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Texas Tech Professor Says FBI Tricked Him Into Plague Confession
Texas Tech University professor Thomas Butler has said the FBI tricked him into confessing that he had accidentally destroyed 30 vials of plague samples and that he had falsely reported them missing, the New York Times reported yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 4). In January, Butler told university officials that 30 out of 150 vials of plague bacteria had been stolen, prompting a massive FBI search, according to the Times. After two days of questioning, however, Butler said in a handwritten affidavit that he had accidentally destroyed the vials and had reported them missing “to demonstrate why I could not account for the plague bacteria that had been in my possession.” Butler is now scheduled to begin trial in two weeks in federal court on almost 70 charges, including many unrelated to the charge of making false statements to FBI agents, the Times reported. According to court documents, Butler has said that while he may have accidentally destroyed the vials, he does not remember doing so (Kenneth Chang, New York Times, Oct. 19). During an interview aired last night on CBS’s 60 Minutes, Butler said the FBI had tricked him into making a confession to close the case. “I was tricked and deceived by the government. I feel I was naive to have trusted them and the assurances they gave me,” he said (CBS News.com, Oct. 19).
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