Date: Wed, 14 Jun 95 11:15:41 CDT
From: [e--aw--n] at [netcom.com] (Ed Lawson)
Subject: A Major win!!

Quoted under fair use..

from the San Jose Mercury News June 14, 1995:

Ammo raid fiasco will cost taxpayers
By TOM SCHMITZ

Mercury News Staff Writer
What started out as the biggest seizure of illegal ammunition in U.S.
history became a history-making fiasco Tuesday after federal authorities
agreed to give back all the 74 million rounds of ammunition they hauled out
of a Santa Clara warehouse and pay the return freight at taxpayer expense.
The decision brings an embarrassing end to a high-profile case that
investigators had hoped would bring arrests, the confiscation of a dangerous
arsenal and a public warning to those who traffic in black-market weapons.
Instead, last month's raid on Eagle Exim Inc. has left the government with
nothing but a very public black eye.
Federal prosecutors have signed an agreement pledging to release all the
items seized from the company and take no further legal action against the
importer. Neither U.S. Customs Service officials nor the Justice Department
would comment on the case.

But company representatives were quick to say what the government would not.
``They were wrong,'' said company president Donald St. Pierre Jr. ``Dead
wrong.''

When they raided Eagle's offices on May 3, Customs agents accused the
company of using falsified documents to smuggle Russian and Chinese 7.62mm
cartridges, a type of ammunition commonly associated with assault-style
rifles. They described the stockpile as sufficient to arm a small nation and
used the seizure to highlight what they call a civilian threat posed by
weapons designed for warfare.

But Eagle Exim fought back, insisting it had done nothing illegal and
charging the government with grandstanding in the wake of the Oklahoma City
bombing.

Now that the case has crumbled, legal experts suspect that's exactly what
may have happened.
Agencies `raw-nerved'

``Clearly, the (Customs) service got caught up in the heat of the moment,''
said Joseph Russoniello, former chief federal prosecutor for the Bay Area.
``At that point in time, the agencies were raw-nerved about such things as
ammunition and explosives. . . . Everybody would be extra careful to make
sure there was no slippage on their watch.''

Given the political pressure that surrounds such cases, the government's
total capitulation is equally remarkable, said Robert Weisberg, who teaches
legal procedure at Stanford Law School.

``It seems that their probable cause dissolved completely,'' Weisberg said.
``This kind of thing shouldn't happen.''

Exactly what did happen may never be known. But Eagle attorneys say they
believe Customs agents eager to make a case used the Oklahoma bombing as an
excuse to dust off a year-old tip from a confidential informant identifying
Eagle as a smuggler of contraband ammunition.

Series of errors

Rather than check the accuracy of the tip, the agents rushed to get a search
warrant for a raid. But their information was so bad that the raiding party
initially showed up at the wrong address, bursting in on a precision
metalworking shop in a building Eagle had moved out of months before.
Problems continued to surface after the seizure. In legal papers filed to
secure the search warrant, Customs officials accused Eagle of trading in
Chinese ammunition, now banned under U.S. trade law. Eagle pointed out that
all the cartridges in its warehouse had hollow-point bullets, a type China
does not make.

Within days, red-faced investigators agreed to return more than a quarter of
the cartridges. Lawyers for the company challenged the legality of the
search warrant and petitioned a court to return the entire stockpile.

Customs officials continued to hint that charges would be filed. But a week
before the case was due to go before a federal judge, prosecutors told Eagle
they were dropping their criminal investigation and instead considering a
civil complaint, allowing them to continue to hold the ammunition.

That case was supposed to be filed today. Eagle attorneys now dismiss it as
a desperate attempt at damage-control.

And with the ammunition on its way back, the only thing Eagle hasn't won is
an apology.

``That's the one thing they could do -- they could apologize,'' said company
attorney William Nickerson. ``If this isn't evidence of being wrong, what
the hell is?''

Loss put at $250,000

Meanwhile, Eagle is adding up the damages from the raid, which it estimates
has already cost more than $250,000 in lost sales and legal fees. The
company also lost the ability to store ammunition in its Santa Clara
warehouse after city officials said it posed a safety hazard.

For the moment, the stockpile is at a site in Oakland. ``What we're going to
have to do now is find an alternative place to store our merchandise when
they release it,'' St. Pierre said.

The company has agreed not to file its own suit against the government. As
for the Customs officials who ordered the raid, they probably are facing an
internal inquiry, said Russoniello.

``I would be very surprised if they weren't doing that,'' he said.

Yet although the government may have blundered in raiding Eagle Exim, the
public shouldn't take the incident as a troubling example of federal
agencies abusing their powers, Russoniello said.

``I'd be more worried about what's going to happen to the 74 million rounds
of ammunition,'' he said. ``I'm glad somebody was looking at it and asking
questions.''


*********************************************************
Ed Lawson, Austin                    "The appearance of evil is often
                           fax              worse than evil, itself.  Pure
evil
(512)329-8574  (512)329-0475     has sense enough to disguise itself
                                             as "good." So people combat the

                                             appearance of evil and let pure
evil
                                             go unchallenged."
                                                             L. Oboe Atzul,
June 1995
*********************************************************