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| Memos: FBI Tried to Avoid Inmate Death Hearings |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 05/29/2003 |
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On TV and on paper, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin G. Hatch pledged to hold hearings into the death of a federal prisoner the government says hanged himself even though the victim's throat was cut and his face bruised and bloodied. Hatch, R-Utah, suggested as long as six years ago that the death was a murder at the hand of government employees and there was an 'aroma of a cover-up.' A federal court recently awarded the prisoner's family $1.1 million for intentional infliction of pain for misleading the family about the case. But Hatch's hearings never materialized - one of several examples critics say shows Hatch hasn't been aggressive enough as chairman of the Senate committee that oversees the FBI and Justice Department. Hatch rejects the criticism, saying he has a lengthy record of questioning FBI and Justice wrongdoing 'and will do so again if warranted.' Internal FBI memos obtained by The Associated Press offer a rare window into how the bureau escaped hearings in the Oklahoma City prison death. Agents convinced one of Hatch's Senate leaders - then-Republican whip Don Nickles - that hearings were unnecessary. Nickles 'intimated that he had a significant role in determining whether this matter would require congressional review, and that such action would most likely not be necessary,' FBI agents wrote in a Jan. 28, 1998, memo summarizing their contacts with Nickles. Those same memos raise questions about whether the FBI told the senator the full story. They show Nickles wanted to know whether there was evidence of a struggle in the cell before prisoner Kenneth Trentadue died, and agents told him that the blood found on various items in the cell belonged to Trentadue. But one of the same agents who briefed Nickles later testified at the civil trial that six months after the death he found a mattress in the prison cell with two blood stains on it - one which belonged to someone other than Trentadue and which was never tested for DNA. After Trentadue's body was found, with his face was bloodied and bruised and his throat cut, prison officials concluded he hanged himself. The local medical examiner openly questioned the conclusion. Internal probes by the government reaffirmed the suicide ruling but found Justice employees had lied during the case and that evidence was mishandled, including a bloody sheet that was stuffed in an FBI car and putrefied, destroying its value as evidence. The FBI's meetings with Nickles occurred just weeks after Hatch sent out a news release to announce that his committee planned hearings. 'It looks as though somebody in the Bureau of Prisons or having relationships with the Bureau of Prisons murdered the man,' he told then-Attorney General Janet Reno at one point. This week, Hatch said he believes his early and aggressive tactics forced the Justice Department to conduct multiple reviews of Trentadue's death. 'The committee did not hold hearings on the Trentadue matter because it appeared very unlikely that such hearings would add materially to the multiple criminal investigations of the case, as well as a separate investigation by the Justice Department inspector general, all of which concluded that Trentadue committed suicide and was not murdered,' Hatch said. 'This is not to say that I think this case was handled correctly. In fact, it was not,' he said. |
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