Momma Said There’d Be Days Like This

My mother was visiting here in Singapore when Brandon Mayfield was first arrested in Oregon. The FBI claimed to have found his fingerprint on a plastic bag associated with bomb materials turned up by Spanish investigators of the Madrid train bombings. Mayfield is a white American convert to Islam, and was tangentially associated with one of the men convicted in an Oregon terrorism case (Jeffrey Battle), having represented him in a custody dispute. He claimed not to have been outside the US in nearly ten years, a claim made all the more plausible by the fact that he does not currently have a valid passport.

Mom’s verdict: this is a total set-up. The FBI has been monitoring this guy for a while and now they want to pin something on him. But Mom, I said stupidly, granting that fingerprint matching is not a particularly exact science, and wrong ID’s do happen, what are the odds that the wrong match would happen to be a convert to Islam with any connection, no matter how tenuous, to any alleged terrorists? And she said, exactly. You just wait and see. Well, once again, she was right (though, as of a few days ago, he was still barred from talking about the case or leaving his house without permission from the authorities). Here is a quote from the official FBI apology to Mayfield (I’m actually pleased and suprised that they did apologize, so, 10 points for the FBI):

The submitted images [of the latent prints from Spain] were searched through the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS).

An IAFIS search compares an unknown print to a database of millions of known prints. The result of an IAFIS search produces a short list of potential matches.

A trained fingerprint examiner then takes the short list of possible matches and performs an examination to determine whether the unknown print matches a known print in the database.

Using standard protocols and methodologies, FBI fingerprint examiners determined that the latent fingerprint was of value for identification purposes.

This print was subsequently linked to Brandon Mayfield. That association was independently analyzed and the results were confirmed by an outside experienced fingerprint expert.

Soon after the submitted fingerprint was associated with Mr. Mayfield, Spanish authorities alerted the FBI to additional information that cast doubt on our findings.

As a result, the FBI sent two fingerprint examiners to Madrid, who compared the image the FBI had been provided to the image the Spanish authorities had.

Upon review it was determined that the FBI identification was based on an image of substandard quality, which was particularly problematic because of the remarkable number of points of similarity between Mr. Mayfield’s prints and the print details in the images submitted to the FBI.

Note that the FBI all along spoke of “a fingerprint”, while the Spanish now say that the fingerprints of an Algerian man, Ouhane Daoud were found:

Spanish authorities, however, expressed doubts from the start about the FBI’s fingerprint match. Yesterday, officials in Spain released a statement saying the fingerprints belong to an Algerian, Ouhnane Daoud. The Europa Press news agency reported Daoud had a residency permit to live in Spain and had a police record.

“The extensive and meticulous work of the Spanish scientific police has determined completely that the fingerprint identifications are of the medium and thumb fingers of the Algerian’s right hand,” Spanish authorities said.

From the same article: “Newsweek, which broke the story, quoted an unnamed U.S. counterterrorism official as saying the fingerprints were an “absolutely incontrovertible match.” So, the FBI was looking at a constellation of the medium and thumb prints of a single person’s hand, and claiming to have found a match with only one of those prints. Likely? Was he wearing some kind of Mission Impossible fingerprint mask, but only on his thumb?

Seriously, does anyone believe that the FBI innocently ran this through a general database and just happened to mistakenly come up with a Muslim advocate for one of the “Portland Seven”? Not to get all Ockham’s razorish on you, but isn’t it much more plausible that the FBI had a hard-on for Mayfield and tried to pin a heinous crime on him? The most charitable explanation is that the FBI ran the prints against a special secret list of suspicious Muslims, and Mayfield’s was the closest match. But is that so great? And, given that Mike Hawash and co. faced the threat of indefinite detention without access to counsel (the Padilla treatment), how secure are you feeling about their guilty pleas now?

I know the Constitution isn’t a suicide pact, and it doesn’t seem unreasonable for the FBI to focus on adherents of Islam rather than, say, Lutherans when fighting extremist Islamic terrorism. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as if the government knows how to “only sort of” violate your rights. The dial goes all the way to eleven, right from the start. Sorry, Mom. I’ve learned my lesson. Next time, I promise not to trust the government.

(Timberite fans of my mom’s no-nonsense hatin’ on the government should be aware that she’s also a total babe.)

UPDATE: Mayfield was indeed already under FBI surveillance prior to the bombing: “In a report prepared more than three weeks ago by Spanish police about the lead involving Mayfield, he was described as a U.S. military veteran who was already under investigation by U.S. authorities for alleged ties to Islamic terrorism.”

Hat Tip: my mom.