From: [r m plstls k n] at [aol.com] (Rmplstlskn) Date: 28 Jul 1995 03:18:48 -0400 Subject: ATF Seeks Out EASY PREY! SOF article Mismanaged, Mindless & Macho ATF Insider Talks About Ailing Agency by SOF Staff Soldier of Fortune Sept. 1995 pp.42 Soldier of Fortune has repeatedly called for investigations into events at Waco and Ruby Ridge. If mistakes were made by ATF officials, they should be held accountable. If there are any systematic problems with the agency, they should be corrected. In our effort to address these issues, SOF has found many of the ATF rank-and-file willing to come forward. Many feel they are being blamed for a bureaucracy out of control and contend fault lies with management, not the agents in the field. Kay Kubicki is just such an agent. After leaving the ATF in July 1988 as a group supervisor, she began representing Treasury agents as an attorney in employment matters. SOF recently interviewed her regarding problems in the agency. SOF: Let's start with Waco. One of the things our sources report is that Waco commanders Phil Chojnacki and Chuck Sarabyn were able to get reinstated with back pay because their lawyers were able to put pressure on the government by subpoenaing the phone records. Have you heard anything of this nature? KK: Yes, I have heard rumors. SOF: The government caved in because those phone records show upper management's involvement at Waco. KK: I don't know about the phone records specifically. But the agents' lawyers appealed their firing to the Merit Systems Protection Board - the agency that hears federal employees' appeals. Anyway, they asked, through the discovery process, for the transcripts of the interviews that they used to fire Chojnacki and Sarabyn. Apparently there are phone records included in those transcripts. Only after the judge set a deadline for Treasury to produce the documents, did they begin negotiating a settlement. One of the lawyers noted as part of the settlement, Treasury was allowed to withdraw all the documents they had filed, including the small portion of the interviews they submitted. I started thinking, what are they trying to hide? What's in those documents? SOF: Well, this would certainly be something of interest to a congressional investigation. KK: Whoever in Congress is interested in that particular issue, Waco, ought to be digging like a banshee. SOF: Digging into what? KK: Into the exact time line of events that happened that day. After having been an agent involved in Miami in the '80s, I can tell you nothing gets by headquarters. Nothing. I mean everything you do has to be approved by headquarters. The rumor running around ATF today claims there is evidence in those transcripts that proves Chojnacki and Sarabyn were not responsible - that they were acting under orders from upper management. All I know is that it appears to me they must have something explosive to bring those men back. SOF: What do you mean, bring them back? KK: Well, they reinstated the agents with not only back pay and benefits, but they are now in law enforcement positions, even though Treasury say they're not. And Chuck Sarabyn flies home every two weeks to visit his family until they are relocated to Washington. I've never heard of anyone else being allowed that. So whatever they have, it is explosive. They never missed a day of pay. What is very interesting to me is Ron Noble told me in his office, a year ago, that Chojnacki and Sarabyn would never come back as agents. That's what he said. And then in August, there was a completely different story. And then in December, they're back. SOF: I'd like to change directions for a minute. You have mentioned in the past that a top-heavy bureaucracy has affected the amount of money agents have for operations. KK: The agents have nothing. When ATF budgets are slashed, the people left without operating money are the agents and the investigations. If you look at the New Orleans office, and it's one of their hot offices right now, they've taken money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development because HUD is seeding law enforcement activities to work on cleaning up the projects. SOF: I guess they can budget it that way. They have the authority to direct funds as they see fit. KK: Right. They work it into a task force situation. Well, that's not ATF money. But, I can tell you, I've been told by agents in Kansas City that they were given $50 a month for gas and oil changes for their vehicles. How far can you get on $50? Some vehicles assigned to agents have over 160,000 miles on them. How can you do the job? These are not usable law enforcement at 160,000 miles. On the other hand, and this is my point, you have the special agent in charge, the assistant special agents and all operations officers with brand new cars. And according to GAO regs., they do not even qualify for cars. Yet some agent who is doing the grunt work, trying to make a case, is sitting in a vehicle with over 100,000 miles on it. This happened to me. There I am, trying to conduct an investigation, and my car breaks down at 2300 hours in the worst neighborhood in Chicago. This happens constantly in ATF. The upper management people, they grab the new cars and throw the bones to the agents. On top of that, all those sitting up at bureau headquarters are getting the 25% availability pay. SOF: What's that? What does availability pay mean? KK: Well, most people at headquarters are a minimum of a grade 13. They go up there as a 13 and they become 14s very quickly. Availability pay is supposed to be money that is given to an agent for working overtime. They don't get time and a half, they get availability pay - 25% of their base pay. The way it is meant to work is when an agent is on surveillance or works at night this is how they get paid for it. But the way it works in reality is that the people in headquarters will schedule their day so that they will be there until 1800, log two hours of overtime and qualify for availability pay. And with the bloated number of managers this adds up to a lot of money, money that doesn't go for investigations. SOF: When did the bureaucracy start to get out of control like this? KK: It really started to balloon around 1990 when you had an increase in management. SOF: But why would an ATF director approve this increase in upper management? KK: Because it all supports their grade. In order to have a grade 14 supervisor, you have to have so many 13s to supervise. The regulations themselves cause this kind of bloating. If you want to be a SEC grade 16, you need so many 15s underneath. So, if they want to pay themselves more money, they have to create higher grades. They never see that money at the agent level. It's certainly not based on more complex investigations. SOF: Why isn't the ATF interested in complex cases? They seem to concentrate on pursuing gun shop owners more than hardened criminals. KK: It's easy. It's an easy kill. SOF: Are you substantiating the allegations that they'd rather go after some poor dork with a gun shop than butt heads with gangs? KK: Many supervisors would rather do that. Many group supervisors base their decisions on what cases to open based on the amount of controversy it has. The agent does not make that decision. The agent gathers the information, writes it up and gives it to the supervisor. The supervisor reads the case and if the case is a little bit controversial, he takes it higher. SOF: Now, what do you mean by controversial? KK: For instance, if you were going to go after the Bloods and the Crips, or if there's anything that is going to be a little bit on the edge, the supervisor won't approve it. Something that is going to entail a lot of search warrants, a lot of undercover work and informants - things that can cause you problems - are discouraged. If there is going to be anything that could go wrong, then if that supervisor is interested in a career move upward, he is going to discuss it with the next level manager. SOF: I see. And the supervisor has the final word? KK: Sure, he can come back and say to the agent, 'No, you're not opening it.' And there's nothing the agent can do because the agent cannot get any money. No other agent will be assigned to work with them on the project and the agent can actually be reprimanded for insubordination. SOF: Then it's not so much of an ATF bureaucracy motivated by pursuing the gun owner because they are anti-gun, as much as it is a case of taking the easy way out, to get a better kill percentage? KK: Right. Because all the supervisors are interested in is how many cases did they make at the end of the year. They don't care what is involved. I will tell you that agents, many agents, have been forced into a situation where they take adopted cases from police officers. SOF: What do you mean by that? KK: The case is made. The cop pulls over somebody for a driving violation and the guy has a gun on the seat in the back. It's an easy case. You know, many agents have been forced into taking adopted cases like that when what they want to do is real investigative work. SOF: Didn't this happen to you? You were talking about when you were an active agent supervisor and had a number of cases shut down by your supervisors that you wanted to pursue. KK: Well, there was a case where Greek nationals with political immunity were trying to buy a phenomenal amount of explosives over the phone. I remember a shopping list of explosives they wanted. One item was something like 200 pounds of dynamite, and that was only one item. When we got these numbers, I looked at this and wondered where we could get that much dummy dynamite to show them. And this was just the first buy. But I couldn't even get their phone traced. SOF: You couldn't get what? KK: I requested to have the telephone number traced down through Interpol, and the ATF/Interpol representative wouldn't even return my calls. I sent him copies of the report to show how this case was getting bigger and bigger. I couldn't even get them to tell me where the phone number went to. Finally, I got so disgusted I gave it to the FBI. SOF: And why did you think they would not respond? KK: The only speculation I could have was because ATF did not want to get involved in the case. But instead of just saying, well, refer to the FBI, they just stonewalled. So, I just took it upon myself. I had a friend in NSA who provided me with the number of the appropriate person in the FBI, and I referred it to a grade 15. SOF: And so you have no... KK: I have no idea what happened to the case. Another case, though, I insisted on carrying through. My agents and the DEA opened up a case on a motorcycle gang in Detroit. We were very successful. SOF: Did you do this on your own volition? KK: Well, I opened the case and the report went to the assistant special agent in charge. He did not want to approve it. He tried to say it was a territory thing - DEA or someone else should do it. But I had the case cold. I already had undercover agents inside. There weren't any fairy tales in my report; I knew we could do everything I said we could. SOF: So they let you go forward? KK: Yes. But as the case got bigger, I was called in once a week and they threatened to close my case. I couldn't believe it. We were taking in guns every week and DEA was buying drugs. By the end of the investigation we seized their clubhouse, vehicles and motorcycles. We destroyed the group. And I was severely reprimanded for allowing the case to go on. SOF: You were reprimanded after you accomplished the mission? KK: I sure was. My supervisor felt that another group of agents should have been running the case. But I feel the real reason was because there was always the risk of something bad happening. We were executing a lot of warrants, arresting people, seizing evidence. It was high risk and it scared them. Things could have gone wrong. It didn't matter that this was exactly the mission ATF is supposed to have. SOF: Let's diverge a bit. Are you acquainted with the facts of the Lamplugh case? KK: No, I'm not. SOF: Well, on one of their magnificent no-knock operations, they went in and trashed this guy's house and were just generally assholes. One of the female agents stomped a cat to death. I'm not a cat fan but this was a bit much. What's the psyche here? What's the motivation? Do you have any insights? KK: You mean for this type of brutality? SOF: Sure. And like the Katona case where they went in and manhandled this man's wife. She had a miscarriage and once again, nothing was found. KK: Many times agents will work with police departments, and they'll see this type of roughhousing. I'm not saying all local police officers do this, but their job is response and that is different. Federal law enforcement's job is supposed to be extensive investigation, the type of long term investigative work police officers don't have the time to do. So, when you see this type of behavior come up, many times this is something they have seen. But truthfully, I have never seen any agent act with brutality. SOF: Are agents taught these response techniques? KK: I thought the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center sometimes stressed the physical aspect or restraint more than negotiation. And a lot of people who were hired by ATF don't learn that you can talk to people and get people to cooperate. There's not a lot of emphasis put on negotiation. And this type of behavior, if this particular agent showed that type of brutality, in my opinion, could be a response to the pressure of the situation. And there's a lot of it because you only have seconds to make those decisions. SOF: Could this be an explanation for Waco? KK: I don't know. But there are agents that have quit the SRT [Special Response Team] because of Waco. SOF: Really? Any way to contact them off the record? KK: Well, most of the agents that are active duty will not talk. SOF: How do you want to wrap this up? KK: ATF needs to let the agents work on criminals. That's who they want to work on. But I think if everyone understood just how easy it is for any agency, any law enforcement agency, to shut down an investigation, they would be amazed. And once this happens a few times, that agent is going to stop working. The agents are hard-working professionals that are horribly mismanaged. For subscription information: call 1-800-877-5207 or write Soldier of Fortune PO Box 348 Mt Morris, IL 61054-0348 =========================================================== -=> Rmplstlskn <=-