Oct. 4, 2004
By ALMA WALZER
The Monitor
McALLEN — Information provided by a high-ranking al-Qaida operative led authorities to almost a dozen undocumented aliens who worked for the largest supplier of ready-to-eat meals for the military, officials said.
"There had to be an investigation into the possibility that al-Qaida had the intention of infiltrating the Wornick Co. for the purposes of contaminating, possibly, the MREs produced by the company," said U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, Michael Shelby.
No tainted military meals have been found.
Shelby said Thursday that an al-Qaida member told U.S. military personnel about the Wornick Co. in McAllen, which holds a $67 million contract with the Department of Defense to produce packaged meals for the military.
The information kicked off a review of all staff at Wornick and eventually led the FBI to Remedy Intelligent Staffing in McAllen, which referred a number of employees to the company. Officials also wanted to know why al-Qaida would be interested in the Wornick Co.
"Immediately after the liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban in 2002, U.S. forces on the ground received specific information that links McAllen, Texas, by name and the Wornick facility by name, to information within al-Qaida’s possession," Shelby said.
Shelby said 10 temporary employees at Remedy were arrested and convicted in July 2004 on charges of using Social Security numbers that didn’t belong to them.
The employees were involved in all aspects of assembling the MREs, Shelby said.
Remedy now is charged with conspiring to make and use false employment eligibility verification forms, also known as I-9s. Remedy’s indictment, handed down by a federal grand jury on July 20, was unsealed Thursday by U.S. Magistrate Dorina Ramos.
Remedy’s vice-president, James Eckensberger of San Antonio, made a court appearance before Ramos on behalf of Remedy on Thursday afternoon and entered a plea of not guilty.
Both Eckensberger and his San Antonio-based attorney Ronald Ederer declined to comment.
Shelby described the indictment as a significant event to servicemen around the world and said Wornick had fully cooperated with the federal investigation.
Shelby said the possibility that the meals could have been contaminated was a possibility that he could not sustain and he did not want to discuss where the undocumented workers might have obtained their fake Social Security cards.
"There is quite a cottage industry in this country, especially in Texas, of people who can prepare documents that are remarkable in their appearance of authenticity," Shelby said. "That is illegal, it violates a number of federal laws and those are the people we’re looking to hold accountable for what they’re doing."
The 10 Remedy employees found working at Wornick pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of fraud and were sentenced to jail time ranging from one day to 173 days.
Two U.S. citizens, one Canadian national and seven Mexican nationals were in the group. Those in the country illegally faced deportation upon the completion of jail time.
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