Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 4, 1993 TAG: 9310060323
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Things went terribly wrong in Waco, Texas, when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms launched its ill-conceived "surprise" raid on David Koresh's Branch Davidians. The ATF's head, director Stephen Higgins, was lopped off.
It was a necessary measure, taken by Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen after receiving a scathing review of ATF's missteps in planning and executing its operation against the heavily armed religious compound. And the director's departure is likely not the last that will result from the misadventure. This is what is called accountability.
Higgins, at least, thought he was telling the truth when he insisted after the ATF's bloody, unsuccessful assault that the agents did not know they had lost the element of surprise when they tried to serve arrest and search warrants. He had been lied to.
The field commanders not only had used poor judgment in proceeding with the operation. Worse, they tried to cover up their errors. First they lied - to Higgins and to the American people - saying they had not known Koresh had been warned. Then they altered the planning document that was supposed to have been written before the agency made its move. They wrote it five days after the raid - and changed it still later in an effort to hide their mistakes.
Their tactical errors were not the only errors made, however. The report puts the bureau's management in a poor light, asserting that the ATF didn't adequately consider the possibility of arresting Koresh outside the compound, and left too many decisions to ATF agents in the field, who lacked adequate training and experience. Obviously.
Such a blistering assessment made a top-level shakeup of the agency mandatory. Still, Bentsen said, it will have no bearing on the debate about whether ATF should lose its status as a independent agency.
But of course it will.
Vice President Al Gore's task force on government reorganization has recommended that ATF be split, its law-enforcement functions folded into the FBI, which is part of the Justice Department, and its regulatory and revenue functions remaining in the Treasury Department as part of the Internal Revenue Service.
This review of the ATF's most sensational failure, painting the picture, as it does, of an agency that made, and then tried to cover up, some devastating errors, has to give impetus to the idea.
And it is a good one, on its own merits. There is considerable potential for administrative efficiencies and better coordination of law-enforcement efforts.
Skeptics fear such a change would weaken the nation's efforts to control guns, making them less well-focused. The fact that the gun industry was wildly supportive when the proposal was first made under the Reagan administration does give pause.
But the nation is hardly doing an effective job controlling guns now. Surely it can do no worse under the FBI, which is under the authority of an attorney general who has identified violence as a national disease that must be fought aggressively.
For now, ATF managers have lost their jobs. But agents in the field are at greater risk, still, from organizational ineptitude. They risk their lives. Four agents died at Waco.
by CNB