Frederic Whitehurst joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1982 and by 1986 was sent to the crime lab as a lab supervisor special agent. He knew something was wrong in the lab the first day he arrived. The lab was dirty and subject to contamination of evidence. “He found hairs, fibers, and lead particles. Any pharmaceutical lab in that condition would have been shut down. ... Additionally, the lab was not accredited,” writes former FBI Supervisory Special Agent Rosemary Dew in her book "Your FBI." The FBI was often asked to testify in criminal matters where the testimonies were “100% certain” which was blatantly untrue but seldom challenged by the unknowing defense.

“The FBI did not care that prisoners were executed on flawed FBI evidence. The bureau knew what was going on and ignored it,” writes Dew.

Whitehurst, now a former FBI scientist and veteran, “blew the whistle” on misconduct within the FBI crime lab and was America’s first successful FBI whistleblower. His case exposed forensic fraud in the FBI crime lab and, as a result, subjected it to outside oversight for the first time.

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