ATF Agent Says Agency Can Get an Agent Confirmed as Director if They’re Top Notch
Vincent Cefalu is a special agent with ATF. His column is in response to a column authored by ex-ATF official James Cavanaugh, who said appointing an ATF director by presidential appointment isn’t working. Cavanaugh said the appointment should be made by the umbrella agency — the Justice Department.
By Vincent A. Cefalu
For ticklethewire.com
I too I have worked for many Directors for 25 years and am STILL on the job. Therefore I would like to respond to the ATF unofficial mouth piece, Jim Cavanaugh.
First of all please stop speaking for ATF management, they are big boys. They have chosen to speak through DOJ attorney’s instead and that is quite troubling.
Your comments early in this debacle suggested you were trying to mitigate and minimize HQs accountability for being so out of control. You were making excuses for how hard catching gunrunners is. Let me break it down for you; you develop evidence and probable cause you seize their guns and arrest them or not. No Guns hit the street.
They LET 2000 guns go to criminals because no one in the loop had the courage or integrity to stop it. Sound familiar Jim? You are obviously doing a Great bit of promoting. And I am intimately aware of the gunshots you heard in anger, and the circumstances of why you heard those shots. That’s not a GOOD thing Jim. Why exactly did you hear gunshots at all?
Have you lost your mind? Keep the appointment in Justice? Yeah that’s who I want overseeing and making sure ATF is accountable.
We have the opportunity to stand with the big boys and because of a totally ineffective and abusive Executive staff, you assert that we can’t get a Director confirmed.
Enter Clarence Thomas, he got confirmed, enter an EXTRA 2 years for the Honorable Mr. Mueller. Stop telling the American people St. John cant get confirmed. How would you know that. All three of our last attempts failed. Stop selecting poor candidates and we will have a Director. Just because he has an ATF badge, doesn’t make him competent
I think what you fail to acknowledge is that Mr. Magaw saved and rebuilt this agency, love him or hate him. He definitely would have been confirmed. Then Mr. Truscott began the process of bosses being bigger than the mission.
Then Mr. Sullivan, who paid about as much attention to our agency as you do to facts. Half United States Attorney and half ATF Director. I think I may have figured out why we have lost our explosives jurisdiction for all practical purposes.
Our ESF 13 function was openly criticized by the GAO. Our NRT program is in the tank and we have more employee disputes than either the FBI or DEA. The industry that we have all worked so hard to become partners with over the last 30 years hate us and don’t trust us.
A Director from inside would be preferred by ALL. The notion the NRA will tank anybody for no reason is insane.
The abuses brought down on the industry by bad policies, the legislating from inside a Bureau has to stop. The total adversarial demeanor has to change, between the field and HQ. Most have lost faith.
That’s not going to happen, dipping a little deeper into the same poison well. They are all either promoted by or have promoted each other.
We need clean crisp leadership to groom a future Agent as our Director. A General Stanley McChrystal of sorts, that realizes HQ is here to support the field, not the other way around. Put a strong “A” political Cop Boss in their and he will get confirmed as a Director.
The exact reason the current and your generation of bosses got away with so much is because the layers of accountability were so thick, and there was no transparency.
No one much had accountability that he/she couldn’t hand off to somebody else. Lets be accountable. We are ATF. We don’t redact 95% of a document to a Congressional Chairman. We hand all of our stuff over. We are ATF and we have nothing to hide.
So Jim, if we let the Justice Department pick our Director, is it your assertion that they would hold likes of Mclemore, Crenshaw, Ford, Hoover at bay?
Um, do you watch the news? The agency lacks character and accountability at the highest levels. An outsider has to clean house, and then provide a short list of qualified managers for consideration as our Director. And no Jim, that is not going to be you. If it makes you feel better, I don’t want the job either.
11 comments:
I'm getting sick and tired of these agents trying to convince themselves, and everyone else that they, and their agency are honorable. Just the formation of this agency was an affront to The Constitution, and it has only gone down hill from there. This agency has a long storied history of violating the law, and killing innocent men, women, and children. Hopefully this gunwalker scandal will be the straw that broke the camels back, and we can finally be rid of this unconstitutional agency once and for all.
Outstanding interview right up to the point where he said we didn't need to get rid of the ATF. While he and many other agents may well be upstanding agents, the ATF is an unconstitutional government organization who's ultimate goal is the disarm the American People and it should be immediately de-funded!
Very well said by Mr Cefalu. But I agree with TL671
Remember a couple of years ago Mike when you published the story of the "revenuer" that went missing?
They were hated then too.
Like TL said, no good comes from this agency and it never has.
Boo F' Hoo that they can't get a top Oathbreaker.
Yup, let's get rid of a beat-down ATF that the higher-ups really managed to screw up, and replace it with a new agency that we have zero control and influence over.
Mike has said "better the Devil we know.." and he's absolutely right.
There are good agents in ATF, who like guns, and simply want to go after the real bad guys.
A local range got broken into a few years ago, and the ATF agent assigned to it had the case closed within two days, and most of the stolen guns recovered.
Imagine a professional ATF; we could probably get a good amnesty set up, and possibly the 86 MG Ban eliminated.
At one point the colonists in Lexington and Concord were loyal British subjects. At some later point in time many of them had become something else entirely, willing and eager to run miles for the chance to open fire at their own government's troops. After that, the congress spent 16 months trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. That was a no-go situation.
I'm not sure if ATF ever had the support of America's gun owners and our shooting sports industry as Agent Cefalu seems to think. But they most certainly do not today and have not since at least 1968. I think he is mistaken that any conceivable ATF director, whether from inside or outside the agency, is ever going to put the toothpaste back in that tube.
Anonymous,
Why do we need an agency to "regulate" three completely legal possessions? Last I checked alcohol, tobacco, and firearms were all legal to own, and purchase. We already have several agencies that can, and should handle any illegalities committed with any of these three legal objects. The congress make laws, if federal enforcement is needed of said law it should be the responsibility of the FBI to investigate it. ATF started as a tax collection agency, then some corrupt politician realized they could grasp more control over the citizenry if they turned it into a police force. Since then they have trampled every Constitutional right they have come across, unchecked. So, I ask again why do we need the atf?
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/06/27/atf-to-fire-gunrunner-whistleblower/ Sort of a follow up to what is posted here.
No one seems to understand "shall not be infringed". The only purpose of the batfags its to infringe. Some agents may be less evil than others, but there are no "good" agents whose sole job is to infringe on the Constitution.
Does any have any idea how bad this interview made the ATF look? I cannot help but to think that we have Mike and David to thank for all of this! Great job everyone!
Here's the solution to the misdeeds of the BATFE....DISBAND the agency. It's that simple.
The hell with Cefalu. If you believe he's a "good" ATF agent then you're drinking the Kool-Aid too.
Remember....he carries an ATF badge. That's all one needs to understand. He's employed by the Feds to undermine our freedom and compromise the United States Constitution at every opportunity.
From what I see here it seems the readers are to believe that Cefalu is an ATF agent with honor, with scruples, with allegiance to the US Constitution. In that case NAZI Germany's GESTAPO agents weren't all bad. In turn there certainly must have been some really good, patriotic member's of Uncle Joe Stalin's NKVD.....later to become the Soviet Union's KGB. Oh yeah....gee, can't lump all the former members of Hitler's GESTAPO, Stalin's NKVD, Khrushchev's KGB with Reagan/Bush/obama's BATFE....can we ? Certainly some of those GESTAPO/KGB agents had the best interests of their citizens at heart, eh ? You know the same way BATFE Agent Cefalu really cares about his fellow Americans; those same fellow Americans Cefalu stomped on with the heel of his BATFE boot for 25 years.
Cefalu is little better than Cavanaugh or Holder or the illegal Kenyan, obama. Quit putting any of America's GESTAPO agents, the BATFE, on a pedestal. Unless of course the pedestal includes a noose on a short rope above it.
DISBAND the BATFE and have a start on the return of our Freedom and Liberty.
DAN
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