Fed-Up ATF Agents Blow Whistle On Bosses – Seek Hearings

“Management culture of ATF holds no regard for the life and/or safety of front line agents.” - anonymous ATF agent

The Dutchman says it's a solid lock, a done deal.

Senior U.S. Senators from the Judiciary Committee are looking into allegations made by agents working on the border and deep in Mexico that “Project Gunrunner” operated out of the ATF's Phoenix office last summer as a front for what is actually “Project Gunwalker.”

Stunning allegations first reported to veteran gun rights advocate and “Guns” Magazine journalist David Codrea, who now writes for NationalExaminer.com, hold that the agency operated as a rogue entity to smuggle assault rifles across the border into Mexico.

Why?

To “pad” the books and make what they've been telling the media seem to be more true.

One of these guns, they allege, was actually used to murder a Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was interdicting bandits who prey on illegal immigrants on the border near Nogales when he was shot dead.

Who is the Dutchman?

It's best, first, to ask, who is R.A. Bear?

Both monikers come from the same font of journalistic creativity and both have bodacious stories to tell.

Let's start with The Dutchman.

Mike Vanderboegh authors a daily blog at “Sipsey Street Irregulars” (sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com) which chronicles the foibles and forays of the ATF, its agents, gun dealers and drug cartels in their adventures with money, drugs, smuggling folks and guns.

He once invented a man sought throughout the southeastern U.S. by ATF and other federal agents under the name of R.A. Bear as a material witness, for whom they had a subpoena and a warrant.

One problem, however, is that no such man exists. R.A. Bear sprang fully formed from The Dutchman's brow – a prank, a hoax, a joke.

Yeah, you know, THAT R.A. Bear.

That's the Dutchman. He and David Codrea have developed a network of gentlemen in black velvet suits – moles – inside a very unhappy agency named ATF. These men are fed up with being sent in undercover to penetrate deadly blood-in/blood-out motorcycle gangs, meth lab operations and gun smuggling coteries, only to learn that there is no protection, not only for themselves, but for their wives and kids, and the only light at the end of the tunnel is – you got it right the first time – a speeding locomotive coming at them right, in stereo.

According to Messrs Vanderboegh and Codrea, “We have lift-off.”

By that they mean staffers of the Senate Judiciary Committee are involved in negotiations with ATF agents who want to spill the beans on their bosses back in Washington, but don't want to do it without some kind of “whistleblower” immunity.

That federal immunity from retaliation and prosecution offered to federal employees who come forward with tales of wrongdoing done by their bosses. It's granted under federal statutes which require they show cause before a U.S.District Judge under the recommendation of federal prosecutors.

That's going to be a ticklish thing to do because, you see, they are at contretemps with a Justice Department that has held, along with Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton, that 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico from drug cartels came from gun dealers in Texas.

It ain't necessarily so, according to multiple sources throughout the nation, including the attorney for a beleagured Houston gun dealer, Bill Carter, who has often been identified as the source for most assault weapons and high-capacity magazine pistols recovered from Mexican gangsters.

Dick DeGuerin held a press conference recently in which he alleged that the ATF approved many sales of such weapons to persons Carter Country clerks suspected as gun smugglers making “straw purchases” for crooks on the other side of the border. They protested to the feds, but they approved the sales, anyway, according to the veteran defense attorney.

According to The Dutchman and Mr. Codrea, operating as a back channel commuications conduit for the ATF agents seeking protection and fighting for their professional lives, the ATF is planning a massive Waco-style raid, something they claim is going to get a lot of people killed the way the 1993 Branch Davidian debacle did if they aren't careful.

And they aren't careful, as anyone who has been paying attention is subject to know deep inside their bones and to the roots of their toenails inside their funkiest old cowboy boots.

In fact, the Obama Administration has renominated ATF executive Andrew Traver – once again – to head the agency and is seeking the approval of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mr. Traver was proposed at the new head of the agency during the Congressional recess, but his name was later withdrawn.

The gauntlet was flung down and the Senators picked it up, but only after Mssrs. Vanderboegh and Codrea and the ATF agents with code names like “Apostate” and the like challenged Chief of Staff Charlie Harmon of Senator Saxby Chambliss' office to prove he's got the cojones to stand up to the White House. Other former ranking members of the committee include Jeff Sessions and Charles Grassley.

They say they have persuaded them to reach out to the agents to learn the true nature of the Project Gunrunner/Gunwalker conundrum prior to Mr. Traver's confirmation hearings.

Knowledgeable lawmen say ATF will either emerge stronger at the broken places, or it will implode.

It's on.

Stay tuned.

- The Legendary