There’s a good article over at American Thinker on what the consequences of “Operation Fast and Furious” should be. I agree, the BATF should be abolished. They are the example of a rogue agency, and have been for decades. I, too, want to know how far up the chain of command responsibility for this deceptive criminal enterprise went. I find it hard to believe that something this far reaching, that coincidentally happened to time out with a push by senior Administration officials to paint the “gun problem” in Mexico as being a problem with weapons smuggled from the United States, didn’t have clearance all the way from the top.
Posts Tagged ‘BATF’
ATF Takes Cue From CRU
by snork ( 109 Comments › )Filed under Weapons at April 26th, 2010 - 9:00 am
I’ve written before about the FOIA process, and how it was a liberal/Democrat invention, but is increasingly being used by conservatives and libertarians. I’ve also written about how Climategate would have been trivial if the principal parties involved had obeyed the law, and answered FOIA (and the UK counterpart, FOI) requests completely and in good faith.
I’ve also written about how FOIA avoidance is becoming standard procedure all across government. Over at PJM, Bob Owens (Confederate Yankee) writes of a tale of sunshine avoidance by the BATF that is so bad, it sounds like they’re taking their advice from the same people who were advising Jones and Mann:
Customs has refused to answer questions addressed to them about the seizure, referring all claims to the ATF. As a result, Pajamas Media filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the ATF, asking in part for:
Documentation relating to the determination. … [C]opies of written documentation and video or photographic evidence showing how ATF technicians were able to convert the lower to fire real ammunition, and information of what occurred when the converted weapon was fired. … [C]opies of email and print communications within the ATF regarding this issue, and copies of email and print communications between ATF and CBP related to this issue.
The ATF’s written response to the FOIA request was less than helpful. Instead of providing information about the WE Tech rifles seized from Airsoft Outlet Northwest at the Port of Tacoma, Washington, ATF responded with what appeared to be a clumsy bait-and-switch:
We would like to bring to your attention our oversight on the subject of your request in our letter dated April 13, 2010; Springfield, Inc instead of record pertaining to Airsoft rifles intercepted by Customs and Border Protection; as maintained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
Perhaps an expert in FOIA law can explain this interesting redirection to those of us less versed in the finer points of the legalities, but it would seem quite bizarre that an agency subject to FOIA requests has the authority to randomly determine that the requester really wanted something entirely different … and entirely useless. Airsoft Outlet Northwest’s Ben Martin confirmed receiving apparently identical information in response to their FOIA request as well.
Instead of providing reasonable, simple answers to reasonable, simple questions (along the lines of “how did the ATF come to the determination that these Airsoft rifles were machine guns?”), the agency passed along a series of heavily redacted documents about:
- Sigma Airsoft silencers (not WE Tech Airsoft rifles)
- seized in Phoenix, AZ (not Tacoma, WA)
- in 2004 (not 2009-10
To bring everybody up to speed (if you don’t want to read the article), this is in regard to the wrongful seizure of a shipment of plastic BB guns by the BATF under the ludicrous pretense that they could be converted into machine guns.
So…
Exactly like the climate guys, they answer the wrong question, and they send the answer to the wrong question to everyone making any kind of request.
Hide the decline? No, hide the BB guns. They’re dangerous!
The Mother of all Conspiracies
by snork ( 136 Comments › )Filed under Crime, Economy at January 23rd, 2010 - 12:00 pm
Here is a story with something for everyone: Big Tobacco, Islamic terrorists (yes, I said that; sue me), Hezbollah, CAIR, the ATF, Koreans, Italians, Bloomberg, and Exxon, Glenn Beck, and the Vatican have gotta be in there somewhere.
Undercover ATF agents in Virginia have funneled more than 250 million cigarettes onto the nation’s streets in the past three years through black market sales targeting smugglers, an Associated Press review has found.
[…]
Many of those cigarettes undoubtedly wind up in the mouths of minors, since black market vendors have no reason to turn away teenage purchasers.
Despite that, government auditors and anti-tobacco groups want the ATF to do even more.
So… Our friends at the BATF are selling cigs to kids. And the anti-tobacco groups want them to crank it up. Why? Because NYC has, by far, the highest tobacco taxes in the country. So why is BATF focusing on these rings that sell in the city? Because the NYC city government is losing significant tax revenue.
The Department of Justice, the ATF’s parent agency, estimates that federal, state and local governments lose out on $5 billion annually in tax revenue from cigarettes sold through illegitimate channels.
So the feds are trying to maintain the city’s tax collections.
…Eastern District of Virginia, which includes Richmond, northern Virginia and the Interstate 95 corridor. The area is a hotbed for the crime because while 42 states and the District of Columbia have collectively passed more than 80 tax hikes on cigarettes since 2002, Virginia and North Carolina, the heart of tobacco country, still tax tobacco at only pennies per pack.
“The profit margin on this is ridiculous,” said Ashan Benedict, resident agent in charge of the bureau’s office in Falls Church, Va. “It’s not that hard to find a customer who wants to save $40 a carton.”
That’s a very interesting comment, coming from a fed. It’s profit if smugglers do it. When the city taxes it away, is it still a ridiculous profit margin?
The Virginia agents say they focus on cigarette smuggling in large part because the investigations often turn up other crimes. The ATF’s Richmond office went so far as to set up its own store in King George, Va., called KG Wholesale, which advertised in Arabic-language newspapers and elsewhere. The store was set up with audio and video surveillance to record the transactions, all of which were illegal undercover sales.
Uh-oh. Profiling. They’re setting up stings for Arabic speakers only.
The planners of the storefront sting were aware that cigarette smuggling has been a source of terrorist funding in the past – in 2002 a federal jury in North Carolina convicted two Lebanese citizens of diverting millions of dollars in cigarette smuggling proceeds to the radical Islamic group Hezbollah – and were anxious to disrupt other similar money trails.
Agent Ken Mosley is confident that investigations like the KG case disrupt terror financing, but he acknowledged evidence was insufficient to bring terrorism charges.
“There is no doubt in my mind that we have arrested people involved in terrorism,” Mosley said.
Now they dunnit.
The focus on Arabic-speaking smugglers in the KG Wholesale investigation – the store did not run ads in other foreign-language papers – smacks of profiling, said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group.
“Obviously it would be a concern if they targeted only Muslims and/or Arab-Americans,” Hooper said.
Well, Dougie, you may have a point there.
The focus on Arabic-speaking smugglers in the KG Wholesale investigation – the store did not run ads in other foreign-language papers – smacks of profiling, said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group.
“Obviously it would be a concern if they targeted only Muslims and/or Arab-Americans,” Hooper said.
But they aren’t the only ones involved:
Benedict and Fairfax County Police Lt. David Smith had the Korean smugglers convinced they were Italian mobsters. In the KG case, Mosley said agents would get angry or cagey if their customers asked where all the cigarettes were coming from.
And to round out the roster of unsavory characters, we have:
In fact, the cigarettes come from the same places the legitimate ones do: Big Tobacco. Under an ATF program, tobacco corporations supply cigarettes for stings and are repaid with the proceeds from the sales.
So it’s all a big conspiracy to put money in the hands of (gasp!!!!!!!) Big Tobacco at the expense of NYC taxpayers!!!!!11 But I shouldn’t be telling you about this, because you’re probably getting kickbacks, too.
