Dodson was not the only agent willing to talk about the burgeoning scandal. Vince Cefalu, a special agent based in California, had previously rocked the BATF boat by objecting to using illegal wiretaps. His punishment was to forfeit his assignment for undercover infiltration of white supremacist and other illegal groups, and instead sit in an office with no duties beyond occasionally adding gasoline to other agents’ cars.64 Trying to bore the average bureaucrat into retirement is like trying to drown a fish, but good law enforcement agents are a different breed.
Cefalu began to speak out on Fast and Furious and how it was the product of BATF’s institutional practices. He pointed out to journalist Elisabeth Meinecke:
In the 18 months leading up to Fast and Furious, Special Agent in Charge Bill Newell’s actions required that the agency had to pay out over a million dollars in settlements which should have led to his removal for the related conduct, had it ever been investigated and documented. Special Agent in Charge George Gillette had been disciplined multiple times, and his subordinates had logged dozens of complaints related to his incompetence and mismanagement. Had ATF dealt with them at the time, the Fast and Furious program would never have been undertaken. However, by attacking those who exposed corruption, ATF was able to keep their golden boys in place. This process was repeated all over the country….
[M]illions of taxpayer dollars and countless hours of manpower have been expended by my agency to attack and discredit me and other whistleblowers.65
As the affair grew, the whistleblowers gained a new ally: Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which has broad power to investigate federal agency misconduct. Rep. Issa was a valuable ally because at that point in time Republicans controlled the House but not the Senate; Sen. Grassley was ranking minority member of his committee, but Rep. Issa was chairman of his. Issa thus had the power to issue subpoenas, schedule hearings, and generate reports. Issa and his staff began to do just those things.
BATF leadership “lawyered up,” out of necessity with USDOJ lawyers. This was risky: under high pressure, USDOJ leadership can be counted upon to boldly order a banzai charge, so long as the charge can be carried out by their client agency while they themselves stay somewhere safe. The lawyers ordered BATF’s Acting Director Kenneth Melson to stay silent and to defy Congressional subpoenas for documents.
Melson began to worry—if held in contempt of Congress for his defiance, Melson himself would be the one prosecuted, not the empty suits at USDOJ who gave him the marching orders. He obtained copies of the Fast and Furious file and took them home to read. He would later testify: “I remember sitting at my kitchen table reading the ROIs [reports of investigations.] … I had pulled out all Patino’s [one of the straw men] … my stomach being in knots reading the number of times he went in and the amount of guns that he bought.”66
He emailed USDOJ officials a stark warning that their public positions were belied by the files and the hard facts.67 It says something about the size and irresponsibility of the federal establishment that while assuring Congress for months that nothing irregular had happened, neither the agency head nor the Assistant Attorney General had read the actual evidence.
Then came newspaper articles suggesting that Melson might be fired. Melson realized he might be caught in the perfect USDOJ gambit: order him to stay silent, let him draw all the criticism, then announce that the bumbling agency head who caused the problem has been fired.
Melson struck first. He retained a private lawyer, who negotiated with Issa’s staff. Then, on the Fourth of July, when federal employees would be off duty and unlikely to accidentally spot him, Melson went to Capitol Hill. He proceeded to spill his guts to Grassley’s and Issa’s staffers, beginning with how USDOJ had ordered him to stonewall the Congressional investigations and to defy their subpoenas.68
“It was very frustrating to all of us,” Melson told the Congressional investigators. “It appears thoroughly to us that the department is really trying to figure out a way to push the information away from their political appointees at the department.”69
The Congressional investigations turned up one more startling fact. The entire purpose of Operation Fast and Furious had supposedly been to pass over the straw-man buyers (whose identities already were known) and the person to whom they passed the guns (ditto), and instead to identify the higher-ups in the chain of illicit transfers. But, the investigation discovered, “the higher-ups” were two Mexican nationals who turned out to be paid FBI informants who sometimes used FBI money to buy the guns. They drew FBI salaries for informing on the cartels, and on the side, engaged guns-for-drugs transactions for an extra profit.70
Agent Dodson sums it up:
Take the government out of this equation and nothing gets done. No guns get ordered by the FBI’s assets; no guns get purchased, because there is no FBI money to pay for them; no guns get sold, because ATF is not coercing dealers to sell them; and no guns get trafficked, because ATF is not using the guise of a “big case” to allow it all to happen. And Border Patrol agent named Brian Terry makes it home to Michigan for Christmas because there are no armed bad guys in Peck Canyon, Arizona, that night.71
THE FINAL IMPACT
Ultimately, 2,040 firearms were transferred to the cartels, mostly to the Sinaloa drug cartel. At last count, 389 had been recovered in the United States and 276 in Mexico, the latter mostly at crime scenes.72 The current count of deaths inflicted by cartel gunmen in Mexico using Fast and Furious guns is sixty-nine, including a police chief and two policemen.73 How many American crimes the Fast and Furious guns figure in is unknown, but in 2011 alone these guns were used in eleven deadly offenses.74
WHO WAS HELD ACCOUNTABLE?
The list of who was held accountable is short, considering that BATF and the U.S. Attorney’s Office had committed acts of war (arming of insurgents) against an allied republic, and caused or contributed to the murders of at least sixty-nine Mexican citizens and an American law enforcement officer.
Dennis Burke, as noted, resigned as U.S. Attorney. He cofounded a firm named Global Security and Innovative Strategies. For withholding documents, Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress.75 Since he declined to prosecute himself, little came of the citation.
Within BATF, Special Agent in Charge William Newell received a demotion, as did Special Agent Voth. Someone at Justice headquarters must have had a warped sense of humor, because Newell was also appointed to head BATF’s Mexico City Office. He and Voth ultimately received promotions to BATF headquarters. Hope MacAllister, the Lead Case Agent (essentially the nonsupervisory agent with lead responsibility on the case), received a fourteen-day suspension.76
This nominal discipline—the demotions did not mean less pay77—was imposed by BATF Deputy Director Thomas Brandon. In March 2015, Brandon was appointed Acting Director of the BATF.78
THE WHISTLEBLOWERS
Special Agent Dodson stayed with BATF, but Phoenix Field Station agents were told that associating with him would be bad for their careers. Ostracized, he took an assignment on the East Coast.
BATF accused Special Agent Vince Cefalu of misconduct. “This was followed by six official reprimands, two suspensions, and attempts to demonstrate that Cefalu was not fit for duty. He was told he needed to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. Cefalu was transferred five times and given two ‘termination proposals.’”79 Finally, BATF fired him. He sued the agency, and won $85,000 and reinstatement. He retired after thirty years of service.80
* * *
Operation Fast and Furious established that the bureaucracy was indeed utterly out of control. Agencies had, prior to this, killed American citizens and walked away, but Fast and Furious established that they could commit acts of war against other nations without suffering any serious consequences. A private citizen who set out to arm the most violent criminals in Mexico would, quite justifiably, have been jailed for a lengthy term, if not for life. But the federal emplo
yees who sent two thousand guns to the cartels, resulting in quite a few homicides,81 did not even face firing.
CHAPTER 8
THE MILITARIZATION OF POLICE: TANKS, BAYONETS, AND GRENADE LAUNCHERS
Everything was done right, except it was the wrong apartment.
—A Boston police source, after a SWAT raid killed a seventy-five-year-old retired minister1
If I’d been here and heard that [the SWAT raid on his house] going on, I probably would have taken my pistol and shot through the door. I’d probably be dead. And some of the officers would probably be dead, too.
—Tyrone Echols, Mayor of Venice, Illinois2
THE INVENTION OF THE LAW ENFORCEMENT SWAT concept traces to the late Daryl Gates, the controversial head of the Los Angeles Police Department3 who seemed to think there was no such thing as excessive force and once told the Senate Judiciary Committee that casual drug users should be “taken out and shot.”4 Gates’s brainchild was a civilian police unit that was given special training and military weaponry, and was intended to be used in high-speed storming of hostage and other barricade situations. The unit was initially to be termed the Special Weapons Assault Team until it was pointed out that “assault” in a police unit’s name would be bad public relations. The unit’s name instead became the Special Weapons and Tactics unit, SWAT.5
At the state and local level, the concept of SWAT units quickly spread, probably aided by the understanding that getting paid to practice with machine guns, armored vehicles, and high-tech instruments was an attractive job description. Even small-town forces soon had SWAT teams—the “militarizing of Mayberry” some termed it.6 John Fund, writing in National Review, noted: “By 2005, at least 80 percent of towns with a population between 25,000 and 50,000 people had their own SWAT team.”7
Few would complain if this approach were used only where it was originally intended: against dangerous criminals in barricade situations, where there was no alternative to the sudden use of overwhelming force. But such uses are rare, and thus mission creep has become the rule. As John Fund continues, “the number of raids conducted by local police SWAT teams has gone from 3,000 a year in the 1980s to over 50,000 a year today.”8
Such SWAT deployments in routine searches and law enforcement often bear tragic results.
MAY 5, 2011, TUCSON, ARIZONA
Jose Guerena was sound asleep; the Marine veteran had finished working his graveyard shift in the copper mines a couple of hours before. He awakened to the sound of explosions and the terrified screams of his wife, Vanessa, that there were people in the yard with guns.
“Take the boy and get in the closet, get in the closet,” he called as he grabbed his AR-15, emerging from his bedroom in time to see his front door smashed open and a crowd of armed men standing outside. One began to enter.
The strangers were an ad-hoc SWAT team of officers from four agencies. They had a search warrant for the Guerena house but no arrest warrants. They suspected that some of Guerena’s relatives were dealing in marijuana and that he might have some evidence.
The team’s briefing had included assurances that “this family has a history of violence to include kidnapping and homicide.” The briefer neglected to say that the history consisted of Guerena’s relatives having been crime victims.
Guerena stood with his AR-15’s safety set to “safe,” as he tried to make sense of the situation. Armed men in dark-green outfits and helmets smashing his door and entering his house?
The officer in the lead, seeing that Guerena had a rifle, halted and began to step backward. He tripped over the man behind him and fell. He had his finger on the trigger, and his gun fired.
The rest of the team heard the shot and saw him fall. Reflexively, they assumed that Guerena had shot the fallen man and went into an “empty your magazines” drill. Those who were outside packed into the doorway to add their firepower. Four men fired seventy-one shots in a matter of seconds; twenty-two hit Guerena.
Vanessa left the closet and tried to talk to her husband, who did not respond. She called 911 as their son pleaded, “Mom, what’s happened to my dad?”
The 911 call was futile; the SWAT team had retreated and did not know if Guerena was alive or dead. They held the ambulance at bay for more than an hour while they brought in a bomb-deactivation robot and sent it in to locate his body. The search revealed nothing illegal, and they retrieved Guerena’s rifle with its safety still on.9
JANUARY 25, 1994, STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA
At 2:00 a.m., retiree Manuel Medina Ramirez was awakened by armed men breaking down his door. He drew his bedside pistol and fired at the invaders. One fell, but the other police opened fire on Ramirez, who died at a local hospital. The intruder who fell was Officer Arthur Parga. He too died, leaving behind a pregnant wife and five-year-old son.
The motive for a violent raid: Ramirez had let a friend use his (Ramirez’s) address to obtain a driver’s license. When the friend was arrested with five pounds of marijuana, police had assumed that the address shown on the license was a drug stash house.10 A search of the house found no drugs.
MARCH 25, 1994, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Rev. Accelyne Williams, a seventy-five-year-old retired Methodist minister, died of a heart attack after thirteen heavily armed police used sledgehammers to break into his apartment, then broke down his bedroom door, wrestled him to the floor, and handcuffed him.
A reportedly intoxicated informant had told police the apartment was full of drugs and guns. The search found nothing illegal.11
AUGUST 2, 2008, BERWYN HEIGHTS, MARYLAND
Cheye Calvo, Mayor of Berwyn Heights, recalled his experience:
I remember thinking, as I knelt at gunpoint with my hands bound on my living room floor, that there had been a terrible, terrible mistake.
An errant Prince George’s County SWAT team had just forced its way into our home, shot dead our two black Labradors, Payton and Chase, and started ransacking our belongings as part of what would become a four-hour ordeal….
I remain captured by the broader implications of the incident. Namely, that my initial take was wrong: It was no accident but rather business as usual that brought the police to—and through—our front door.12
Prince George’s County Sheriff’s deputies had kicked down the Mayor’s door, shot his dogs, and held the Mayor and his mother-in-law at gunpoint. The reason for the search: a marijuana sales ring had come up with a novel way to move its product. They would ship the pot via FedEx to innocent persons, and a confederate who delivered for FedEx would skim off the packages and keep them. Police had intercepted a box of pot addressed to the Mayor.13
MAY 16, 2010, DETROIT, MICHIGAN
Detroit’s Police Special Response Team raided seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley Jones’s grandmother’s house looking for a male suspect, who in fact lived in a different apartment. The team was accompanied by a film crew for the A&E series The First 48, recording the raid for the television show. The team opened by throwing a flash-bang grenade (a beer can–sized firecracker designed to give a blinding flash and stunning concussion). It landed near and burned Aiyana; a member of the raid party then accidentally shot her to death.14
Danger and adrenalin do not make for safe gun handling. In 1989, police mistook the sound of exploding flash-bangs for gunfire and fatally shot twenty-year-old Dexter Herbert. The same year saw police sergeant Mark Murphy shot in the head by a fellow officer during a SWAT raid, and Irvington, New York, police officer Keith Neumann was killed by “friendly fire” during a search that recovered an eighth of an ounce of cocaine. In a 2000 drug raid, the SWAT team ordered three children to lie on the floor, and for unknown reasons kept their guns aimed at them. An officer accidentally fired his shotgun, killing eleven-year-old Alberto Sepulveda.15
MARCH 10, 2011, PHOENIX, ARIZONA
Sheriff Joe Arpaio had obtained five armored vehicles from the military. He let actor Steven Seagal command an enormous self-propelled 155 mm howitzer (which looks like a tank on ste
roids)—and take it on a SWAT raid against the home of Jesus Sanchez Llovera. Seagal crashed it through the wall surrounding the house. The SWAT team went in, bashed in the door of the house, and arrested Llovera. The criminal charge that required such a raid? Organizing cockfights. Llovera ultimately pled guilty to a misdemeanor.16
In 2011, after waiting four hours for treatment in a Veterans Administration hospital, a sixty-five-year-old vet decided to go to a different hospital. A nurse informed him he was “not authorized” to leave, and when he insisted, she called in the VA police. (Yes, the VA has its own police.) They tackled him, threw him down, and pinned him with a knee in his back and a boot on his neck. The latter caused a split in a neck artery, which killed him. A doctor informed his wife that he had fallen and suffered a stroke, and reported his death as natural.17
JANUARY 28, 2012, FITCHBURG, MASSACHUSETTS
Judy Sanchez was awakened by a pounding on her apartment door. Then a chain saw began cutting through the door, and armed men entered, shouting, “FBI, get down!” She lay down and they proceeded to search her apartment while her three-year-old daughter cried in terror for her. After half an hour, one agent noticed that the search warrant was for apartment 2F, but they had sawed their way into apartment 2R. They instructed Sanchez on how her landlord could get reimbursement for a new door and left.18
MAY 28, 2014, CORNELIA, GEORGIA
Police obtained a search warrant claiming that a reliable informant told them he’d bought a small quantity of meth from Wanis Thonetheva. The SWAT team sent to execute the search warrant threw in a flash-bang grenade. The grenade landed in the crib of an eighteen-month-old child, blew off the child’s nose, and inflicted third-degree burns. A team member was later charged with lying to obtain the search warrant: the tip had not come from a reliable informant but from someone she barely knew.19
I'm from the Government and I'm Here to Kill You Page 19
