Gibson Guitar Factory Invaded by Federal Agents!

Henry Juszkiewicz, Chairman and CEO of Gibson Guitar Corp., has responded to the August 24 raid of Gibson facilities in Nashville and Memphis by the Federal Government. In a press release, Juszkiewicz said: 

...“Gibson is innocent and will fight to protect its rights. Gibson has complied with foreign laws and believes it is innocent of ANY wrong doing. We will fight aggressively to prove our innocence.”...

Federal agents, acting more like Nazi Storm Troopers, descended on the Gibson Guitar Company Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. Strangely though, the Feds ignored Gibson's plant in Bozeman, MT.

The Feds have no comment, but Gibson's chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company's manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. "The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier," he said, suggesting the Feds are over-aggressive in their enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.


Gibson was forced to cease manufacturing operations and sent workers home for the day while armed agents executed the search warrants. “Agents seized wood that was Forest Stewardship Council controlled,” Juszkiewicz said. “Gibson has a long history of supporting sustainable and responsible sources of wood and has worked diligently with entities such as the Rainforest Alliance and Greenpeace to secure FSC-certified supplies. The wood seized on August 24 satisfied FSC standards.”

Juszkiewicz said this isn't the first time the Feds raided the legendary maker of such iconic instruments as the Les Paul electric guitar, and the J-160E acoustic-electric John Lennon played.

In 2009 the Feds seized several guitars and pallets of wood from a Gibson factory, and both sides have been wrangling over the goods in a case with the delightful name "United States of America v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms."   Juszkiewicz said they  still haven’t filed charges against Gibson in that case.

“We believe the arrogance of federal power is impacting me personally, our company personally and the employees here in Tennessee, and it’s just plain wrong.” Juszkiewicz said in response to the raid.

...It's a million dollar-a-day decision and one that also leaves over 500 employees out of work....

The question in the first raid seemed to be whether Gibson had been buying illegally harvested hardwoods from protected forests, such as the Madagascar ebony that makes for such lovely fretboards.  And if Gibson did knowingly import illegally harvested ebony from Madagascar, that wouldn't be a negligible offense.   Peter Lowry, ebony and rosewood expert at the Missouri Botanical Garden, calls the Madagascar wood trade the "equivalent of Africa's blood diamonds."   But with the new raid, the government seems to be questioning whether some wood sourced from India met every regulatory jot and tittle.


Gibson's Bozeman factory manager, Dennis O'Brien, says all the wood is legal.  "Here is a plank of Indian Rosewood. It's been cut the rough dimension in India, which is a requirement of their export rules. It was approved by the export officials in India for export, it was accepted by U.S. Customs for import. We have all the documentation of these facts for every lot of wood we use here in Bozeman and everywhere in the company," says O'Brien.

While the Bozeman facility is still open, Gibson officials say that without the Rosewood to make their fingerboards, they were forced to shut down their two plants in Tennessee. It's a million dollar-a-day decision and one that also leaves over 500 employees out of work.

Musicians who play vintage guitars and other instruments made of environmentally protected materials are sweating the authorities may be coming for them next.


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Let's say you own a 1920s Martin guitar, it may well be made, in part, of Brazilian rosewood. Cross an international border with an instrument made of that now-restricted wood, and you better have correct and complete documentation proving the age of the instrument. Otherwise, you could lose it to a zealous customs agent—not to mention face fines and prosecution.


The tangled intersection of international laws is enforced through a thicket of paperwork. Recent revisions to 1900's Lacey Act require that anyone crossing the U.S. border declare every bit of flora or fauna being brought into the country. One is under "strict liability" to fill out the paperwork—and without any mistakes.


In an article posted in the  Wall Street Journal, writer Eric Felten says, “It's not enough to know that the body of your old guitar is made of spruce and maple: What's the bridge made of? If it's ebony, do you have the paperwork to show when and where that wood was harvested and when and where it was made into a bridge? Is the nut holding the strings at the guitar's headstock bone, or could it be ivory? "Even if you have no knowledge—despite Herculean efforts to obtain it—that some piece of your guitar, no matter how small, was obtained illegally, you lose your guitar forever".


“The Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has suggested that the use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department’s interpretation of a law in India. (If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.) This action was taken without the support and consent of the government in India.”

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