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virus: Witchhunt madness
« on: 2004-06-16 22:27:13 » |
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June 15, 2004 http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20040615/03
Artist faces bioterror chargesAttorney for Steven Kurtz says FBI is
'zeroing in' on anti-bioterrorism spending message | By John Dudley Miller
A Federal grand jury in Buffalo will consider possible bioterrorism charges
today (June 15) against an art professor who uses biotechnology to make
performance art displays criticizing capitalism.
Steven Kurtz is an associate professor at the Buffalo campus of the State
University of New York. He came under suspicion on May 11 after he called
911 early in the morning to report that his wife had died in her sleep,
from what authorities later said was heart failure.
While in his home, police and paramedics spotted items including Petri
dishes and scientific equipment, according to his attorney, that caused
them to call the FBI. After the FBI obtained a criminal search warrant,
agents of the 30-agency Joint Bioterrorism Task Force then spent parts of 2
days in hazmat suits searching his home and removing several items.
The search team found no dangerous agents, according to Buffalo FBI
spokesperson Paul Moskal. Kurtz's lawyer, Paul Cambria, said they found
samples of three different kinds of bacteria, one of which was an
"innocuous" genetically modified strain of Escherichia coli Kurtz used in
his displays.
Kurtz is controversial because of his membership in the Critical Art
Ensemble (CAE), a tiny group of artists nationwide who build biotechnology
arts projects with a political message. Neither for nor against
biotechnology in general, according to its web site, the group advocates
"contestational biology" – opposition to the belief that "the 'free' market
always works in the public interest by saving us from environmental,
health, and population problems."
The Department of Justice has subpoenaed several of Kurtz's present and
former CAE colleagues from around the country to testify today. The
subpoena for one of them, Beatriz da Costa, a professor at the University
of California at Irvine, says that the investigation involves possible
crimes of possessing biological agents defined in Section 175 of the US
Biological Weapons Anti-terrorism Act of 1989, according to her attorney,
Dan Henry.
The Buffalo federal district attorney's office refuses to say what the
government took from Kurtz or even to verify that they are investigating
him. "We don't say there is or isn't an investigation," William Hochul,
Jr., chief of the office's Terrorism Division, told The Scientist. "We
don't say who is or isn't subpoenaed. We just kind of proceed until such
time as things happen in open court."
Kurtz wrote The Scientist in an E-mail that on advice of counsel, he could
not speak to the press. But in an E-mail from him to a correspondent who
posted it on the Internet June 2, Kurtz wrote, "I was detained for 22 hours
by the FBI. They seized my wife's body, house, cat, and car. These items
were released a week later."
Kurtz wrote, "They seized computers, science equipment, chunks of my
library, teaching files, ID, and all my research for a new book." Referring
to today's grand jury hearing, he concluded, "In all probability, I will be
arrested shortly thereafter."
Because of the Justice Department's secrecy, some of the lawyers
representing people who will testify say they have no idea what the
government will allege. Henry said that the prosecutors are "just throwing
their net out very broadly to conduct their investigation and see what it
turns up."
"They are zeroing in on his message," Kurtz's lawyer Cambria told The
Scientist. "I know that because they're looking at past things that he's
written and so on, and they're trying to use that to circumstantially show
that he's some kind of terrorist, which is kind of ridiculous."
Cambria said Kurtz objects to spending money on bioterrorism defense at the
expense of the public health agenda of conquering natural killer diseases,
and he opposes genetically modified crops that give the companies who
create them a monopoly on selling them. Previously, Cambria successfully
defended Hustler magazine founder Larry Flynt in the Supreme Court, and he
won suits against municipalities that tried to block the performances of
rock star Marilyn Manson.
Nonviolent protests opposing the grand jury hearing are scheduled to take
place today in Buffalo, San Francisco, Vienna, and Amsterdam.
Cambria said he sees no parallels between Kurtz's case and those of
convicted plague researcher Thomas Butler and bioterrorism researcher
Steven Jay Hatfill, who has never been charged with a crime but remains a
"person of interest" in the FBI's ongoing investigation of who sent anthrax
to several people in the wake of September 11.
But Jonathan Turley, the lawyer handling Butler's appeal of his 2-year
conviction for fraud and for improperly shipping plague samples to
Tanzania, disagreed. "All of these cases showed a distinct lack of judgment
and adult supervision at the Justice Department. There's a new culture of
body counts at Justice. There's very little attention to who is being
prosecuted or the means of prosecution. Prosecutors seem to be trying to
prosecute anyone of anything to get the numbers up in the war on terror."
Correction (posted June 16): When originally posted, this story incorrectly
stated that Professor Kurtz would appear before the Federal grand jury
proceeding June 15. As is customary in such actions, he was not subpoenaed
and did not appear. The Scientist regrets the error.
************
To put this in recent terms, this is a memetic fad like unto the one that
ruined the lives of so many people in the McMartin pre school case in
Southern California.
Keith Henson
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