ATF memo after CBS report: We need positive press

[beevul]

ATF memo after CBS report: We need positive press

Posted by Sharyl Attkisson

As CBS News investigates "gun walking" allegations -- that ATF let thousands assault rifles and other weapons get into the hands of criminal suspects -- ATF bosses have remained largely silent.


We've had ongoing requests for information and on camera interviews with both ATF and the Department of Justice since prior to our first report which aired Feb. 22.

Now, we learn that after our Feb. 22 report, ATF's Chief Public Affairs officer sent an all-call internal memo to ATF Public Information Officers in an effort to "lessen the coverage of such stories in the news cycle by replacing them with good stories about ATF."


The memo asks ATF PIO's to "Please make every effort in the next two weeks to maximize coverage of ATF operations/enforcement actions/arrests at the local and regional level" in hopes it would drown out the "negative coverage by CBS News."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20039251-10391695.html?tag=mncol;lst;3

:rofl:

[sakabatou]

1. The cat's out of the bag, ATF.

[MyrnaLoy]

2. The guns went to

Mexico with or without the ATF. This only proves what most of us knew, guns from the US are making their way to Mexico. All the ATF is trying to do is discover the routes and then shutting them down. Of course the NRA and the "any and all the guns" crowd only wants you to focus of the letters "ATF". The truth, and bottom line, guns from stores in the United States are killing people in Mexico. That is the ultimate truth.

[beevul]

3. Ignore the truth of the matter at your own discretion.

"this isn't over, with the amount of guns that WE put out there..."


http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7358422n&tag=mncol;lst;1

[MyrnaLoy]

4. Did

the ATF pay for any of these guns and drive them across the border? Can you answer that question with a yes or no only?

[beevul]

5. Clearly you did.

"the ATF pay for any of these guns and drive them across the border? Can you answer that question with a yes or no only?"

The answer to the question is irrelevant.


They ALLOWED guns to cross the border, while clearly being in a position to stop it - otherwise known as doing their job.

That you aren't outraged over it is telling.


Game. Set. Match.

[MyrnaLoy]

7. so you can't

answer either one of those questions with a simple yes or no then. Thanks.

[derby378]

6. Doesn't matter anymore, does it?

The ATF brass, through their ineptness, have contributed to the bloodshed in Mexico and the killing of an American border agent. Those are the indisputable facts of the case.

[MyrnaLoy]

8. Let me try again

1. Did the ATF purchase these guns?

2. did the ATF load these weapons in a vehicle and deliver them to bad guys in Mexico?

3. did the ATF set up an operation to find out where these purchases in the US were going?

4. Did bad people buy guns in the US and smuggle them to Mexico?

Yes or No answers only please.

[derby378]

10. You're new here...

...so I'll try again. The fact of the matter is that the ATF knew that guns were illegally being shipped into Mexico and decided to look the other way instead of doing their job.

Your tax dollars paid for this incompetence, by the way.

Don't blame the guns - blame the bad guys for breaking the law, and blame the ATF for not enforcing the law.

[MyrnaLoy]

12. i just

want yes or no answers. Can you do that?

[pipoman]

14. Of coarse you do Mr. ATF agent

geezuz krist what don't you understand about what the ATF's job is? I'll help you out. It is to enforce firearms laws. Why does it matter if they drove them? They watched a criminal act take place, did nothing, now a border agent and probably others are dead. Obviously you don't give a shit, really, about accountability.

[Callisto32]

19. "Yes or no only" questions are good for TWO things.

!. Showing someone a logical folly through a series of them.

2. Trying to make someone look stupid by asking a question that is tangentially related to the topic at hand, but really doesn't matter in the end.


Yours seem to be number 2. Don't be surprised if you don't get answers to such questions. I am willing to answer, and will do so honestly and to the best of my ability if you are willing to tell my why each of the above four questions matters and what the policy implications of each are.

[TheWraith]

30. The ATF authorized purchases that would have been denied.

They ordered gun stores to make sales that the stores themselves were not willing to make without an ATF order. The sales and the smuggling would not have occurred if the ATF had not intervened.

[one-eyed fat man]

9. No! Now your turn

To play the only YES or NO answer game:

Did the ATF ORDER gun shops to make sales they called in as suspicious to the ATF?

Did the ATF upper level management ORDER field agents to not intercept the guns?

Did the ATF fail to inform the Mexican government that guns had crossed the border?


Look at the video! Complete with an agent, still on the job, who talks about it. (That takes serious cojones -- I mean, he has to go into the office tomorrow, with the same supervisor that he's talking about, who now regards him as a "snitch," to be ruined).

They're talking thousands of guns that only got to Mexico because ATF supervisors said let them go. Superiors telling agents who complained that this is "fun" and they can go out and find a different job if they don't like it.

Thousands of guns dealers didn't want to sell because it was fishy. ATF agents who put their careers on the line blowing the whistle on the mishandling of an operation that put lives at risk.

Do you hold them complicit? Or are you saying field agents are lying about the shenanigans ATF headquarters is doing?

[Katya Mullethov]

11. That's awful complicated

I heard the other fat man went into detail about GR on his radio show this afternoon . Thats just what this vulgar brawl needs , a little artillery .

[MyrnaLoy]

13. so

you agree then that guns from the US are going across the border. Thanks for the honesty, ow what do you want to do about it? Continue this diversion against the ATF or stop the illegal sales?

[pipoman]

15. Where has anyone in this forum ever denied that criminals are smuggling

guns to Mexico? Why are you such an ATF apologist?

[Abq_Sarah]

16. The agency charged with stopping the illegal sales

Told gun stores who called them to complete what the dealers thought were questionable sales. It's a complete breakdown of the system intended to prevent straw purchases. To make matters worse, they ordered agents to allow known shipments of firearms to enter Mexico illegally.

So to answer your question, yes.. guns from the USA are going across the border and the BATF knowingly and willingly facilitated it.

[Callisto32]

20. To me this is the real point of the story.

Yet more proof that the U.S. is NOT a nation of laws, equally enforced. The government folks get to either drum up crime that would otherwise not be committed, or allow things to be done that should be punished.

Just like how when the police do things that would get anybody else arrested they get "paid administrative leave" and "no wrongdoing was found..."

[one-eyed fat man]

17. Hey

Don't you get it?

The stores didn't want to make the sales? The ATF told them to. You think some gun store owner has a Mexican dude walk in and want to buy 40 or 50 AK's with cash is not going to be suspicious?? How many normal people carry that amount of cash? Fifty AK's, even cheap Romanian ones at $400-$500 bucks comes out to $25,000 cash. Just how brain dead a bimbo would you have to be NOT to suspect something fishy? So the stores call the ATF and the ATF tells them to MAKE the sale!

The military stuff being diverted from the Mexican government or from El Salvador are not the "American guns" you are whining about. You give a shit less how many Mexicans die as long as you get to smoke your dope and pretend that there are rocket launchers being sold under the table at some gun show in Arizona. Why aren't you demanding "Mexican safe" dope from your dealer? It worked for dolphins in tuna.

Now it's it's your turn to answer YES or NO

Did gun stores go through with suspicious sales because the ATF ordered them to make the sales?

Did the ATF allow those guns to cross the border?

Have those guns turned up in crimes on both sides of the border?

[derby378]

21. Don't you mean stop the LEGAL sales?

We've been playing this game a lot longer than you have - and I smell a rat.

[DissedByBush]

22. The current law was SUPPOSED to stop the illegal sales

Unfortunately the federal agency in charge of enforcing that law decided to LET THE GUNS BE SOLD ANYWAY.

Again, that's thousands of guns that, if not for the ATF, would not have been sold.

That's probably hundreds of straw buyers who, if the ATF had been doing its job, would have been arrested.

This is like a bar owner calling 911 because a drunk just took off in his car.

Then the cops decide not to stop him because they'd rather see what happens if they let him go.

Then he plows into a bus stop, killing several people, and people like you blame -- the car manufacturer? The bar owner? The booze?

You don't want to blame the police whose job it was to stop the drunk in the first place, a job they refused to do.

[Straw Man]

27. I vote for "stop the illegal sales."

That's exactly what the ATF did not do. And people died. Understand?

[one-eyed fat man]

24. Answer yes or no, yourself

Did the ATF stop any of the guns they let across the border? (You won't answer, you never have before.)

The lead ATF official in Mexico at the time Darren Gil says somebody in the Justice Department did know about the case. Gil says his supervisor at ATF's Washington D.C. headquarters told him point-blank the operation was approved even higher than ATF Director Kenneth Melson.

"Is the director aware of this," Gil asked the supervisor. Gil says his supervisor answered "Yes, the director's aware of it. Not only is the director aware of it, D.O.J.'s aware of it... Department of Justice was aware of it."

They couldn't believe the orders, but that is what they were told, let the guns cross the border. Everyone from the clerks in the stores who alerted the ATF to the buys to the agents watching the buys, the transfers, and watching the vehicles get loaded new the sales were fishy. All these field agents and the ATF's attache in Mexico City can't all be making this stuff up just to annoy you.

[AtheistCrusader]

23. No, the sellers weren't going to complete the transactions at all.

The ATF instructed them to go ahead and do so. So no, these guns would not have otherwise gone to Mexico.

[David West]

25. American drug war policy...

...does way more to hurt Mexico than our gun policy ever could. Why don't you seek to end the war on drugs instead of restrict firearm ownership?

[Callisto32]

18. The memo SHOULD have said.

"You know that shit you guys do that is bad? STOP DOING THAT SHIT OR YOU ARE FIRED!"

No, they just say..."drown it."


Fuck these assholes that are more worried about what they look like in the press than doing the right thing.

[S_B_Jackson]

26. That memo's not a good sign.....

the desire to distract the public from negative reports about their treatment of female ATF agents was one of the driving forces behind the ATF's decision to raid the Branch Davidians in Waco,TX.

[east texas lib]

28. CYA@ATF

Business as usual...Move along...Move along...Move along.

[gravity556]

29. Way to go ATF!

Man, talk about stepping on your own dick. Make all kinds of noise about gun shows being the primary supply for the cartels (anyone who makes that idiotic assumption has never been to a gun show and has no idea what firearms cost-suffice it to say that gun shows are a great place to buy a gun if you want to pay 40% or more over what it's worth), then have this story break.

Fucking beautiful-paint gun shop owners as heartless assholes wanting a profit no matter how shady the deal, then it turns out that the shops REPORTED these straw purchases and it was the ATF that told them to make the sale. Talk about shooting yourself in the dick! Then a leaked memo pleading with your PIOs to get "positive press" out to try and distract folks from the fact that your agency is not only inept, but full on, right shoe on the left foot incompetent. Not only are the folks driving that particular short bus not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but they also have such a low opinion of your and my intelligence that they think they can sweep it under the rug if they show us something shiny?

They're going to lose what little credibility they have left when it comes out that all those grenades, machine guns, grenade launchers and RPGs didn't actually come from gun shows (again, something that someone who's ever set foot in a gun show knows is preposterous), but from the Mexican army and whatever friendly rebel group was willing to swap a few cases of AKs for cash. Talk about a train wreck!

And to think that there were politicians willing to use Mexico's problems to restrict US firearms rights. Not to mention that the guns that the ATF let go across the border killed a federal law enforcement agent. Well done, idiots. Now go put on your dunce cap and sit in the corner.

[friendly_iconoclast]

31. *Part* of ATF's plan worked- We have one of their cheerleaders here.

Of course, as more evidence of ATF's incompetence has come out, they would have had more credibilty standing on the deck of

Titanic as the lifeboats were lowered and stating "I tell you, this ship will not sink!"

[Katya Mullethov]

32. She's made of iron, sir!

I assure you, she can... and she will. It is a mathematical certainty .

[gravity556]

33. Fairly apt analogy..

"I seem to see a problem with your clever little plan...."

[Katya Mullethov]

34. I can smell ice, you know.

[PavePusher]

35. That.... was freakin' beautiful!

:toast: :yourock: