ATF Has No Head 15 Months Into Obama Presidency
Just last month, secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew to Mexico City and announced the Obama administration was "doing all that we can" to curb the illegal flow of U.S. weapons to Mexico's drug cartels. But 15 months after the president took office, the White House has yet to nominate a director to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the agency tasked with policing weapons traffic. In fact, the acting director, Kenneth Melson, recently had to be demoted to deputy director because of a law that limits how long acting chiefs can run federal agencies. This has left ATF without a Senate-confirmed leader at a time of increased cross-border gun violence and mounting concerns about militia activity. "It's shocking and indefensible," says Kristen Rand of the Violence Policy Center, a gun-control group, "that when you have a huge problem from gun trafficking and gun violence, they have left this agency leaderless." The void has also dispirited ATF field agents, some current and former officials say. "The message that's sent to the employees is, 'You don't matter,'" says Jim Cavanaugh, a 33-year bureau veteran who retired this month as the agent in charge of the Nashville office.
Advocates like Rand say the failure to nominate a director reflects the administration's larger fear of tackling any firearms issue--like reinstating the assault-weapons ban--that might rile the gun lobby. A White House spokesman declined requests for comment. But privately, senior officials (who asked not to be identified talking about a personnel issue) say they have had a tough time even finding a candidate interested in the ATF job because of likely gun-lobby resistance. That's what befell the last person President George W. Bush nominated for the job, Michael Sullivan. He never got a vote after then-senator Larry Craig of Idaho--upset about the ATF's treatment of a firearms dealer in his state--put a hold on Sullivan's nomination. "Do you think there is anybody we can get confirmed for that job?" asks an administration official. Still, says another, the administration hopes to have a nominee "soon." (NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam says, "If they want to delegate the authority to make that nomination, we'd be happy to do it.")
The absence of a chief, say critics, has made the ATF more cautious about going after gun-trafficking rings or firearms dealers who sell bulk weapons to gangs. Mexican President Felipe Calderón, for example, recently complained about the U.S.'s failure to crack down on the 10,000 gun shops operating along the border. "I'm absolutely confident that because of the lack of a confirmed director, crimes are being committed and innocent people are dying," says James Pasco, a former ATF assistant director. But the bureau's Melson disputes any suggestion that the agency has backed off big cases, citing recent successes targeting illegal traffickers in Houston. The lack of a nominee to run ATF hasn't had "any impact" on the agency's operations, Melson says. "I emphatically deny that the agency has stood still."
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Michael Isikoff has been an award-winning investigative correspondent for Newsweek since 2004. He has written extensively on the U.S. government's war on terrorism, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential politics and other national issues. His book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," co-written with David Corn, was an instant New York Times best-seller when it was published in September, 2006. The book was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "fascinating reading" and "the most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations" in the run up to the war in Iraq. Since January 2009, Isikoff has been an MSNBC contributor, making regular appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball w/ Chris Matthews.
Ever since the events of September 11, Isikoff has broken repeated stories about the U.S. government's war on terror and won numerous journalism awards. His blog "DeClassified: Investigative Reporting in Real Time," which appears regularly on Newsweek's Web site and is written with MarkHosenball, has become a must-read for senior U.S. intelligence officials. Isikoff and Hosenball won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best investigative reporting online.
Isikoff's June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the 9-11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors top prize for investigative reporting in magazine journalism. He was honored, along with a team of Newsweek reporters, by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. For that coverage, Isikoff obtained exclusive internal White House, Justice Department and State Department memos showing how decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush administration led to abuses in the interrogation of terror suspects. Isikoff was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, the highest award in magazine journalism, for their coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998, including profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and a guest appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman." His coverage of the events that lead to President Bill Clinton's impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff's reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2001, Isikoff was named on a list of "most influential journalists" in the nation's capital by Washingtonian magazine.
Isikoff is the author of "Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story," a book that chronicled his own reporting of the Lewinsky story and was hailed by a critic for The Washington Post-Los Angeles Times news service as "the absolutely essential narrative of the scandal with revelations that no one would have thought possible." The book, also a New York Times bestseller, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book of the Month Club.
Isikoff came to Newsweek from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. There he covered the Justice Department and the Persian Gulf War, reported on international drug operations in Latin America and worked on the Post's financial news desk. Isikoff graduated from Washington University with a B.A. in 1974 and received a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1976.
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