5 replies to this topic

[Doc Holiday]

Its reasonable to believe that the executive staff doesn't care about guns to Mexico based on our lack of vision, our poor performance and the absence of any long term strategic plan. They are just begging more money and bodies with absolutely no plan for deploying them. Hell the OIG didn't buy off on Chaits strategic plan (submitted ONLY after the OIG laid us out), and either do we.

[apostate]

On the way to chrch this morning heard this on NPR http://www.npr.org/t...oryId=131195166 I know more than a few SAC's and ASAC's did not like and actively discouraged working investigations with ICE when I was in ATF. Hope it changes

[VINCENT A CEFALU]

Recent events within ATF show that our attorneys should not make law enforcement policy.Experienced law enforcement Agents should. What does Melanie Stinett know about investigations or the dynamics of field work? She is by all accounts a great accountant and a lawyer. Ms. Ficaretta has gotten it wrong so many times as our #2 lawyer, that she now is going to control our law enforcement bread and butter Enforcement programs? Chief counsels long running history of creating personnel disputes where there were none and through their use of highly unethical practices have cost our Bureau so much money and damage to the agencies credibility and morale, that they are now in charge of all personnel matters? What is Mr. Melson or main justice afraid of? Good or bad, a transparent law enforcement agency is driven by information. Good or bad that information must flow, be truthful and unfiltered. Lawyers by trade manipulate information, Agents by trade report the facts and the truth. Somebody tell me I'm wrong.

[apostate]

http://www.justice.g...s/ATF/e1101.pdf

Interesting read but not surprising to Senior agents. They have known this all along but management would not listen. Ask the agents who were sent down last year to Houston and had nothing to do for 4 months. Houston management/intell group did not prepare any leads for arriving agents and it was well-known that quite a few agents just played golf or worked out. Working with ICE agents on the border became quickly apparent that they had their act together as an agency and were doing a great job with their investigations. Their intell groups put ATF to shame.

Everyone knows that the intell groups in ATF are the dumping grounds for incompetent agents who are unable to do investigations or are too dangerous to work on the streets. Remember in 2003 when ATF HQ was begging for agents to come to HQ to work in the HQ intell groups. The announcement requested that agents applying be able to read and understand English and be able to write in proper English with few grammatical errors. They had functionally illiterate agents/managers assigned to ATF HQ intell. I recall attending a terrorism conference in 2004 and someone from ATF Intell spoke at the conference. I was sitting with friends from DEA and FBI. God was I embarrassed when this person spoke. No wonder ATF is a second rate agency.

[ProConfesso]

http://www.justice.g...s/ATF/e1101.pdf

[MidlevelArea51]

What's up with the new gunrunner groups being formed in Brownsville, Sierra Vista, Las Vegas and Oklahoma City? HQ's just throwing more money away? Don't they have some personal travel to use it on?