It seems that we will soon find out who has the explosive jurisdiction, ATF or FBI?? Why does ATF have to fight for the jursidiction that is contained in its name???? Is this madness or what??
If we lose our explosives jurisdiction it will be because Hoover, Chait and Reihl are asleep at the wheel. HQ is so busy with their dirty laundry of personel issues that they can no longer watch the house. Melson is out of the picture. He's clearly a non-factor in anything of substance at ATF. Constant calls for his attention are fruitless. Forget it, the guy is not in the game. Hoover has been severely distracted with his own personal issues. Chait simply can't make a decision on anything to save his life. He just can't pull the trigger on
anything regardless of how minor the decision.
How do we as ATF even end up in a position to have our explosives jurisdiction challenged? Reihl come on man, someone's got to know what they're doing. Don't tell us the FBI is going to beat you on this.
I believe the last three things ATF does well are arson, explosives and our SRT's. I am not a member of any of those clubs but they are good. Our arson guys are top notch. Our explosives crews are excellent. Our tactical squads are professional and exceptionally affective. I am a plain old agent so I criticize my own game when I say we just aren't as good as we use to be chasing guns. Our intelligence is confused. Our numbers of original cases are pathetic. We may be stapling PD's reports to ROI cover sheets and calling them cases but not all that long ago if you conducted your agent business that way you were viewed disgracefully. Now its all the rage. Our management is in shambles. The once reliable undercover pool, although still holding on to a few exceptionally talented agents, has been so diluted with inexperience you can't count on getting a quality uc when you go the EUP for help. My office has just turned to state and locals for our uc's because the guys you want from the EUP are not the guys they offer. Our tracing and nibin is being challenged regularly. Our international programs have been left unsupported with personel and resources. Training has vanished. Chief Counsels office is corrupt. EEO numbers are the highest they've ever been. The Ombudsmans office is a Benedict Arnold to employees for management. PGA, I can't even go there without starting a new paragraph on incompetence.
You know that judgement day is near when INS and Customs BP are submitting as many gun cases to the US Attorney as ATF is on the southwest border, in some areas more. How can that be? In some of the major cities DEA is catching more guns than ATF and they don't even bother to call us to pick up their scraps anymore.
Here's a kicker. The Grapevine says OIG recently audited ATF's Project Gunrunner and we got laid out bad. No surprises there when you have Hoover, Chait, Webb, Newell and Torres calling the shots on that program. How did DOJ leave these guys with the keys to the car? A perfect storm of incompetence. Mismanagement, false promises, inaffective leadership, funding fraud-waste-abuse are just of few of the lowlights that are going to be brought to the attention of DOJ and Congress by the OIG. But, do any of these guys even care? They've all been accused and found guilty of mismanagement in the past and they are all still in their comfy spots unchallenged and unchanged. Their incompetency simply doesn't matter to them or apparently anyone of influence at DOJ.
With our current leadership at the helm ATF will soon be left with the SRT guarding NRT scenes while the explosives and gun agents will become court baliffs or counting bullets in the FBI's basement. If you love ATF say a little prayer tonight that we are allowed to keep our explosives jurisdiction. We just can't afford to lose that battle at this time. The consequences of a defeat on explosives is very critical at this time for the survival of ATF.
