The reputation of the ATF has taken a beating over the years. Longtime members of the gun culture are well aware of the Bureau’s disastrous actions in the early 1990’s. During the last decade, the ATF seemed to have reformed their strategy somewhat, and their credibility was slowly being rebuilt.
That all changed with the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry late last year.
On December 14th, Terry was gunned down in a firefight near Rio Rico in southern Arizona. The following day, Arizona law enforcement recovered two of the rifles used. They were WASR-10 semiautomatic AK-47 clones, purchased by Jaime Avila at a shop in Glendale the previous January.
Avila had been identified by the ATF the previous January as a participant in a vast conspiracy to transport weapons and narcotics across the border into Mexico. Both Avila and the rifles were in their database as “suspect.” Yet Avila was not arrested or questioned until the death of agent Terry.
Between December of 2009 and January 2010, Andre Howard had been in contact with the ATF regarding suspicious purchases of large quantities of identical pistols and rifles by Avila and his associates at his shop. Agents put the location under surveillance and began an investigation. The ATF planned to track the weapons and arrest the conspirators at some point.
In some cases, as many as 40 identical rifles were purchased in a single transaction. According to the indictment against Avila and his associates [pdf], the total number of AK-47’s coming from Howard’s shop alone is over 600. The vast majority of those guns are now unaccounted for.
Before the media chooses to castigate Howard, I’d like to remind everyone that ATF agents have been known to order dealers to allow straw purchases to go through in hopes of tracking the guns after they get out. I see no rational reason for Howard to allow something like this to take place unless he was under instructions to do so.
Then we have the case of ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata.
Zapata was ambushed and killed in February in an ambush outside Monterrey. One of the weapons was recovered, and agents were somehow able to reconstruct the serial number, which had been obliterated. Along with ballistics testing, they were able to trace the gun to Otilo Osorio of Lancaster, Texas [pdf].
Like Avila, Osorio had been under investigation by the ATF. Last November, he was identified for his role in facilitating the shipment of weapons to the Los Zetas cartel in Mexico. He handed them off to a confidential informant while under surveillance, and even confessed that he knew their purpose and destination.
Osorio was not arrested at the time. Though the weapons furnished to the CI were recovered, that only represented some of the guns Osorio had worked with, and he would not be arrested until a week after Zapata’s death in February.
This whole mess was first brought to light by David Codrea a few months back. Like many, I found it hard to believe, especially since there wasn’t much hard proof at the time. However, we’ve seen a great deal of documentation surface the last few weeks, and the mainstream media has picked up on it over the last few days. CBS was able to interview several ATF agents on the matter, and the whole picture is troubling, to put it mildly.
As of this morning, the question was put directly to White House press secretary Jay Carney, and on behalf of the administration, he plead ignorance on the matter.
Project Gunrunner has allowed thousands of guns to “walk,” and very few have been recovered. We don’t know how many Mexican lives will be claimed using them. As one agent put it, every time a shooting was reported, “we would all hold our breath hoping it wasn’t one of ‘our’ guns.”
Given the ability to freely and widely disseminate information on the internet, there’s no easy way to make this go away. This whole thing could end up being more damaging for the Bureau than Ruby Ridge, and it could spread to all levels of the government.