mr. Mayfield had represented a Portland terrorism defendant in a custody case; that records showed a "telephonic contact" on Sept. 11, 2002, between his home and a phone number assigned to Pete Seda, the director of a local Islamic charity, who is on a federal terrorism watch list; that his law firm was advertised in a "Muslim yellow page directory," which was produced by a man who had business dealings with Osama bin Laden's former personal secretary; and that he was seen driving from his home to the Bilal mosque, his regular place of worship.

The document also said while no travel records were found for Mr. Mayfield, "It is believed that Mayfield may have traveled under a false or fictitious name."

(For what it's worth, the FBI affidavit in question never did bother to actually back up that particular statement.)

As for the Times article, it goes on to describe not only the continuing (although diplomatic, from the Spanish side anyway) tensions between U.S. and Spanish authorities, as well as tensions between the Portland and Washington offices of the FBI. It also points out that the "miscellaneous Spanish documents" seized during Mayfield's arrest turned out to be his kids' Spanish homework.

But here's the final bit to which we need to respond, after relating some of the story as told by the Times article:

Many Muslim leaders say they suspect the F.B.I. zeroed in on Mr. Mayfield because he was a Muslim who had connections to the Portland Seven and who visited a mosque that was under suspicion. But F.B.I. officials emphasized that the examiners who made the initial match between the Madrid print and Mr. Mayfield did not know his name, much less his religion.

There's little reason to suspect that the last bit is untrue. But what this avoids addressing is the simply likelihood that once they realized the "match" was a Muslim living in Oregon, nothing anyone else had to say -- including the law enforcement experts in the case back in Spain -- mattered one whit to the FBI. Despite the continuing evidence from Spanish authorities that the FBI's version of the evidence in fact was entirely wrong, the FBI simply stopped looking at all the possibilities because it had found a precious Muslim boogeyman to pursue.

Racial and ethnic profiling isn't just something that happens, for example, when a police officer pulls over a driver because he or she happens to be African-American. It's also something that happens during an investigation, something that can divert attention from the proper processes of supportable evidence, verifiable proof, and... well, actual investigation.

This is why we made the noise we did over the FBI affadavit and its indictment of being a Muslim. Yes, at the moment the FBI found a "match" for the fingerprints in question, it did not know Mayfield was a Muslim. But once they noticed this fact, it blinded to them to all other possibilities.

Given this, just think what could have happened had there not been an independent third-party (the Spanish authorities) involved. If the case against Brandon Mayfield had existed entirely within the context and authority of the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI might have gotten their "Muslim boogeyman," and the rest of us would never have known that an innocent man had been stolen by the government right out from under us.

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