A scientist and former U.S. Army man was named a person of interest in the 2001 anthrax deadly attack. He was later cleared of all charges, but a federal judge wanted to make public the court records which have been sealed for so many years. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Royce Lamberth released the information for The New York Times and the Los Angeles newspapers who later worked on their own to discover everything about Steven Hatfill.

Hatfill was never charged and in addition he even received $5.85 million from the Government for accusing him of false deeds and violating his privacy rights. The FBI investigators have been trying to track him for so many years and the Justice Department paid him in June the money he had wanted.

In August, both FBI and the Justice Department said that they were wrong about Hatfill and that Bruce Ivins, another U.S. Army scientist, was to blame for the anthrax attack. But Ivins killed himself in July after he had apparently sent the anthrax letters to politicians and news organizations back in September 2001 after the terrorist attack.

Five people died after opening the letters and 17 other got sick. Immediately after this attack, the FBI called Hatfill a person of interest in the case. They searched the scientist’s house, but it seems they had found no clear evidence to charge him. But now, judge Lamberth released a ruling of 15 pages through which he rejected the Justice Department argument that Hatfill should go on with his life without anybody to look through his file.

 Lamberth added that the public asked for access to the documents regarding Hatfill’s case. As conceded by the government, “the anthrax investigation was one of the most complex, time-consuming and expensive investigations in recent history," the Judge wrote.