An FBI special agent was testifying in the government's high-profile terrorism trial against Omar Abdel Rahman, the "blind sheik" suspected of plotting the first attack on the World Trade Center.

Frederic Whitehurst, a chemist and lawyer who worked in the FBI's crime lab, testified that he was told by his superiors to ignore findings that did not support the prosecution's theory of the bombing.

"There was a great deal of pressure put upon me to bias my interpretation," Whitehurst said in U.S. District Court in New York in 1995.

Even before the Internet, Whitehurst's extraordinary claim went viral. It turned out he had written or passed along scores of memos over the years warning of a lack of impartiality and scientific standards at the famed lab that did the forensic work after the World Trade Center attack and in other cases.

With the FBI under fire for its handling of the 1993 trade center attack, the Oklahoma City bombing and the O.J. Simpson murder case, officials had to act.

After the Justice Department's inspector general began a review of Whitehurst's claims, Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh decided to launch a task force to dig through thousands of cases involving discredited agents, to ensure that "no defendant's right to a fair trial was jeopardized," as one FBI official promised at a congressional hearing. snip" end quote

This is the lead to a several page investigative report in yesterday's Washington Post, and goes on to expose the FBI of seriously messing up / making up / slanting their forensic reports on all kinds of crimes.

And how they send some incoherent form to people in prison, years later, which would at a minimum allow them a new trial.

Scoot over on the bench, Iran, we can fake evidence too.

That's not to say that all law enforcement is guilty of being corrupt, but greed and fear of crossing those who are corrupt has turned our system of justice into a joke.

I shall endeavor to read the article first thing in the morning, and give my comments upon completion.

Justice, these days, is for sale to those with the money to pay for it, or the power and influence to get what they want.

Actions such as these were what Reverend Wright was condemning.

My second question is... how can prosecutors deliberately keep information from the defense team. Isn't there some law requiring full disclosure? I believe there is.

Then, there's this line: "As long as the task force got the information, a participant said, it did not matter whether it was written down."

Um, excuse me, but aren't records... paper or electronic... important? The human mind cannot be relied upon as a fact file holder of important information.

Between the questionable forensics, destroyed records, refusal to disclose, excuse upon excuse, not to mention the passage of time in such investigations... I'd have to say that we should have a hard time believing anything told to us by anyone connected to the Justice Department, and that we, as citizens, better hope we either never get in trouble, or we have enough money to buy the best defense there is.

And this... this is most bothersome:

"After the 1993 World Trade Center attack, the key FBI witness "worked backward," tailoring his testimony to reach the result he wanted. Other agents "spruced up" notes for trial, altered reports without the author's permission or failed to document or confirm their findings."

Extremely bothersome, or troubling, in my opinion.

When I add up what I'm reading with what I've been personally told by very reliable ex law enforcement sources, plus our own experiences with the legal system, I am more certain than ever that justice is just out of reach for too many people... and that our Constitutional rights are being stomped into the ground by a system that believes it can make up its own rules as it goes along.