Mayfield Terrorized by FBI
You may recall the story of Brandon Mayfield (timeline), the Portland-area lawyer arrested and held as a material witness in the Madrid train bombing case.
Saturday's NY Times had a shocking investigative follow-up on the story. I'm surprised I haven't found any discussion of it around the Blogosphere.
The whole mess began when Spanish police sent copies of incriminating fingerprint evidence to the United States and other countries. The FBI crime lab identified the prints as belonging to Mr. Mayfield, whose fingerprints were on file from his military days. But since the investigators were working from a rougher, second copy, they sent Mayfield's prints to Spanish police for confirmation.
The Spanish police responded that the prints conclusively did NOT match Mayfield's. When the FBI met with Spanish police in Madrid to confer on the matter, the Spanish maintained their original conclusion despite vigorous efforts by the FBI to convince them otherwise. Furthermore, even though the Spanish were working from the original (i.e. clearer) copy of the fingerprints, the FBI never requested the original copy for themselves.
The Spanish denials had worried U.S. prosecutors, and they were anxious to hear how they responded to the FBI's views of the matter When the FBI agents returned from the Madrid meeting, they LIED TO FEDERAL PROSECUTORS, claiming that the issue had been resolved and that the Spanish agreed with their conclusions.
The FBI investigators were confident that they had a terrorist in custody, and they weren't going to let the Spanish dictate what counts as a match.
Apart from the "slam dunk" fingerprint evidence, what else did they have against Mayfield? Plenty, mister, plenty ...
- He had represented a Portland terrorism defendant in a custody case.
- His telephone records showed a 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.
- 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. [Damning evidence. Clearly he has something to hide.]
- He was observed driving to and from a mosque. [Mayfield is a practicing Muslim.]
- There were no travel records for Mr. Mayfield. The investigators inferred that he must have been travelling under an assumed name. [It turned out he simply hadn't travelled for over 10 years.]
When the FBI raided Mayfield's home and office on May 6 for "explosives, blasting agents and detonators," what incriminating evidence did they find?
The court records show that the agents confiscated a large number of items from the office, including computer disks, bank statements, yellow Post-it Notes and confidential client files. Meanwhile, agents were confiscating things from the Mayfield's home, including a .22-caliber handgun and .22-caliber rifle, his Koran, and what was described in the search warrant return report as "miscellaneous Spanish documents" ...
Oooh, jackpot! The Spanish documents that connect Mayfield to the Madrid train bombings!
Um, no. Those "miscellaneous documents" happened to be "Spanish homework belonging to Mr. Mayfield's children."
Now one might agree that the FBI clearly overreached but nevertheless insist that the system ultimately worked in this case, since Mayfield was released after two weeks.
But that's decidedly NOT the moral to take away from this story. If the Spanish had not been involved -- say, if it had been a domestic bombing case, and if FBI investigators had a partial or imperfect fingerprint like the imperfect copy they obtained from the Spanish -- then Mayfield would still be in custody and possibly prosecuted for the bombing (a capital crime in which the death penalty would certainly be sought) and (here's the point for the wingnuts) THE REAL TERRORIST(S) WOULD STILL BE AT LARGE.
1:06:18 AM 
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