Controversy could kill the ATF By: Josh Gerstein July 8, 2011 04:42 AM EDT

The unfolding scandal over a gunrunning investigation allegedly botched by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives could do what years of criticism of the long-beleaguered agency never quite accomplished — result in its demise. That, at least, is the view of some former ATF employees and advocates on both sides of the gun control debate who have watched the agency struggle to contain the damage from an operation intended to trace the traffic of illegal guns to Mexico that has reignited the harsh criticism often directed at the ATF in the past. The agency, which moved from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department in 2003, has been without a permanent director for nearly five years. Nominees offered by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have languished without approval from the Senate after drawing strong opposition from the National Rifle Association, which for years has been the agency’s loudest critic. Now, with ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson hobbled by the scandal over Operation Fast and Furious and by indications he’s at odds with senior Justice Department officials, many are saying a breakup of the storied agency could just be a matter of time. “I think something like that is likely to happen,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “Unless they take some action to give it a director, it’s inevitable it’s going to have to get to that stage. It cannot continue the way it’s going now. … Right now, ATF is so weak it’s amazing.” Christopher Cox, legislative director for the NRA, the agency’s longtime nemesis, also said arguments for shuttering or breaking up ATF are building. “Their criminal investigation tactics are going a long way to proving that point,” Cox said. “If they cease to be an effective law enforcement organization, they will cease to be legitimate, and the calls for restructuring or abolishing of ATF are going to become more and more valid.” Some experts said the ATF, a successor to Treasury’s Prohibition Unit that once counted crimefighter Eliot Ness among its ranks, has outlived its usefulness. “Even the name of the organization, it’s from the black-and-white movie era,” said Jim Kessler of Third Way, a centrist Democratic group. “I don’t think it should exist. The investigations should be subsumed within the FBI, and the licensing could be done by Treasury, which is a tax-collecting agency.” But the idea of disbanding the agency or folding it into the FBI is rejected by Bradley Buckles, ATF’s director from 1999 to 2004. “It’s the same [question] as why does the [Drug Enforcement Administration] exist or the Marshals Service. You could make an argument that all federal law enforcement could be collapsed into the FBI, I suppose, but I’m not sure anybody thinks that’s a good idea, to concentrate that much power in one agency,” said Buckles. “There are arguments that specialized agencies can carry out those functions better than an agency that has too full a palette with everything else to do.” “I don’t see them merging with another agency,” said Ronnie Carter, another former ATF official. “Whatever agency you merge them with is going to have the same problems. … A lot of it is weakness in the law. ATF can do the job. They just have to be allowed to do it.” But even those officials who favor keeping the agency said lawmakers need to put an end to the years of limbo, one way or another. “I know it’s tough to get things through Congress, but this is ridiculous. … Quit treating the ATF as a bastard child,” Carter said. “You can’t run an agency or a police department or anything without having a leader. … It’s a traumatic thing for ATF. They don’t think anybody cares, and nobody’s following through.” “You can’t have any kind of organization and expect it to run well without some kind of leader,” Buckles said. “It’s just unimaginable in any other environment.” For decades, the ATF director job did not require Senate confirmation. But after a financial scandal involving the last permanent director in 2006, Congress decided at the NRA’s urging to make the post subject to Senate approval. Since then, presidents have been slow to nominate directors and senators reluctant to accept nominees opposed by the powerful NRA. “I point the finger at Congress. You made it confirmable, so confirm somebody. If not, restructure it. … If this structure doesn’t work, let’s get a structure that does,” Helmke said. In 2007, Bush nominated Michael Sullivan, a federal prosecutor from Massachusetts, as director. He served as acting director for more than two years, but his confirmation was opposed by the NRA and never came to a vote. Obama waited nearly 22 months before nominating Chicago ATF supervisor Andrew Traver in November 2010. Traver has yet to have a hearing or a vote. A Senate aide said Traver’s full paperwork was not received until earlier this year, and no hearing is presently scheduled. “The ATF has been without a confirmed director for years — predating this administration — and our hope is that, given the important mission of the bureau, we will soon have Senate-confirmed leadership there,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz. Not surprisingly, the NRA also opposes Traver. “What we’ve insisted on is that the agency that is tasked with enforcing gun laws not be headed by someone who is rabidly anti-Second Amendment,” Cox said. “That’s not an unreasonable position for the National Rifle Association to take. “It’s unfortunate, but not surprising, that’s exactly the kind of candidate President Obama has put up in Andrew Traver. We will continue to strongly oppose not only Andrew Traver’s nomination but any nomination [advancing] a political agenda directed at the rights of law-abiding gun owners,” Cox said. Advocates said they doubt there will be any hearing or vote for Traver until the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Justice Department Inspector General complete probes into what went wrong in Operation Fast and Furious. Guns tracked as part of the operation have shown up at crime scenes north and south of the border, including a December shootout in Arizona that left a U.S. Border Patrol agent dead. Recent developments in the congressional investigation could also intensify calls for bringing ATF personnel into the FBI. Melson told congressional investigators in recent days that ATF was kept in the dark about FBI and DEA dealings with some of the people encountered in the course of the gunrunning probe. “We have very real indications from several sources that some of the gun trafficking ‘higher ups’ that the ATF sought to identify were already known to other agencies and may have been paid as informants,” House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote Tuesday in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. The Justice Department’s official response to the lawmakers’ letter did not explain any connection between the ATF operation and other agencies, but one official said it was unclear whether any connections to the FBI or DEA would have altered ATF’s handling of its investigation. Aides to Issa said he’s not currently considering the fate of ATF as an agency. “We’re focused on the investigation at this time,” Oversight Committee spokeswoman Becca Watkins said. “At this time, Sen. Grassley has not indicated a desire to make changes to the structure of the ATF,” Grassley spokeswoman Beth Levine said Thursday. Despite the talk of folding ATF into the FBI, gun control advocates also said they suspect that the NRA and pro-gun lawmakers actually prefer a hobbled ATF to the possibility of a forceful director or vigorous enforcement of gun laws by the FBI. “They like a weak ATF,” Helmke said. “They don’t want any part of this at the FBI.” “Congress made this a confirmed position to make sure there will never be an ATF director. There will never be an ATF director in our lifetime,” Kessler added. http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=3F9196D4-B777-42A3-B6A1-7DDCC2910830

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