HistoryCommons.org Profile: Patrick Fitzgerald
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Jun 9, 6:06 AM EDT

Fitzgerald threatens to sue publisher over book

By MIKE ROBINSON
AP Legal Affairs Writer

CHICAGO (AP) -- The top federal prosecutor in Chicago is threatening to sue publisher HarperCollins, calling a book about the war on terrorism that focuses in part on cases he handled "a deliberate lie masquerading as the truth."

If HarperCollins publishes the new edition of "Triple Cross" by Peter Lance this month "and it defames me or casts me in a false light, HarperCollins will be sued," Patrick Fitzgerald said in a letter to the New York-based company.

The book focuses on, among other things, major terrorism cases that Fitzgerald prosecuted when he was an assistant U.S. attorney in New York in the 1990s.

Its content goes beyond normal criticism, which "goes with the territory" for public figures, Fitzgerald told The Associated Press on Monday.

The main focus in the 9/11 Timeline this last week has been the anthrax attacks. There was some material about them in the Timeline at one point, but it got lost somehow. It has now been revived and new material has been added. The first anthrax mailing was in 1997, when the target was the Jewish service organization B'nai B'rith, and the CIA investigated the possibility of anthrax attacks using letters in 1999. Wrongly accused scientist Steven Hatfill's contract with USAMRID ended in the same year, and he then started helping the US military build a mock biological weapons factory. White House staff started taking anti-anthrax drugs on 9/11.

It will soon be the 10th anniversary of the African embassy bombings. I am planning to write a series of short pieces about the attacks, and how they could easily have been prevented. The first one is a summary of the 9/11 Timeline's chapter on one of the bombers, Wadih El-Hage.

Wadih El-Hage was an al-Qaeda operative involved in the 1998 East African embassy bombings, as well as serving as Osama bin Laden’s personal secretary. He was under investigation and known to both the FBI and CIA for years before the attacks, and this surveillance represented a missed opportunity to save over 200 lives. He was arrested after the bombings and sentenced to life in prison.

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