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AP: Faulty Body Armor May Have Endangered Bush

The Justice Department is investigating whether a company sold defective bulletproof vests for President Bush, federal agents and local police and then waited nearly two years to alert customers that the body armor could be unsafe.

A former research chief for Second Chance Body Armor Inc. is cooperating with the criminal investigation and testified this month that the Secret Service tested and bought some of the defective vests for the president and first lady Laura Bush. The Pentagon obtained the same armor for elite troops who guard generals, according to transcripts obtained by The Associated Press.

Many sales occurred well after Michigan-based Second Chance had been alerted [in 1998] that the Japanese-made Zylon synthetic material in the vests was degrading faster than expected from heat, light and moisture exposure, allowing bullets to potentially penetrate the armor, according to the former employee's testimony and other company documents.

[...]

By 2001, Second Chance's research chief, Aaron Westrick, was pleading unsuccessfully with his company's president to replace the vests after his own tests showed them degrading rapidly, the memos show.

"Lives and our credibility are at stake," Westrick wrote then-Second Chance president Richard Davis in a Dec. 18, 2001, memo. "We will only prevail if we do the right things and not hesitate. This issue should not be hidden for obvious safety issues and because of future litigation."

[...]

But Second Chance customers were not alerted to the problems until September 2003 _ after a California police officer was shot to death wearing the vest and a Pennsylvania officer was seriously wounded.

[...]

Westrick's lawyer, Stephen M. Kohn, said Sunday his that client was cooperating with the criminal investigation.

"Greed prevailed over the safety of police, soldiers and even the president of the United States," Kohn said. "The officials who personally profited from selling the defective vests to law enforcement must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the criminal code."...