We'll see who's innocent after the smoke clears. Often there's fire to go along. The fact that Ric, Ernie Ball or Fender were not raided tells me, no, not that they acted perhaps more diligently, but that they must all be part of some grand conspiracy aimed at bringing Gibson down. The MOSSAD must be involved too, they always are. Obama wants to eradicate Henry J. and his sorry outfit of a company off the face of this earth. The old mahogany hater.
Seriously: Possibly even worse than how Gibson's legal advisors must have handled this is the prep Henry J received from the PR Dep of Gibson when he stepped out on the streets in Nashville to pour insecure derision on the authorities for that raid. A complete F (as in fail) under state-of-the-art modern communication rules. Rather, someone should have scripted for him:
"Yesterday, federal authorities searched our facilities in ... and ... as part of an investigation under the ... Act. We regret that they did not seek our co-operation earlier in this matter and felt compelled to this measure. Gibson USA has nothing to hide and an excruciating compliance regime in place to ensure that we only employ in our production wood of 100% doubt-free environmental origin. It is not just something we do, it is something we believe in. If we erred or were misled - we are a business of "only people" -, we are the first who would like to know how and where to make sure it doesn't happen again. As I speak, a task force of inhouse and outside legal counsel is in contact with the authorities offering our unrestricted to ensure that the investigation can continue in full depth and unhampered as long as it takes, yet at the same time with the least interference to our production. Personally, this is not enough for me, we have initiated our own internal investigation. So far, nothing has been revealed that indicates Gibson employees acting anything less than conscientiously in the procurement of our woods, but it is early days. The investigation team, reporting to me, will file progress reports on our website as they occur."
Or something like that.