Senator Chuck Grassley made the following statement after the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General released, “An Assessment of the 1996 Department of Justice Task Force Review of the FBI Laboratory.”
Grassley led an investigation of the crime lab in the mid-1990s after an agent and scientist in the lab, Dr. Fred Whitehurst, blew the whistle on sub-standard science. The Justice Department Inspector General subsequently found serious problems in the lab and faulted several individuals. The Justice Department created a Task Force to remedy those problems, but today’s Inspector General report found that there were serious flaws in the Task Force’s design, implementation, and management.
“The Inspector General’s findings are shocking. The initial shoddy lab work was compounded by the Justice Department’s unconscionable failures to fix the problems it caused in hundreds of cases. The department should be ashamed and embarrassed by what the Inspector General found. This Task Force supposedly worked from 1996 until 2005, and yet it seems to have accomplished virtually nothing. By failing to make notifications to defendants whose lives were on the line, this Task Force failed to ensure that justice was served to those who were affected by the FBI’s shoddy work. As a result of the FBI’s poor lab work, foot dragging, and resistance to accountability, defendants in capital cases were denied an opportunity for a trial based only on scientifically reliable evidence. The FBI and the Justice Department will have a lot of work to do to restore the public’s confidence in their integrity following these revelations.”
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