BATF in GOP Crosshairs

Recent news the GOP majority is looking to eliminate the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms reminded me of a previous attempt years ago. The rogue agency was out of control then, too.

I recall news of a masked ‘No-knock” raid on an ordinary family back east.

When the raiders barged in, the unclad wife shrieked for her spouse who was showering. Naked he rushed out to defend his family with a black-powder revolver –all he had — and was gunned down. Justification for the raid? Some “confidential informant” said he hoarded hand grenades.

He actually had one of those novelty ash trays purported to be made from deactivated and cut open WW 2 grenades. No punishment for the raiders.

Or for the sniper who killed a mother, son and his Lab retriever in an Idaho standoff after the husband allegedly sold sawed-off shotguns to undercover agents.

Does anyone remember who created BATF? Nixon did, after existent agencies like FBI refused orders to harass political opponents. Then his secret “plumbers” got to work, culminating in Watergate and the rise to fame of Woodward and Bernstein. In the great circus finally taking down a sitting President and his plumbers, no one remembered to get rid of his pet agency. Then came the killings of the innocent and a GOP failed attempt to disband BATF.

Excerpt from a chapter in one of my romans a clef covered some of that.

Chapter 33: Depressing developments

One frozen December day the executive assistant — now a major — said we were invited to the chief’s forty-foot sailing yacht for a holiday drink. In the deserted marina, the three of us huddled the catalytic heater in his main cabin. I accepted Scotch because no bourbon was on offer. Damn good Scotch — the chief was no piker.

Then he got down to business. The troopers’ union was once more badgering the governor about getting rid of the chief’s number two, and the governor was fed up. The boss feared he would have to fire his old friend, and hated it: recommendations? The major said the union’s main clout is with the media, Ish. You’re the media expert. Ball’s in your court.

At risk was a guy who second-guessed my every move since I took him to a pivotal editorial board early on — as if he had forgotten how well that worked. I shared troopers’ dislike of his autocracy, and was sorely tempted to turn my thumb down to be rid of him. But he was dead-loyal to the chief. So was I.

The new positive-thinking me said don’t sweat the media, boss. I can fade the union’s best move. He took my word. He always did. His friend finished his career on his own terms and retired with honor. A small private triumph for positive thinking.

The next year, a rural gun-shop owner and friend of mine was arrested on bogus charges: illegal possession of machine-gun parts. State law prohibited private ownership. But he was federally licensed for automatic weapons, contract armorer for several police and covert military units. A wounded Vietnam veteran, bearded like Moses, opinionated as all get-out, the big guy was an outspoken critic of U.S. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms.

When I still was with the state Liquor Board, the GOP initiated efforts to disband BATF for their harassment of legitimate gun owners. A BATF honcho came to us to solicit more and sexier liquor-crime referrals, to justify agency survival.

He was poaching: the 21st Amendment vested absolute liquor control in states. But federal agencies used any excuse to mutate like a virus against electoral vaccine.

Now Reagan was gone. BATF wasn’t, and was back on top, twice as arrogant. Their “sting” against Idaho survivalists devolved into a shootout, killing a wife, her teenage son and his Labrador.

Harsh critics like my friend had to be nipped in the bud, so they co-opted a Canadian arms dealer to mail unsolicited machine-gun parts to his home shop. Black-clad, masked BATF agents followed the postman, terrorizing his teenage daughter and confiscating every firearm down to collectible Old West six-guns from his shop and his home.

The state judge dismissed the bogus case out of hand, said unpleasant things about BATF and ordered return of all guns to his daughter’s mother, his business partner who had never married him.

Pissed, they refiled the state charges before a federal judge known for increasingly erratic decisions as he descended into Alzheimer’s. Federal judges are America’s feudal barons, ducal power constrained only belatedly on appeal. Unlike pilots, there is no fitness test required to keep their tenured cockpits. Woe betide any defense lawyer raising mental-fitness issues.

Prosecutors gilded their lily, whispering to the judge my friend sold guns to underage buyers though filing no such charge. The defense called me to testify I knew the exact opposite: illegal buyers were turned away. The judge refused my testimony and anything else exculpatory. I watched him from the bench call my friend Scarface Al Capone with your Chicago typewriters, perhaps conflating Prohibition beer and guns in his dimming brain.

My friend went to the federal pen. He was assaulted and crippled by inmates who were never identified, and walked with a cane thereafter. Message delivered: don’t mess with BATF. They even griped to senior cops in my agency about my willingness to testify. They were told forget it; I had my chief’s unswerving confidence.

Best boss a man could have. But unfair treatment of my friend, and my inability to help, put a serious crimp in my positive thinking regimen….