Black people loot. White people find stuff. The FBI takes "souvenirs"

[NNN0LHI]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4373627/

FBI agents took Ground Zero souvenirs

By Lisa Myers, Jim Popkin and the NBC Investigative Unit
NBC News
Updated: 7:33 p.m. ET Feb. 25, 2004

After 9/11, 400 FBI agents from around the country were dispatched to New York to look for evidence in the ruins of the World Trade Center. But now a federal investigation reveals that, while they sifted through piles of rubble, many of those same FBI agents removed items to use as souvenirs or gifts for bosses, friends and colleagues.

NBC News Senior Investigative Correspondent Lisa Myers has learned that at least 13 FBI agents took items including American flags that once flew over the World Trade Center, marble chunks of buildings from the towers, patches from World Trade Center security-guard uniforms, signs and keys marked “World Trade Center,” a glass Tiffany globe that originally cost $350 and somehow survived the collapse.

The items, and the agents’ behavior, are outlined in a scathing report issued in December by the Justice Department's Inspector General. Sources familiar with the Inspector General’s investigation provided details of the still-confidential report to the NBC News Investigative Unit. The report recommends disciplinary action for two agents who allegedly took items from the World Trade Center ruins, and chastises the FBI for having “no written policy governing what could be taken from recovery sites or mass crime scenes.”

“A memento from a mass grave of 3,000 people,” says Monica Gabriel, whose husband, Richard, died on 9/11. "To think of taking something from that site is not only ghoulish, it’s despicable. Nothing should be taken.”

[mike_c]

1. don-- just in case no one has thanked you recently for all you do...

...around here, for all the information you provide: Thank you!

:yourock:

[aquart]

2. GIFTS?????????????

jesus h. christ.

[intheflow]

5. I took a class on traumatic pastoral counseling.

One of my classmates had a chunk of the Morrow Building that her father-in-law (a federal official of some kind, one of the first people on the scene) gave her and her husband as sort of a sacred object. I wouldn't describe how she viewed it as a "gift." It really was a sacred object for her, and we passed it around. It was heavy with sorrow, you could feel the trauma in the rock. (Which sounds weird, especially for a Christian seminary, but it was something we all felt nonetheless.)

But then, a piece of the building isn't the same as WTC "memorabilia" like signs and flags and pieces of art that emerged unscathed. Building chunks will just be dumped somewhere. It's not the same thing at all, imo, although the article makes it sound like the same thing.

[moodforaday]

6. Well, I can sort of understand it

Two years ago my job sent me to Taiwan for three weeks. One Sunday there was an earthquake, 8-point Richter scale IIRC. The epicenter was off-shore, so the damage to Taipei was minimal, but when you feel the marble floor of an underground station move beneath your feet for the first time, and it takes you several long seconds to realize what it is that's happening around you, you don't think about Richter scale, you just want it to be over. One person died that day, a crane operator at a construction site:


Well, it was over in a few moments. Me and a friend walked out of the station, since the underground was closed for the day, and walked back to the hotel. The streets were littered with small and not-so-small pieces of high-rise office buildings. You wouldn't want to stand underneath one when they were falling. The buildings were very nearly untouched, mind, they just lost patches of the outer elevations. I picked a small piece and though I've only looked at it once since then, I know where it is, in a drawer in the desk I'm sitting at right now.

So I guess it's a kind of a souvenir from my first-ever brush with impermanence. It's no big deal. But I picked it and have kept it, and I can absolutely understand people picking up parts of the Twin Towers rubble. I understand some were then selling them on eBay, which is an entirely different thing.

[intheflow]

3. Nominated.

This is an important observation. Thanks for posting.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. Note the "removed items" terminology.

[NNN0LHI]

7. It was duly noted n/t

[Cocoa]

8. and Bush was "given" Saddam's pistol

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8077-2004Jun1.html

In this week's issue, Time magazine discloses that Saddam's pistol was given to Bush by military officials. The White House confirmed to us yesterday that he keeps the cross and the brick on display with the gun but gave no details.

[mogster]

9. Grave robbing, pilfering

Yuck!

[NNN0LHI]

11. It takes all kinds n/t

[pepperbear]

10. OMG! You mean......

" I WAS AN FBI AGENT DISPATCHED TO INVESTIGATE THE 9/11 INCIDENT AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT???!?!!?!??!?"

[David Zephyr]

12. Don, You Rock.

Thanks.

[NNN0LHI]

13. kick