Just a Little Stumble

By Rick Horowitz

This kind of thing happens all the time: You're driving from one place to another place, you park your car in some motel parking lot. You leave a few things in your car, some joker breaks in and grabs the stuff. It happens.

Of course, sometimes the details are a little bit different. Let's say you're driving a truck instead of a car. Let's say the stuff you've left in your truck isn't just a Walkman and a pair of sunglasses, but a cache of high-power weapons and enough ammunition to keep things busy for hours. Let's say the joker not only grabs the goodies, but the truck, too.

And just to make it interesting: Let's say you're not the average weapon-toting tourist (or even the above-average weapon-toting tourist) getting your particular load of firepower ripped off right under your nose. Let's say you're the FBI.

Oops.

Are we inventing this one? We are not. The whole thing happened just that way just this week in Memphis, where the FBI was teaching people how to fight domestic terrorism, of all things. The motel in question is a Budgetel Inn, hard by Interstate 40 on the eastern edge of town, and the truck in question is a 1989 Chevy Suburban which belongs to the FBI office in Little Rock.

Belonged to the FBI office in Little Rock -- now it belongs to the ages. By the time the authorities caught up with it, it was nothing but a burned-out shell. And the weapons? You don't want to know.

Sure you do.

Seven M-16 rifles, according to the Memphis Police Department. Three submachine guns. Two grenade launchers. A 12-gauge shotgun. And 8,000 rounds of ammunition. All went bye-bye, at least temporarily. At last count, they'd managed to recover all but one of the weapons before the equipment -- and the few remaining shreds of the FBI's reputation -- disappeared for good.

The bureau is not exactly on a hot streak lately -- have you noticed? First there was the Olympic Park bombing fiasco, Richard Jewell and all that. Then there was the hullabaloo about the various screwups at the FBI crime lab. Sure, the Timothy McVeigh conviction gave them a bit of a boost -- but now this. They're cracking down on domestic terrorism, and they can't even keep their own weapons from being stolen?

Here's what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Well, didn't anyone hear the alarm go off when they broke into the truck?" Actually, no -- nobody heard the alarm go off; that's because this particular truck didn't have an alarm.

So the next thing you're thinking is, "Well, didn't anyone notice them breaking into the truck? The truck was locked, wasn't it?" Maybe yes, maybe no. "I would assume it was," says an FBI special agent. (He assumes?!) "I can't imagine that it wouldn't be." This is a few syllables short of definite.

So the last thing you're thinking is, "Well, even if they could get into the truck without breaking in and without setting off an alarm, they couldn't just take the weapons, right? The weapons had to be protected somehow, didn't they?"

Funny you should ask.

The FBI does have a policy: Vehicle trunks with weapons in them have to be secured with chain locks. There's just one teeny-tiny problem with the policy: The Chevy Suburban didn't have a trunk!

Hey, no sweat then; just leave all that stuff sitting there in the open. Who'd be stupid enough to steal it?

Speaking of stupid...

 6/6/97