LAW FROM THE CENTER

Word from today's NY Times that FBI Agents took pieces of World Trade Center rubble home with them, and that the FBI is finally instituting a policy to deal with it:

Thirteen agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation took mementos, debris or valuables from the Staten Island landfill that held the rubble of the World Trade Center, and the F.B.I. now plans to formally ban the removal of crime-scene items as a result, officials said on Wednesday.

Among the items taken from the rubble, officials said, were a Tiffany globe paperweight, an American flag, chunks of concrete, bags of dust, bolts and pieces of metal, investigators from the Justice Department inspector general's office found.

The department first began investigating charges of possible theft last year after receiving a complaint that the Tiffany globe wound up on the desk of an F.B.I. secretary in Minneapolis. But the inspector general's investigation found that the removal of World Trade Center evidence was more widespread than previously realized and that the problem was a longstanding one at the F.B.I. at other crime scenes as well.

The results of the investigation, first reported Wednesday night by NBC News, outraged some survivors, who saw the removal of items from the rubble as insensitive to the memories of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"I would have hoped that the F.B.I. was more concerned with conducting an investigation and gathering evidence, not gathering mementos to sit on their bookshelves as a relic from the worst national tragedy in the country's history," said Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband died in the trade center and who has helped lead a group of survivors pushing for more answers about the attacks. "This speaks to a real lack of focus by the F.B.I. in getting to the bottom of what really happened on Sept. 11," she said.

I couldn't have said it better myself. For what it's worth, the military has had a similar provision in place for years. Ever since Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, theater commanders of deployed units have instituted an order generically referred to as General Order #1, that prohibits a host of activities which may be deemed by the local population as culturally insensitive. Such prohibited activities usually include "[r]emoving, possessing, selling, defacing, destroying archeological artifacts, or national treasures," and, "[i]n the event of armed conflict, taking of war trophies." Other prohibited activities often include gambling, the consumption of alcohol, and entrance into local houses of worship. Desert Storm commanders found the policy so effective that in every armed conflict or humanitarian deployment since, some form of the order has been enacted. Hopefully, agencies like the FBI can learn from the military's success in this area.