Homeland Security's return of spy drone
to Mexican government just the most recent
example of government evidence tampering
In many cases, government agencies admit to destroying evidence;
list of compromised investigations includes assassinations of JFK and RFK,
plus September 11, Oklahoma City, and Waco

by Tom Kowitz
December 19, 2010

Homeland Security's return of spy drone
to Mexican government just the most recent example of government evidence tampering
To those familiar with so-called "investigations" of major events involving the federal government, Homeland Security's return to the Mexican government of the spy drone that crashed last week in an El Paso, Texas, neighborhood comes as no surprise.

Agencies of the United States government have a long history of destroying or "losing" evidence and failing to secure crime scenes of major historical importance. What follows is by no means a comprehensive list, but it shows that the federal government cannot be trusted to secure crime scenes, preserve evidence, and properly investigate crimes.

Assassination of John Kennedy

Presidential limousine dismantled immediately
From Heritage Auction Galleries, the world's largest collectibles auctioneer:

Following the assassination, F. Vaughn Ferguson, the Technical Service Representative at the White House responsible for the presidential automobiles, was told by the Secret Service to clean the limousine and get it ready in case the new president, Lyndon Johnson, wanted to use it to attend the funeral. When Ferguson arrived at the garage where the car had been taken following the assassination, he found parts of it dismantled and the leather seats ripped-out, the result of an FBI search for bullet fragments. 'Blood was everywhere,' Ferguson remembered. He worked throughout the weekend to get the car ready for the funeral, but President Johnson didn't use it. Ferguson kept some of the ripped-out leather as mementos.

Original autopsy notes burned
Dr. James Humes, who performed the autopsy on President Kennedy, swore in a deposition before the Assassination Records Review Board in 1996: "And I then burned the original notes in the fireplace of my family room to prevent them from ever falling into the hands of what I consider inappropriate people."

President Kennedy's brain lost
According to the Final Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1979), which, but the way, found a "probable conspiracy" in the JFK assassination, President Kennedy's brain was determined to have been lost in the spring of 1965.

Waco massacre

Front door or Mount Carmel Center missing since day of fire
One of the two front doors of the Mount Carmel Center has been missing since April 19, 1993, the day the Center was torched and gassed by federal agents. Seventy-four Branch Davidians were killed by the fire and/or gas, including some twenty children, thirteen who were under age six. According to the sworn testimony of Sgt. David Keys, a Texas state trooper who was standing guard as the flames at Waco were subsiding, he observed what appeared to be one of the front doors being loaded into a U-Haul truck approximately two hours before Texas Rangers took custody of Mount Carmel from FBI agents.

Body secretly removed from crime scene
Sgt. Keys also testified that he was ordered by Texas Department of Public Safety personnel to stand down and allow a white van to enter Mount Carmel to pick up a body prior to the Texas Rangers taking custody of the scene from the FBI.

September 11

Steel from World Trade Center shipped to China
Shanghai Baosteel Group Corp., China's largest steel company, purchased 50,000 tons of steel from the pulverized World Trade Center towers. The steel was shipped to Shanghai beginning in January, 2002.

BBC claims it has lost its original 9/11 tapes
The BBC, one of the world's top news agencies, claims to have lost its original tapes of one of the most important news stories of all time, stating, "We no longer have the original tapes of our 9/11 coverage" due to a mistake. While this is not an example of a government agency being directly involved with the destruction of evidence, this tale is impossibe to believe, and based on many other historical examples, government involvement is plausible.

Oklahoma City bombing

Several security cameras simultaneously stopped
working a few minutes before the explosion

From an Associated Press story originally published September 27, 2009:

The tapes turned over by the FBI came from security cameras various companies had mounted outside office buildings near the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. They are blank at points before 9:02 a.m., when a truck bomb carrying a 4,000 pound fertilizer-and-fuel-oil bomb detonated in front of the building, Trentadue said (referring to Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue).

'Four cameras in four different locations going blank at basically the same time on the morning of April 19, 1995. There ain't no such thing as a coincidence,' Trentadue said.

He said government officials claim the security cameras did not record the minutes before the bombing because 'they had run out of tape' or 'the tape was being replaced.'

'The interesting thing is they spring back on after 9:02,' he said. 'The absence of footage from these crucial time intervals is evidence that there is something there that the FBI doesn't want anybody to see.'

Assassination of Robert Kennedy

Evidence lost or destroyed by Los Angeles Police Department includes ballistics tests, audiotapes, photos 

From the book Who Killed Robert Kennedy? by Philip Melanson:

[T]he LAPD continued to resist for three more years-until letter campaigns and media coverage made it politically inexpedient to keep the information secret any longer. On April 19, 1988, the files were sent to the California State Archives in Sacramento, where researchers could evaluate the evidence for themselves.

The files made it clear that the LAPD had engaged in a massive cover-up, both during the original investigation and in the intervening twenty years. They'd not only attempted to misconstrue or overlook data that didn't support their lone-assassin view, but they'd actively destroyed evidence that might suggest a conspiracy... Now it learned that:

* The results of the 1968 test firing of Sirhan's gun were missing.

* The test gun used for ballistics comparison and identification was destroyed.

* Over 90% of the audiotaped witness testimony was lost or destroyed. Of the 3470 interviews the LAPD conducted, only 301 were preserved. Key testimony -- like 29 witness accounts that suggested conspiracy -- was missing, while less important interviews -- like that of Sirhan's Bible teacher -- remained.

* On August 21, 1968, less than two months after the assassination, 2400 photographs from the original investigation were burned, in the medical-waste incinerator at LA County General Hospital. The LAPD claimed that the photos were duplicates, but there weren't any known logs or inventories of photos that could verify that.