FBI CONFISCATES CHATHAM COUNTY EMERGENCY DISPATCH RECORDS

PITTSBORO - Two FBI agents accompanied by a Chatham County commissioner
confiscated a year of telephone recordings from the county's emergency
dispatch center.

The agents delivered a subpoena Wednesday for all recordings for incoming
calls placed to the center between Sept. 1, 2000, and Sept. 1, 2001,
emergency operations director Tony Tucker said. He was away from the center
when the agents arrived.

"Part of this stuff is public record; part of this stuff is confidential,"
Tucker said.

The agents seized about 10 disks on which the recordings are stored, said
Rick Givens, the county commissioner who accompanied the agents. They
planned to make copies of the recordings to return to the center, which has
been operated independently of the sheriff's office since Jan. 1.

No one would say what prompted the confiscation.

The FBI announced earlier this year that it had been investigating the
September 2000 theft of 5,000 pounds of marijuana from the sheriff's
office. A ton of the drugs had been buried at the county landfill and about
3,000 pounds were held in a surplus Army truck parked behind the
department. The drugs had been seized in February 2000 during an undercover
sting near Siler City.

No charges have been filed in the marijuana thefts.

Chatham County Sheriff Ike Gray said recently that FBI agents told him that
"four or five" people would be federally indicted "sometime in the near
future." Agents indicated that those indictments would not involve anyone
employed by the sheriff's department, according to Gray.

"The investigation is still ongoing, but I anticipate that there could be
some closure to part of the investigation sometime in the near future," he
said. "Agents have indicated very strongly that the landfill part of the
investigation is where we should expect action ... and they have also
indicated very strongly that it would not be anyone in this department."

"The stuff they told me I can't talk about," Givens said. "I know that (FBI
agents) are looking very closely at the missing marijuana. They have been
for a long time. "

Givens said the agents called him Tuesday and asked him to accompany them
to the center. They told him they wanted someone credible to expedite the
process, he said.

Givens said he did not know why agents told him to accompany them.

Carl Fox, the district attorney for Orange and Chatham counties, said he
knew nothing about the FBI agents' visit to the dispatch center. He said it
was unusual to seize a year's worth of recorded communications.

"They are not just looking at the tapes as evidence," Fox said. "It
actually is going to be played probably in front of a federal grand jury.
Someone intends to listen to it to determine whether it has some
evidentiary value."

The next federal grand jury for the Middle District in Greensboro is
scheduled to meet Feb. 25.