Winston Smith

You forgot to mention the pinky rings, cool "English" cufflinks and other accessories that our Mgt adorns these days. Seriously, we need to start a thread with pictures showing the fashion trends of our agency's leaders.

"...Madea has been given information that poor Billy Hoover (you all remember this nice guy) and Chait have lost their cushy jobs in Baltimore and D.C."


Send them to the NFA Branch to assist with registrations, and/or the Tracing Center to conduct hand searches of the out of business dealer records. Both reside within commuting distance of Martinsburg, WV, which is about the same distance from their residences to their former SAC offices. With their excellent leadership and organizational skills, these guys should be tremendous assets to the workforce.

Patriot,
Good post. Thankfully, in my current Division, I don’t see a majority of Agents who sit on their duff’s. I see many hard workers, some slackers, and those who fall somewhere in the middle. I feel your pain if things in your office are as bad as you described.

I hope the Director and AD realize that a large part of the problems hurting our agency can be fixed by making major changes to our promotion policy:

This is the biggest problem we face. When a slacker of an agent scores 2 to 5 points better on the Assessment Center Test than the next applicant for a GS 14 position, guess who usually gets the job? Many of us question how is it that slacker agents scored well enough to get the GS job over a hard charging productive agent who actually cares about his/her colleagues? We have some GS 14’s that have never testified other than in Grand Jury, have never written an affidavit, never run a complex or multi-defendant case, etc….. These same slacker GS’ers grow up to cause problems and often become problem ASACs. The problem is, why do we put so much faith in a test score? Test scores should be reduced to pass or fail, with a requirement that agents must have 8 years on the job for being eligible to take the test. At a minimum, Agents should have to provide 2 or 3 references such as AUSA’s and Command Staff from another agency who can attest to leadership potential, knowledge of laws and the ability to work with people from other agencies. Poor agents usually make poor leaders. As they say, you can't make chicken salad from chicken shit. I think of folks such as Newell and other "stars" who were promoted way too fast in their careers. The results speak for themselves.

I beg that the Director and AD take immediate corrective action on this area. Of course there are other areas needing improvements, but this is a good place to start.

While I am unfamiliar with the specifics of the stories discussed by Madea, the poor performance of some ATF I.A. Agents should not surprise anyone. For years, many in the Agency have questioned the skills of our I.A. Agents, and complained that their investigations were flawed and often retaliatory in nature. Why does ATF Mgt. still believe that in order to be in I.A., one must have served as a GS14 Group Supervisor for several years. Many "real" police agencies staff I.A. units with top Senior Investigators who are not in management. These are the Investigators who have honed their skills to perfection. Many Police agencies also select I.A. Investigators that are recommended by Prosecutors based on their integrity and courtroom prowess. Again, our Agency does not follow the industry standard. Instead, we promote GS14's to I.A. who haven't worked an investigation in years and may not have been good investigators at all during their careers. Grade level should have no bearing on who is selected to an I.A. Agent position.

I'm not bashing I.A. as much as I am faulting the ATF promotion policy in general. When you have an agency that promotes managers based on social and demographic reasons instead of merit the outcome will generally be bad. How does a complete dud as an Agent suddenly score well on the Assessment Center and wind up as a Group Supervisor or a Program Manager? For years, Public Affairs, ESF13 and other hideouts were the dumping ground for these folks to get their GS14 status. This promotion policy is responsible for most of the calamities that our agency has experienced over the last 10 + years. The common denominator of which is poor and misguided leadership. Wake up call to management, you can't make chicken salad with chicken s%!t.

Shifting gears here. I'm not complaining, just asking questions.

I heard Mgmt. wants us to redirect our focus to working proactive violent crime cases, and to become an intelligence-driven investigative agency. Has anyone heard about how HQ plans to accomplish this? Some of what I heard involves: reducing the number of agents working adopted cases such as PSN, Exiles, and having TFO’s handle most of these; working more Title III cases; using NIBIN hits to generate leads on violent crime cases; implementing the intelligence-based firearms trafficking analysis initiative (iTrafficking) across the board; and increasing staffing of agents in Intel Groups. I’m sure there is much more to this.

Any thoughts on how the USAO will react to a reduced effort on Exile/PSN? Does anyone know the current status of the NIBIN program? Is it true that the NIBIN contractors were all victims of budget cuts and that we no longer have anyone handling the liaison with local/state PD’s to follow up on NIBIN hits? Are there any special initiatives or intel based programs at HQ that are addressing the recent spike in FFL burglaries across the country?