Word: raiding
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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John Magaw, installed as ATF's director in 1993 in a post-Waco shuffle, has vowed to reform the agency and resolve its interior conflicts. But some agents question his commitment, especially in light of his decision to rehire two leaders of the Waco raid fired last October after the Treasury Department's scathing "Blue Book" report blamed them for botching the action and later lying about why it had failed. The rehiring caused ATF self-esteem to droop yet again. "I've never been more ashamed of being an ATF agent than I am right now," an agent wrote...
...process ignoring the thousands of investigations that conform even to the N.R.A.'s own anticrime platform. In 1994 ATF recommended 10,000 defendants for prosecution, of whom 47% were previously convicted felons. The bureau's critics also sidestep the fact that on the same day as the Waco raid, an ATF investigator, working with a New York City bomb-squad detective, found the vital shard of evidence that broke the World Trade Center bombing case. Agents from the bureau's office in Charlotte, North Carolina, recently took down a murderous street gang and sent a dozen members to prison, many...
...bureau took the action in reprisal for their having reported corruption and sexual harassment, including allegations that police officers assigned to ATF had stolen money from a drug dealer. Prompted by their disclosures, investigators from Treasury's Office of the Inspector General in November 1992 conducted an unprecedented raid on the Chicago office to seize financial documents. The interlocking scandals caused the transfer of the division's top three officials and the firing of a first-line supervisor (who was reinstated this year by a federal appeals court in Chicago). The experience, however, took a grave toll on the pair...
...Klipfel led a series of raids with the help of two Chicago police officers. In the course of the day, Klipfel began to suspect the officers had stolen money from the raiding party's first target, a 30-year-old drug dealer named Darrin Pippin. The evening of the raid, Klipfel challenged the officers, triggering a violent argument in which one of the officers kicked the door of her car and threatened her and her family, according to a formal statement she filed with ATF. "The cops were so mad," Klipfel says. "I just couldn't be sure. I felt...
Director Magaw says ATF has begun to change. His first priority, he says, was to address what he saw as the central lesson of the Waco disaster: lack of training, even among field commanders. The initial raid, which took place Feb. 28, 1993, was by all accounts an inexcusable disaster. The Treasury's Blue Book outlined in cold detail a cascade of errors and placed primary blame on the fact that the raid leaders allowed it to proceed even after learning that they had lost the element of surprise...