Puke alert: B. Toad Jones talks about ATF leadership while friendly pols of both parties try to make you think that the ATF is all about Kevin Costner.

Abetted by their familiars in the government-run press, the ATF is the middle of a. some of the worst publicity they've seen since Fast and Furious; b. a charm offensive to change the subject; c. both.

The correct answer is "C."

When even the most anti-gun Democrat senators start bad-mouthing the ATF, even they know they have trouble: Baldwin says ATF stings "totally inexcusable,"

So what does ATF director B. "Toad" Jones do? Why he finds a friendly venue to chat about "leadership" of all things. "Training a new generation of special agents."

The article starts out with bilge like this and goes downhill from there:

Q. How would you describe your leadership style?

A. I went into the Marine Corps after law school, and I draw on the core values that the Marine Corps instills in you that are very relevant to leading people and organizations. Those are simple, fundamental concepts like courage and integrity, being engaged and exercising good judgment, and having bearing or the military’s command presence. That has to be tempered with confidence in what you’re doing, being knowledgeable about your organization’s history and its culture, and being mission oriented. ATF is a new experience for me because most of my non-Marine Corps experience has been as a prosecutor. I truly believe in ATF’s mission of public safety and justice, and that makes it easy for me to apply these leadership traits and principles.

ATF agents who have worked with Jones call him a politician and a bully who brooks no dissent in underlings and yet possesses a slavish ass-kissing demeanor to higher ups. He has been described as the "Nuremberg Man" who would "execute his own mother if Eric Holder told him to."

In the mean time, anti-firearm Democrat pols eager to change the subject want you to remember that the ATF is all about Kevin Costner. No, really.

'Untouchable' idea -- building named for Eliot Ness

Illinois’ U.S. senators proposed today that a major federal law-enforcement building in the nation’s capital be named for Eliot Ness, the Prohibition-era crime fighter who helped bring down Chicago gangster Al Capone.

The headquarters of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, built in recent years, would be called the Eliot Ness ATF Building under the senators’ resolution.

The Chicago-born Ness is immortalized in the TV series “The Untouchables” and the 1987 film starring Kevin Costner. Capone, once Public Enemy No. 1, was convicted and imprisoned on tax violations after Ness and his team of federal Prohibition agents raided the gangster’s breweries and arrested dozens of his men.

Mind you, the real Eliot Ness had a career that was less-than-stellar. As Wikipedia reports:

The efforts of Ness and his team had little impact on Capone's operations. Ness had almost nothing to do with the IRS prosecuting Capone for income tax evasion, which led to Capone's downfall. . .

Unfortunately, his otherwise remarkably successful career in Cleveland withered gradually. Cleveland critics targeted his divorce, his high-profile social drinking, and his conduct in a car accident. . .

Ness remarried in 1939, to illustrator Evaline Michelow. The Nesses moved to Washington, D.C. in 1942 where he worked for the federal government, directing the battle against prostitution in communities surrounding military bases, where venereal disease was a serious problem. Later he made a number of forays into the corporate world, all of which failed from his lack of business acumen. In 1944, he left to become chairman of the Diebold Corporation, a security safe company based in Ohio.

After his second divorce and third marriage, he ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Cleveland in 1947, after which he was expelled from Diebold in 1951.[11] In the aftermath, Ness began drinking more heavily and spending his free time in bars telling (often exaggerated) stories of his law enforcement career. He also spent himself into debt. Ness was forced into taking various odd jobs to earn a living, including as an electronics parts wholesaler, a clerk in a bookstore, and selling frozen hamburger patties to restaurants.

Even so, the legendary Eliot Ness has always been the patron saint of the ATF. They celebrate his birthday with dinners and golf tournaments and when the Costner movie came out it was required viewing for all new recruits.

As I wrote back in 2011:

De Palma's film, like most Hollywood "true stories" plays fast and loose with the truth of Ness' efforts to bring Al Capone and his mob to justice. No matter. It was Costner's Ness -- pure good -- versus Robert de Niro's Capone -- pure evil. With great supporting actors like Sean Connery and a slam-bang script, it was a hit -- especially with ATF agents. There was only one problem: the Untouchables in the movie were not law enforcement officers, they were avenging angels unrestrained by law.

Toward the end of the movie, after Costner's Ness has shot fleeing felons, thrown a suspect in custody off a roof to his death and blackmailed a judge, he confesses: "I have foresworn myself. I have broken every law I have sworn to uphold, I have become what I beheld and I am content that I have done right!"

The ATF agents who watched it ate that sentiment up. And after it came out in VHS they would watch it again and again, internalizing the lesson that the ends justify the means. Over and over they would watch it. When a new guy came into the field office, they would ask, "Have you seen The Untouchables? No? Well, I'll loan you my copy. It's great." Over and over they would cheer as Costner and Connery used the "Chicago Way" on Capone's cartoonish bad guys. And gradually, in the minds of the field agents of the ATF, life began to imitate art.

Oh, and what date is Eliot Ness' birthday? Why the 19th of April, of course. That is why the Davidians died that day. The FBI made the immolation a present to their little wayward brothers in the ATF. That is why they raised an ATF flag with four gold stars (representing the four ATF agents killed in the initial raid) on the flagpole while the building was still burning. It was a birthday present to the ATF and it carried another message to any future folks who might try to defend themselves against the leviathan: "You may kill us, but we will kill you at a ratio of twenty to one. We will kill your old men, your women, your children. We will burn down your homes and your churches and wipe you out utterly. And no one will stop us."

And they were content that they had done right. The ATF wasn't the only federal agency that found The Untouchables persuasive propaganda. So when they want to change the name of the ATF headquarters in DC it is because they want you to remember Kevin Costner, not Eliot Ness.

The FBI gift to the ATF on Eliot Ness' birthday. The ATF flag flies over the remnants of Mount Carmel.