When Dr. Frederic Whitehurst initially blew the whistle on the systemic forensic fraud in the FBI crime lab, he could never have known it was the start of a lifelong fight for government accountability.

In 1994, he reported his concerns with FBI lab practices internally. It was “alterations of reports, alterations of evidence, folks testifying outside their areas of expertise in courts of law”, said Whitehurst, but “really what was going on was human rights violations. We have a right to fair trials in this country… And that’s not what was going on at the FBI lab.”

After his superiors failed to take any action, he took his concerns to the Department of Justice. Whitehurst faced significant and ongoing retaliation from the FBI, who highly criticized his claims, attacked his credibility, and fired him from his position at the FBI crime lab as chemist and lab supervisor.

Bad Science and Forensic Fraud

 Eventually, investigations were launched into Whitehurst’s allegations but failed to lead to any justice. It wasn’t until ten years later that Whitehurst was finally vindicated, when a scathing 500+ page study of the lab by the Justice Department Inspector General, Michael Bromwich, concluded major reforms were required in the lab. This included the use of forensic hair analyses, which had been used for decades in state and federal criminal cases, and was proven flawed and inaccurate more than ninety percent of the time. Some of the cases Whitehurst had reported included the 1993 World Trade Center at