When pastors learned that two ATF agents who had attended the last and most notorious roundup in 1995 had been assigned to investigate church burnings, they protested and sought to have the agents removed. Instead of removing the agents or at least taking them off the probe, the ATF simply reassigned them to investigate other church fires—a move sharply criticized by clergy.
“Give a badge and a gun to a racist and you have the situation that we have with the ATF investigation of the firebombings,” Noah Chandler of the Center for Democratic Renewal told Freedom.
Formerly a division of the Internal Revenue Service, the ATF still revels in the glory days of its famous agent, Eliot Ness. Indeed, despite becoming an independent bureau within the Treasury Department in 1972, ATF has struggled with its identity since the repeal of Prohibition.
A 20-year U.S. Treasury Department official said the ATF has frequently been threatened with dismantling and its functions assigned to other agencies, such as Customs and the FBI. The main reason the group has not been taken apart, the official explained, is that no other agency is eager to put ATF managers or ATF-trained employees on its payroll.
“ATF management is the most incompetent ever assembled by any government agency, period,” he claimed, adding his opinion that this makes other federal agencies leery of ATF agents. A new head for the ATF, appointed following the Waco disaster, and a discrimination lawsuit settled in May 1996 with black ATF agents for between $4 million and $5 million in damages have not been enough to salvage the reputation of the agency.
A Fire on the Cross continued...
    
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