Nov 9, 2010

Whack-a-mole: Review of ATF’s Project Gunrunner

Here is the full, 152 page, published evaluation of Project Gunrunner by the Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Dept. of Justice.  A draft version was leaked in early Oct. The report highlights the lack of coordination within and among federal agencies. What is even more disturbing,  it also makes evident that the lack of a federal law requiring the reporting of multiple long-gun sales and of any law on firearms trafficking makes stopping the arms traffic to Mexico even more difficult. 

Review of ATF’s Project Gunrunner (Among its findings):

"Despite the increased ATF activity associated with Project Gunrunner, we found that significant weaknesses in ATF’s implementation of Project Gunrunner undermine its effectiveness.

The success of Project Gunrunner depends, in part, on ATF’s sharing intelligence with its Mexican and U.S. partner agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Although ATF has shared some strategic intelligence products with each of its partner agencies, it is not doing so systematically and consistently.

We also found that while reports of multiple sales of handguns produce timely, actionable investigative leads for ATF, the lack of a reporting requirement for multiple sales of long guns – which have become the cartels’ weapons of choice – hinders ATF’s ability to disrupt the flow of illegal weapons into Mexico.

In addition, when ATF obtains or generates intelligence, its Southwest border field divisions’ intelligence structure is not consistently using that information to provide effective investigative leads for field agents to pursue.

We also found no routine sharing of firearms trafficking-related information and techniques between ATF intelligence personnel in Southwest border locations and in the ATF Mexico Country Office.

we found weaknesses in how ATF implemented Project Gunrunner as a multi-agency effort. Although, as noted above, ATF has increased some program activities during Project Gunrunner, ATF’s focus remains largely on inspections of gun dealers and investigations of straw purchasers, rather than on higher-level traffickers, smugglers, and the ultimate recipients of the trafficked guns.

For example, we found that 68 percent of Project Gunrunner cases are single-defendant cases, and some ATF managers discourage field personnel from conducting the types of complex conspiracy investigations that target higher-level members of trafficking rings. Federal prosecutors told us that directing the efforts of Project Gunrunner toward building larger, multi-defendant conspiracy cases would better disrupt trafficking organizations.

Because there is no federal firearms trafficking statute, ATF must use a wide variety of other statutes to combat firearms trafficking. However, cases brought under these statutes are difficult to prove and do not carry stringent penalties – particularly for straw purchasers of guns. As a result, we found that USAOs (U.S. Attorney's Offices) are less likely to accept and prosecute Project Gunrunner cases. And when these cases are prosecuted and convictions obtained, Federal Sentencing Guidelines categorize straw-purchasing related offenses as lesser crimes.

We also found that ATF and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement of the Dept. of Homeland Security) do not work together effectively on investigations of firearms trafficking to Mexico, and therefore ATF’s Project Gunrunner cases do not benefit from ICE’s intelligence and prosecutorial options. ATF and ICE rarely conduct joint investigations of firearms trafficking to Mexico, do not consistently notify each other of their firearms trafficking cases, and do not consistently coordinate their investigative work with each other.

Despite the increased activity related to Project Gunrunner, ATF is not using intelligence effectively to identify and target firearms trafficking organizations operating along the Southwest border and in Mexico. Moreover, ATF’s expansion of its automated system (eTrace) to trace guns seized in Mexico has yielded very limited information of intelligence value." Nov. 9, 2010

No comments:

Post a Comment