Posted 29 March 2013 - 10:26 AM
10. ATF managers fired a 30-year veteran Special Agent in a Denny’s parking lot after he exposed abuses at the highest levels. In a rare move, the unlawful, retaliatory termination was immediately challenged and put on ice by external watchdog agencies. The Agent was promptly reinstated.
9. An AD suspended an Agent for honestly and properly exposing potentially criminal acts committed by a senior ATF manager. The illegal retaliatory suspension was later rescinded.
8. After attempting to ignore and conceal his unethical conduct for years, the Bureau finally proposed termination of one of the most viciously abusive and woefully incompetent SACs in the country, but within days, reversed itself and withdrew the proposed firing.
7. ATF’s executive staff unlawfully refused to respond to legitimate formal Congressional inquiries, instead kicking the inquiries up the chain to main Justice.
6. ATF’s Acting Director publicly issued a thinly-veiled but unmistakable threat of unlawful retaliation against any employee who would dare to speak out about management abuses or expose illegal conduct.
5. Bureau executive staff formed a committee supposedly charged with addressing widely-recognized management failures and abuses, but deliberately ensured that years of egregiously unlawful and unethical conduct on the part of its own Chief Counsel’s office would contunue to be ignored and actively covered-up.
5. Agency leadership permitted an Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) in Reno to effectively dictate ATF policy by improperly threatening to refuse prosecution of valid cases. In accordance with standard ATF practice, the responsible managers were either promoted or quietly retired in “good-standing”.
4. Agency leadership unsuccessfully attempted to quietly close a critical field office in one of the nation's most violent cities (Reno) and involuntarily transfer its agents, despite the fact that an Internal Affairs (IA) investigation cleared the Agents of any wrongdoing.
3. ATF leadership resorted to desperate, unprecedented, and in several instances, overtly illegal measures to protect and hide those among them that were directly responsible for the “Operation Fast and Furious” debacle that resulted in the deths of hundreds of Mexican citizens and several U.S. law enforcement agents.
2. The Bureau removed its fifth head of Internal Affairs in as many years for apallingly unethical conduct, but in its usual "shell game", did not demote him out of the SES ranks and simply shuffled him into another position.
1. ATF’s top leadership knowingly arranged for a senior management official at the epiccenter of the “Fast & Furious” fiasco (and many other terrible skeletons in ATF’s closet), to illegally “double-dip” at taxpayer expense, purely to buy his silence. All of those responsible for these shockingly corrupt and criminal acts remain in top leadership positions to this day.
Way to go, ATF Leadership! Your Mothers must be so proud.