In some cases, federal agents argued in public as explosion investigations were just getting started. In others, investigations were delayed as two federal agencies sparred over who was in charge.A report from the Justice Department's Inspector General now documents how a years old feud is taking a toll on real criminal investigations, now years after Justice Department leadership pledged to address the turf war between FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
The report found that ATF agents refered a suspect for prosecution in New York City in March 2008, only to find out the FBI had already been working the same exact case. The crime involved a bombing at Times Square, and the suspect was in another state.
The report also found that ATF agents made lots of noise at a Phoenix crime scene in November 2007, saying it wasn't notified about a pipe bomb being found in a truck at a nuclear plant until hours after FBI started its own investigation.
In other cases in Los Angeles and San Diego, the report documents agents from both agencies feuding in front of local firefighters and police about who should be in charge of the federal response.
The inspector general's report said,
These disputes can cause confusion for local first responders about the roles of the FBI and ATF during explosives-incident responses and delays in conducting investigations.
The report said agents from both agencies have actually raced each otherr to crime scenes to determine which agency would be the lead agency, and this affects working relationships and has kept the two agencies from sharing valuable crimefighting information and training resources.
The inspector general also found that Washington promised to address this bubbling conflict back in 2004 by issuing a memo, but that memo made no sense and didn't clear up anything.
A later policy was issued in 2008, with Washington saying this would clear up the issue once and for all, but the Justice Inspector General wrote that this policy also accomplished nothing and left agents from both agencies with just as many questions as before the policy.
The audit found this turf war had FBI and ATF maintaining separate explosives-related databases for evidence in crimes and emerging trends. The report found that some important information never made it into the database that is supposed to be shared by the two agencies, all because of this constant conflict.
As a result, the agencies' separate databases cause a duplication of effort and the inability to accurately determine trends in explosives incidents.
In a further example of Washington failing to pour water on this dispute, the inspector general noted that the Attorney General set out in 2004 to clear up a definite process for coordinating lab analyses in criminal cases so that both agencies benefit from the best tools available to the federal government as a whole. This report points out that, despite that 2004 promise, the review was never completed so the laboratory work remains a grey area between these two agencies.
The report even mentions that both agencies may fall short of complying with the presidential directive that emerged after 9/11 for coordinated, multi-agency strategies for dealing with the explosives threat by terrorists.
A 2004 review of this issue known as the "Explosives Review Group" found that both the FBI and the ATF believe they are uniquely qualified to lead explosives cases. ATF contends that explosives are its central mission, while FBI believed that it should lead the way until terrorism is ruled out. This, despite the fact that ATF and the FBI admit that few explosives incidents really involve terrorism.
The bottom line answer from the ERG and the Attorney General's office is that ATF should lead all explosion investigations, including bomb hoaxes and bomb-making, unless it is determined to be terrorism related.
However, the inspector general finds the constant feuding keeps even this order from being followed to the letter. Most specialists and managers within both agencies had different answers when they were questioned by auditors about who should be in charge in a new explosives case.
The delay that results could cause evidence to grow older, interviews with witnesses or suspects to be delayed, and could portray an image of the federal government response being confused, according to the report.
But this trench is growing deeper by the day. FBI and ATF are both expanding their explosives training facilities and the audit finds that their post-blast training programs are not coordinated and they disagree on training guidelines for bomb-dogs. The report even finds they don't agree on the amazingly basic notion of a "render-safe protocol," which is the procedure that agents follow in the field for disarming a bomb.
The confused training requirements have left both ATF and FBI agents without current training certificates for bomb handling. Their certifications have lapsed in many cases.
This audit spells out 15 recommendations to the Department of Justice to clear up the confusion, basically urging a clear cut policy to spell out in no uncertain terms what agency takes the lead, depending on the set of circumstances.
The report also urges DOJ to arrive at a uniform procedure for disarming bombs, as well as training its agents and its bomb-dogs.
For more info: Read Justice Department Inspector General's full report
Comments
FBI And ATF Turf War
judiciaryreport.com/fbi_raids_new_york_block.htm
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the BATF created to ensure taxes were collected on Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms? And isn't it a part of the Treasury Department?
What's it doing getting involved in law enforcement?
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