Word: waco
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...MAGAW MAY BE RUNNING OUT of time. The bureau faces a long hot summer of scrutiny, starting this week when the House subcommittees on crime and national security begin a joint eight-day hearing on ATF and FBI actions at Waco. The crime subcommittee plans two more hearings after the August congressional recess to examine other alleged ATF abuses and the enforcement of firearms laws in general. In short, congressional Republicans aim to ask whether the bureau should be allowed to survive. One of this week's inquisitors will be Representative Bob Barr of Georgia, an N.R.A. member who heads...
...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...
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...
...Time, dated May 5, defines such cases to include investigations "of possible criminal conduct by any foreign official or government, religious organization, political organization, or the news media." Says Magaw: "Anybody who questions why we're doing it differently now than we did before need only look at Waco...
Despite all those changes, some agents wonder if life within ATF has really changed. Immediately after the Waco raid, many agents were outraged when the raid leaders, Phillip Chojnacki and Chuck Sarabyn, tried to blame the fiasco on a young undercover agent. The Treasury report, which condemned both leaders for serious errors and for lying to postraid investigators, stated, "Their consistent attempts to place blame on a junior agent were one of the most disturbing aspects of the conduct of senior ATF officials...