Back in March, newspapers revealed that the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms had the bright idea of arming the narcos in Mexico by letting guns—thousands of guns—slip over the border. The supervisors figured that tracking the guns would help them find criminals (even as field agents begged them to stop the program).

Instead, the ATF lost over half of those guns—and many of the ones they eventually recovered were found at crime scenes, including the murder of a US border patrol agent.

Earlier this month, three of the supervisors responsible for Operation Fast and Furious were sent to ATF headquarters in D.C. The LA Times reported it as a “promotion.” The ATF countered that it was a “lateral transfer.”

Today, the acting chief of the ATF, Kenneth E. Melson, announced that he’s stepping away from the harsh ATF limelight—all those terrible decisions to answer for! all that sudden and exhausting public accountability!—to “work” as a “senior advisor” at the Department of Justice.

Would that be a promotion or a lateral transfer?

Brend an Kiley has worked as a child actor in New Orleans, as a member of the junior press corps at the 1988 Republican National Convention, and, for one happy April, as a bootlegger’s assistant in Nicaragua....

21 replies on “Promotions and “Lateral Transfers” for the ATF Supervisors Responsible for “Operation Fast and Furious””

  1. It’s inconceivable that any of these fuck-ups still have jobs at all. Well, except for the fact that they’re taking the fall for the people much higher up yet who really were responsible.

  3. Yes but after a while when it all blows over people will forget the extent of the fuck up and they again will be brought out of the deep freeze to fuck up again. I am all for job protections to de-politicize civil service jobs but dumbasses need to be fired or demoteted to file clerks with appropriate cuts in pay.

  4. I remember asking on Slog if our government were helpless in stopping the flow of weapons south of the border. Now I know the answer. They were the one’s shipping the weapons. Talk about insane! Lateral transfers? They should be in prison!

  8. This is a non-story, dressed up to look like a scandal by FOX news, and then credulously repeated by reporters who should know better.

    I’m no fan of the ATF; my twitchy inner libertarian still winces at the memory of an ATF sniper blowing away an unarmed & innocent woman in her own home at Ruby Ridge, but in this drama, they’re just the patsies.

    1. The ATF did not give guns to anybody; they merely observed legal gun purchases by people they suspected might later transfer the guns to Mexican cartels or others.

    2. Neither the ATF nor anybody else could legally intervene in the purchases of these guns without probable cause to believe that a crime was being committed. Again, the mere suspicion that the guns might end up in bad hands was insufficient for them to take action.

    3. Legally exporting guns from the country is mainly a matter of obtaining a license: http://www.atf.gov/firearms/faq/imports.…

    Without the probable cause necessary to intervene, the best ATF could have done here, as far as I can tell, was continue to investigate, and maybe warn the Mexican authorities that the guns were coming over. And maybe they did warn the federales – but so far I don’t think any reporter has bothered to ask.

  9. Not exactly, Eric. ATF was tipped-off by numerous dealers to illegal “straw purchases” that were happening, and the higher-ups (I suspect it went as high as Holder) made a conscious decision to do nothing. That’s hardly the same picture you paint.

  10. @9 You got your facts wrong.

    They did not view “legal” purchases. They viewed what may or may not have been legal purchases that they had evidence to believe were not legal. That is how law enforcement works. You can’t REALLY be sure until it goes to court so you have to act on the evidence.

    As it turns out the evidence was correct. We now know this through tons of documentation that the guns being smuggled across the border were going directly to the cartels and were used in numerous and well documented instances of violence.

    Fail troll. 0/10

  11. @10,

    If a gun dealer is suspicious that one of his customers is up to no good, that’s a great lead, but it doesn’t amount to probable cause. Supposing the ATF even had confirmed that the guns were headed to Mexico, if the exporter was licensed and the paperwork looked correct, there would be nothing for them to do except continue to investigate to see who actually took delivery of the guns.

  12. @12,

    What you seem to be saying is “they didn’t have probable cause to make any arrests at the time, but they should have made the arrests anyway, because they were able to establish probable cause after the fact”

    So, like, “Civics class fail. 0/10” or whatever

  13. Jesus Christ, Eric, you obviously know nothing about the facts of what happened, and are just making it up as you go. STFU until you do.

  14. @13: You can build as many hypotheticals as you want. “If the guns were legal” / “if the export was legal” / “if the Mexican government requested hands-off” / whatever.

    But in the real world, this was a sting operation gone wrong. They could have arrested the people involved earlier but were waiting, hoping to get bigger fish on bigger charges. The weapons were *smuggled* across the border, not exported legally. Agents who believed they had probable cause for arrests were overruled by bureaucrats.

    Alternate realities are best left to the Fox News types. Here on slog, let’s deal with facts rather than our imaginations of whether a scandal would be an issue if the facts were different than they are.

  15. @15, @16, @17,

    The first question every reporter should be asking is, “What did the ATF actually know?” But nobody’s asking that question. All I’ve seen is a lot of breathless hype, originating mainly from Fox News, repeating the conclusion that the ATF stood idly by while the cartels armed themselves with American guns.

    Since I’m keenly interested in knowing if that’s really what happened, I’ve actually been following this story, but to my great frustration, nobody has written a word of factual information about what the ATF knew, outside of their being tipped off by some rightfully concerned gun dealers. And that, by itself, doesn’t amount to much.

    So given the paucity of reported facts that would amount to probable cause, it’s no surprise to me that these ATF and DOJ leaders are receiving promotions and transfers instead of discipline.

    p.s. 5280, don’t Jesus-Christ me, if that’s not too much to ask.

  16. @15,

    Better yet, I will happily STFU and acknowledge the superior basis of your opinion if you’d do me the courtesy of posting a link to a story that cites some objective facts about the information available to the ATF at the time.

  17. I would love to, but I get such a mind-boggling flood of shit from the NRA on a daily basis that I delete just about all of it.

    It’s time for my afternoon nap (yes, really), but while I’m out, http://www.nra.org would probably be a good place to start.

  18. @ 18 and @ 19. Read this from the LA Times:

    Federal gun agents in Arizona — convinced that “someone was going to die” when their agency allowed weapons sales to suspected Mexican drug traffickers — made anguished pleas to be permitted to make arrests but were rebuffed, according to a new congressional report on the controversial law enforcement probe.

  19. @21,

    Funny you should accuse me of not wanting to learn anything. I just found the federal indictment arising from all this, and learned, among other things, that I have been totally in the wrong on this.

    Here’s a link: http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/AVILA.…

    Paragraphs 42, 43, and 44 are flat-out shocking. The guy they are describing is a convicted felon. And here’s a federal prosecutor openly alleging that this felon went to a licensed gun dealer, filled out an ATF 4473 form, which implies an NICS instant background check… and somehow that check passed, and he got his guns. Three times. At least.

    So, the feds literally let the NICS check go through so a felon could buy heaps of guns. That’s a whole different level of involvement on the feds’ part than just standing by and gathering facts for their investigation. So, color me shocked. Seriously, totally shocked. Holy shit.

  20. @19: Also from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canad…

    “Authorities had hoped they would be able to follow the guns to drug cartel leaders. But ATF agents did not track the weapons after they were transferred from buyers to others who smuggled them across the border.”

    So STFU already. Your entire imaginary scenario for what happened is, well, imaginary.

  21. @24,

    I didn’t have an imaginary scenario. I was complaining that nobody was reporting any actual facts about what the ATF actually knew, and I was wondering why everybody was reporting the conclusion that ATF had fucked up without providing any detail.

    Now that I’ve read the complaint, I see it’s way, way worse than I would have thought…

Comments are closed.