Kelly, John F. and Wearne, Phillip K. Tainting Evidence: Inside the Scandals
at the FBI Crime Lab. New York: The Free Press, 1998. 355 pages.
J. Edgar Hoover was a master at promoting his FBI. Since the 1930s,
one important ingredient in the FBI's public relations has been the
reputation of its crime lab. For decades it did almost all of the lab work
for state and federal prosecutors around the country. Forensic science
deals with probabilities and shades of gray more often than prosecutors and
television crime dramas would have you believe, even though the discipline
lacks an enforced set of ethical and accreditation standards. Over the
years, the FBI's monopoly became a formula for disaster -- it turns out that
key FBI scientists were incompetent, and some have even skewed test results
and testified falsely to favor the prosecution. This situation was exposed
after ten years of effort by an inside whistleblower, Frederic Whitehurst.
The authors take a detailed look at the lab's role in several high-
profile cases: the Unabomber case, the death of Judge Robert Vance from
a mailbomb, Ruby Ridge, the World Trade Center bombing, the Oklahoma City
bombing, and the hairs and fiber analysis in the Alcee Hastings case and
the Jeffrey MacDonald case. Meanwhile, Whitehurst was suspended from duty
in 1990. Even though official inquiries have substantiated his charges,
it still looks like he'll never get his job back.
ISBN 0-684-84646-2
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