AP Enterprise: 9/11 Thefts Not Prosecuted

Dan L'Allier, an emergency medical technician, poses in front of his ambulance Wednesday, June 14, 2006. in Ellsworth, Wisc. His employer dispatched trucks in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, to a warehouse, about 25 miles from Ground Zero, and had them loaded up with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of donated bottled water, clothes, tools and generators, to be moved to Minnesota in a plot to sell some for profit, according to government records and interviews. L'Allier, who witnessed some of the thefts, ignored a company executives' order and talked to the FBI. (AP Photo/Bill Kelley) (Bill Kelley - AP)

KEI had worked for years for the government, providing disaster relief services during tornadoes, floods and other catastrophes. It was picked to manage the New York warehouse for the government's main Sept. 11 relief contractor.

Officially, the government can't fully explain why the company wasn't charged with Sept. 11 thefts.

Thomas Heffelfinger, the former U.S. attorney in Minnesota who prosecuted KEI, said he never intended to charge the company for the ground zero theft, and instead referred that part of the case to prosecutors in New York.

"At the heart of the KEI case was financial fraud," Heffelfinger said. "It was so bad we didn't need the theft."

Heather Tasker, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in New York, declined to discuss the KEI case. The whistleblowers, however, said they've never been contacted by New York prosecutors.

FBI documents state the government, in fact, was preparing to charge KEI with the ground zero thefts.

A March 2002 entry in the FBI's "prosecutive status" report states the U.S. Attorney's office in Minnesota intended "to prosecute individuals who were alleged to be involved in the transportation of stolen goods from New York City after the terrorist attack." A followup entry from Sept. 6, 2002 lists the specific evidence supporting such a charge.

The lead investigators for the FBI and the Federal Emergency Management Agency told AP that the plan to prosecute KEI for those thefts stopped as soon as it became clear in late summer 2002 that an FBI agent in Minnesota had stolen a crystal globe from ground zero.

That prompted a broader review that ultimately found 16 government employees, including a top FBI executive and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, had such artifacts from New York or the Pentagon.

"How could you secure an indictment?" FEMA investigator Kirk Beauchamp asked. "It would be a conflict."

While the globe's discovery had been widely reported, its impact on the Sept. 11 thefts had remained mostly unknown.

"It's a sad indictment of our justice system that they would let people go in order to cover up misconduct by federal employees, especially in a prestigious agency like the FBI," said Jane Turner, the lead FBI agent. She too became a whistleblower alleging the bureau tried to fire her for bringing the stolen artifacts to light. Turner retired in 2003.