SOMETHING STINKS ABOUT THE AGNEW CASE: FBI refuses to answer legitimate questions

Opinion

VIRGINIA BEACH (August 6, 2007) - - Too many times bureaucrats and politicians get away from accountability by hiding behind self-proclaimed policy designed to protect them from the public, media, and accountability.

Public servants should serve the public, not hide their acts from inquiry, assuming everything they do is on the up and up!

More often than not, the media allows bureaucats to wiggle out of situations in which they feel uncomfortable because it doesn't have the time to point out the damaging value of what they refused to answer. The media frequently doesn't follow up.

Somewhere in the background of the ongoing Agnew saga: Miscarriage of Justice: Conspiracy or Coincidence - involving the investigation, trial, conviction, and sentencing of Mike and Barbara Agnew on 11 bank fraud charges involving Resource Bank: Somewhere there was a trigger that started this thing and it's not as simple as the public answers.

The bank's records and testimony acknowledge it did not initiate the investigation of the Agnews. The bank's problem with the Agnews was going to be handled civilly. At no time in the record is it mentioned they planned to prosecute until the FBI voluntarily shows up a knockin' on the doors looking for work.

Ten days after the bank shut down the Agnews' concrete contracting company - AGM, an FBI Special Agent (SA) Nicole Hendericks waltzes into the bank 'wanting' to investigate a 'story she saw' in the newspaper. Of course the bank's position was 'have at it.' Ten-days after the fact the agent shows up. And that was 3 months before the FBI ever took custody of all the records Resource confiscated from AGM on August 7, 1999. That's right - the unsecured records were rifled through by an unknown number of people and interests - all illegally. (See: Letter from bank officials to Armada Hoffler)

Professional investigators grab and protect evidence with their lives - not let it get contaminated. Barbara Agnew said documents are missing from the records, documents were added to the records to help convict them that weren't there when the records were confiscated, and some can't be found.

Things don't work that way. Somebody goosed somebody to take action. Hendericks stayed on the job until the Agnews were indicted. She resigned from the FBI and got married. She was never called as a witness which allowed her to sit in the courtroom and hear all testimony throughout the trial.

At each recess of court, she was seen huddling in the hall with bank officials and their lawyers. No one can say she was repeating 'disallowed,' sacred testimony, but it certainly didn't look ethical or professional on the part of a X-FBI agent who knew the rules.

Barbara Agnew was in the room at Resource Bank during the investigation when she overheard a Resource senior vice president ask Hendericks 'where is your gift' registry on file? 'We'd like to get you some 'nice' gifts' for her wedding. That would normally raise an 'Oooopsie.'

Was this a quid pro quo? A query to the Norfolk FBI office, resulted in the spokesman there saying there'd been an investigation (yeah, we've heard that one before, I like investigating myself, too, don't you?). No problems were found, he said.

He said the FBI would not make Ms. Hendericks-Duckworth or her cohort in crime, SA Michael McMahon (brought in to finish the job on the Agnews), available to answer specific questions.

Therefore VNS sent the following questions to Ms. Hendericks-Duckworth via the U.S. mail. (See: Letter to the X-agent.) The letter concluded: "Your failure to contact me with some response, refusal to comment, no comment or explanation by Aug. 31, (2005) will be reported as a "no response...".

In our business, the questions are more important than the answers: Therefore, here are the interview questions sent Ms. Hendericks-Duckworth:

VNS: What was your relationship with the bank, its officers, board members, stockholders, or employees prior to the Agnew investigation and when did it begin? And were you in anyway involved in the criminal investigation of (the) Armada/Hoffler case by the FBI in Chesapeake and other Tidewater locations?

Ms. Hendericks-Duckworth: Refused to answer.

VNS: There are conflicting reports of whether you initiated the investigation into the Agnew case or whether the bank did. Which of you initiated the investigation and on what date?

Ms. Hendericks-Duckworth: Refused to answer.

VNS: Can you explain why, after you contacted the bank and an investigation was initiated, as the FBI investigatory agent, you allowed the AGM records to remain unsecured to be rummaged through by third parties for 3 months before taking FBI control of them?

Ms. Hendericks-Duckworth: Refused to answer.

VNS: Did you receive any wedding or other gifts from officers, directors, stockholders, employees or group thereof of Resource Bank?

Ms. Hendericks-Duckworth: Refused to answer.

VNS: Did any officer, director, stockholder, or employee of the bank ever discuss with you where your wedding registry was filed and for what purpose?

Ms. Hendericks-Duckworth: Refused to answer.

VNS: If you received any gift from any officer, director, stockholder, employee, or group thereof, can you please identify what it was and its approximate value?

Ms. Hendericks-Duckworth: Refused to answer.

VNS: What is the FBI policy for receiving gifts? Value limits? Donors?

Ms. Hendericks-Duckworth: Refused to answer.

VNS: Between the indictment of the Agnews and their trial, you left the employ of the FBI. Why? When?

Ms. Hendericks-Duckworth: Refused to answer.

VNS: Although you were no longer employed by the FBI during the trial, you attended as a spectator. The court excluded the witnesses. Yet during trial recesses, I have been told that you had conversations with Mary Smith and Nelda Old, excluded witnesses.

This would appear to be a professional violation, if not unethical or illegal. And whether the conversations were right or wrong, perception is reality. Never in my more than 40 years of covering courts and justice have I known a professional agent to converse during trial recesses with excluded witnesses - not even about the weather.

Can you explain this allegation/behavior?

Ms. Hendericks-Duckworth: Refused to answer.

So there you go folks! What do those questions ask and why do you think the X-FBI agent, responsible for a prosecution that became a persecution, refused to answer? What have they done that they are hiding? And who are they hiding it for? Who has the money to influence the FBI? And how much was it?

VNS asked the questions. You see how your tax dollar bureaucrats responded. It is up to you, the public, to draw you own conclusions. What would you think, if you'd been in the Agnews' shoes? And this happened to you?

Why would the FBI hide a tax-paid public servant behind policy in a concluded criminal trial? What are they hiding by refusing to answer legitimate questions about how the investigation began and who was behind it, etc.? Remember: The Resource Bank did not ask for the investigation!

Evidence uncovered so far by VNS continues to point to the fact that 'someone, somewhere, had to have a scapegoat to cover up something else illegal that was going on." TAG! The Agnews were it.

Then let the FBI build a case around the corruption and convict the wrong people. Has happened before. Will happen again. And happened in this case.

How can anyone respect such an abusive government agency? There are many good people in government, but the FBI is more interested in shinning its badge than the light of publicity on its questionable actions.

And these are some of the folks who get to do warrant-less searches, wire-tap law abiding citizens at will under the guise of the Patriot Act and other such law? Gimme a break!

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