FBI Bans Evidence Removal by Agents

The FBI has banned agents from removing anything from crime scenes or evidence sites after a Justice Department review found 13 agents took chunks of concrete, pieces of metal, U.S. flags and a Tiffany globe paperweight from the rubble of the World Trade Center.

None of the agents has been charged with a crime. One was suspended for 10 days for shipping 80 pounds of debris to his home office, and another is under investigation by the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility for making misleading statements about what was taken from the debris collection site at the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, N.Y.

The disclosures were contained in a still-confidential report prepared by Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department inspector general.

Portions of the report were released Thursday by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and the National Whistleblower Center.

“It’s so obviously wrong to do it,” said Stephen M. Kohn, board chairman of the Whistleblower Center. “All of this evidence should be turned over to the New York prosecutors.”

The report also says items were taken by FBI agents after the Oklahoma City bombing, in the investigation of Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski and in the first World Trade Center attack, according to two government officials speaking on condition of anonymity.

According to the report, after the Tiffany globe from the World Trade Center turned up in an FBI field office in Minneapolis, federal prosecutors decided not to bring charges against a government contractor accused of stealing a fire truck door that had been mangled in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Grassley, a senior Senate Judiciary Committee member and frequent FBI critic, said in a letter to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III that there appeared to be a double standard for agents because private citizens had been prosecuted and given prison sentences for taking items from the site.

“The unseemly and ghoulish grave-robbing and filching does cast shame on the FBI as an institution in the eyes of the public, and that warrants a strong response,” Grassley said.

FBI officials insisted that no evidence was compromised and no personal effects were taken.

Still, the agency acknowledged it should have had a clear-cut rule against taking anything from crime or evidence scenes. The new policy, according to an FBI statement, “effectively prohibits the removal of any debris by personnel at a site.”

The investigation was prompted by Jane Turner, a 25-year special agent who noticed the Tiffany globe on a secretary’s desk in the Minneapolis FBI office in August 2002. After learning it came from the World Trade Center, she brought the globe to the attention of the inspector general.

Turner claims in a whistle-blower lawsuit that she was retaliated against and forced to retire. The FBI acknowledges forcing her out but has said the action had nothing to do with the investigation.