by KATE WOODS and MARTIN JIMENEZ
Authorities searched for nitroglycerin that owner says was not
there
When federal, state and local officials swooped down on
Hollister’s MK Ballistic Systems last week with a search warrant,
they were looking for 4,000 pounds of nitroglycerin.
It wasn’t there. What they found were a few pounds of leftover
chemicals in industrial ovens and some other materials they claimed
to
”
blow up.
”
by KATE WOODS and MARTIN JIMENEZ
Authorities searched for nitroglycerin that owner says was not there
When federal, state and local officials swooped down on Hollister’s MK Ballistic Systems last week with a search warrant, they were looking for 4,000 pounds of nitroglycerin.
It wasn’t there. What they found were a few pounds of leftover chemicals in industrial ovens and some other materials they claimed to “blow up.”
“They said, ‘Where’s your 4,000 pounds of nitroglycerin?’ I said, ‘What?!'” recalls Mike Keith, the CEO of the small family business that employs some three people, plus his wife. “Like you could even transport nitro on the road! They could have solved it all with a phone call.”
In these times of heightened sensitivity to terrorism, authorities on the lookout for any device or materials that can kill or maim people are, understandably, in a state of high alert. But in Keith’s case, it appears that a misplaced item on a U.S. Army manifest led those charged with protecting the populace in the wrong direction.
Keith said he was told by lawmen in the raid that a U.S. Army document indicated Keith had bought the highly volatile liquid explosive – used at one point in fire suppression efforts to blow up trees in out-of-control wildfires. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the substance is “a powerful explosive and an important ingredient of most forms of dynamite. It is also used with nitrocellulose in some propellants, especially for rockets and missiles, and it is employed as a vasodilator in the easing of cardiac pain.”
Keith said he had bought propellant from the military, but not nitroglycerin, and that he believes the order got lumped into a “disposal stream” category that included somebody else’s order for nitro. State officials on the case then did an Internet search and felt they could trace it back to MK Ballistic Systems.
“The nitro was a misnomer on their part,” Keith said.
MK Ballistic Systems produces non-lethal, or “less lethal,” ammunition for law enforcement agencies, the military and the prison sector. Their stock-in-trade are the bean bags police use for, say, people threatening suicide, rubber bullets for crowd control and wooden batons. At one point, Keith said, his company also made cloud seeding flares to help produce rain for parched crops.
San Benito District Attorney John Sarsfield and special environmental prosecutor Roy Hubert have told The Pinnacle that they and the other state and federal agencies involved suspect Keith is operating without the right permits. Keith says he’s baffled by the allegation.
“I can’t understand why they say that,” Keith said. “From the day I opened in 1991 I’ve had all my permits.”
That includes five federal permits and several more from the state and county. Besides an explosives permit and a health permit from the county, Keith had to have a use-permit which he says was grandfathered in from the previous ordnance company, Caelus Devices, which operated at the site.
According to Keith, authorities claim he has an invalid number on the county health permit, but when the businessman asked to see what they had in their files they said they couldn’t show him because the county destroys all its files every seven years.
“I remember meeting with them a while back and they said they didn’t know I was even here,” Keith said. “How could they not? The Department of Defense inspects us, the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms inspects us, I even invited OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) in, in 1993.”
The federal permits cost $3,000 and are valid for three years before Keith’s operations are inspected by the feds again. The state permits are renewed annually.
“If there’s something we don’t have, someone should have said something,” Keith said, somewhat exasperated. “Instead of doing this action, they should have called us.”
The agencies involved did not return phone calls. However, District Attorney Sarsfield said Keith is certainly entitled to his opinion and due process.
“Every story has two sides,” Sarsfield said. “We love it when they talk – it only makes our case easier.”
A month ago, said Keith, he was paid a visit by officials from the San Benito Environmental Health Department and the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. The agencies had questions about possible perchlorate contamination and wanted to know who the former tenants were. Keith said he not only was cooperative, he did extensive research for them to find out about the property’s past. Then last Monday, Environmental Health staff were among the officials conducting the raid.
“I went through all the files for them,” Keith said. “Hey, I was helping them. Then they come here and I’m, like, what’s going on?”
Prosecutor Roy Hubert told The Pinnacle last week that materials had to be blown up at the site during the raid, according to those conducting it. But Keith said that’s misleading.
“We had a material a compound that you would load into a cartridge,” Keith said. “Fire marshals (who were among the agencies involved in the raid) have a protocol where whenever they see something like that, they burn it because they don’t know what it is. There was no detonation. They lit it, popped the jar open and it slow-burned for 25 minutes.”
Nothing was burned in the earthen bunkers, called magazines, located a football field’s distance away from the main buildings. The magazines are used to store chemicals such as gunpowder. On the third day of the raid officials did another burning of unknown materials. Keith and his employees didn’t know what it was because they had found it under the building – a remnant of something left by a previous tenant, Keith said.
“They poured diesel fuel on it, ignited it and burned it,” Keith said. “It was like molten salt.”
Located in the rolling hills east of Hollister, the compound is in a rural setting with fields of crops all around it. One can hear birds singing in nearby eucalyptus trees and frogs croaking from puddles created by recent rains. The place has a sort of ramshackle look, which is explained by the fact that MK is the most recent of 10 different ordnance companies that have occupied the same site in the last 45 years.
Before MK Ballistic Systems came to be, the property housed a flare maker in the 1960s. McCormick Selph took the property after that, then moved, then Electro-Chem was there from 1972 to 1978. Electro-Chem went bankrupt, then Coyote Cartridge operated at the site from 1978 to 1981. From 1981 to 1991 munitions contractor Caelus Devices, Inc. made the site its home. A worker, Isabel Yanez, lost her arm in an explosion at Caelus in June 1986, which Yanez and Caelus claimed was caused by defective lead azide from a supplier. They both sued; Yanez settled for $375,000 and Caelus settled for $90,000.
Despite the windfall, Caelus went bankrupt in 1989 and then-employee Mike Keith bought what was left of the equipment and assets. He formed MK Ballistics Systems in 1991.
“It’s a small family business. I started it in 1990 by myself,” Keith said.
At one point Keith employed 15 people, but in the last few years the staff has dwindled to three – five, counting Keith and his wife. He attributes the loss of business to the advent of tasers, which police and other law enforcement agencies are using increasingly as opposed to the kinds of ammunition MK produces.
“The taser has been the biggest impact on us, because we make less lethal ammunition,” he said. “The guy who makes them is a real marketer, and they get government grants to buy them.”
Keith said he doesn’t know what the future holds for him or his company, and he has yet to hire an attorney. In all, the raid officials took away 17 samples and are testing them at various labs to determine their identity.
Sarsfield said no charges have been made against Keith.
“We try to run a good operation,” said Keith. “They assumed I was disposing ordinances. In 14 years of operations we’ve had no accidents, no explosive incidents.”
