Investigation Called ‘Ongoing’ : U.S. Agents’ Raid Puzzles Defense Contractor

Officials with defense contractor Ametek-Straza said Friday they don’t know why government investigators swooped down on their El Cajon offices this week and hauled away reams of personnel files as well as financial records pertaining to two classified contracts for submarine sonar devices.

About two dozen agents from the Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the Naval Investigative Services on Thursday toiled 12 hours to pack and cart away Ametek-Straza Division’s files in a 2 1/2-ton truck, said Kevin Keating, a special agent with Defense Criminal Investigative Service.

Keating said the investigation has been under way for three months and is “ongoing.” Assistant U.S. Atty. Steve Crandall, who is conducting the investigation, declined on Friday to say why the records were seized.

Charles Swaim, Ametek-Straza Division’s director of industrial relations, said it appeared that the federal investigation centered on the firm’s two classified contracts, awarded in 1981, to build two submarine sonar devices.

The agents also took personnel files for the company’s 935 employees, as well as files on all workers who left the company within the last five years, said Swaim.

‘Stormed the Gate’

“They just stormed the gate and slipped right in, with warrants,” said Swaim. The company was unable to find out what prompted the probe, although its attorneys had contacted the U.S. attorney’s office on Friday, he said.

“We know that the U.S. attorney is involved in it, of course, and is doing the investigation, but that’s all we know,” he said. “We’re trying to work out something to get back some of the more critical files.”

Ametek-Straza Division, at 790 Greenfield Drive in El Cajon, makes a variety of hardware for the government, including nuclear missile components, military jet engine components and space shuttle parts. It also manufactures submarine sonar devices and remote-control underwater vehicles, which are used extensively by the oil industry, Swaim said.

Swaim stressed that the company has no connection to former Jet Air Inc. executive George Straza, who earlier this month was found guilty on 43 counts of conspiracy, theft of government property, mail fraud and issuing false invoices as part of a scheme to double deal in engine parts. Straza worked briefly for Ametek in the late 1950s before leaving to form Jet Air, Swaim said.

It was Straza’s brother, John, who founded Straza Industries 30 years ago and eventually sold the company to Ametek in 1968.