The True Story of the Life of "R.A. Bear": Inception & impregnation into the minds of the ATF via a highly placed snitch named Dan Shea of the NFATCA.

Dan Shea and John Brown at an early age.

Long-time readers of Sipsey Street will recall Dan Shea's first appearance in these pages. At the time I dubbed him a "Useful Jew" along the lines of the Lodz Ghetto's Chaim Rumkowski, for using his pulpit at Small Arms Review to make statements like:

There are a few misguided crusaders on the pro-gun side who cross the line; probably the most dangerous people there are to us because they will sacrifice anyone and anything to their generally misguided and usually self-serving agendas. Up in the mountains, we used to have a self-mocking saying. "Hey, Elmer, why don't you go poke that stupid old bear over there with a stick. Stupid old bear." The problem here is that all of the rest of us are are near that bear too. One has to wonder how much damage has been done by this very small group of "true believers" who have attacked the general employees of ATF instead of trying to effect true change in policy, regulation or law. Generally, their arguments are poorly thought out and rely on parsing words, instead of reading the laws as written and working within that as well as the existing political structure to effect real, solid changes. We need good, solid well thought out negotiation and proper legal and legislative remedies to address our issues. Join the NFATCA and help.

Now that Shea has been identified as the ATF snitch who first introduced R.A. Bear into the minds of the ATF Chief Counsel's Office and since NFATCA is back in the news as doing us all a favor making a back room deal with ATF and other entities on large-caliber ammunition (see David's column linked below), the cockroach spokesmen are popping up to defend their fellow photo-phobes.

In comments at David Codrea's Examiner column and here at Sipsey Street, The Dan Shea/John Brown/NFATCA/ATF Anti-Defamation League writing either anonymously or under the Frank Herbertian nom d'guerre of "kwisatz" attempts to defend the indefensible. Here's the one he posted at Sipsey Street:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for confirming what I already suspected. You have no idea what you are talking about. That's just fine. You wrote that Dan Shea was the president and were wrong. What else have you wrote about him that is wrong?

As for the 'public" being "invited" to this meeting let's be very clear. EPS was trying to get this shoved through without any scrutiny of any kind. NRA was unaware, NSSF, SAAMI, Safari and all the others were totally in the dark. NFATCA pulled of the emergency meeting with a week of notice and got the brakes put on a monumental cluster in the making. That very much benefits the public in my mind.

What specific ideas and concepts did you want advanced at this meeting? I'd like to know. Somehow I think that you are going to say that the ATF should be abolished. That may be very true but it is not a viable component of this meeting. So what did you want advanced?

And as far as the whole Dan shea thing, dude, you give him wayyy to much credit. Bowers supporting ATF and NFATCA, what a hoot!

Now, for the uninitiated, here are the players and names:

Bowers: Principal moderator/owner of subguns.com, a machine gun collector and enthusiast website, with a reluctance to take on the ATF and an over-active delete key.

John Brown: Friend of Dan Shea and President of NFATCA, the NFA Trade and Collectors Association (the machine gun equivalent of the NRA).

EPS: Inside ATF speak for the Enforcement Programs and Services Directorate. Since May 2010, Arthur Herbert has been the Assistant Director for EPS.

Dan Shea: NFATCA big wig, owner of Long Mountain Outfitters and Small Arms Review, as well as an ATF snitch with a symbiotic relationship with the agency, who apparently both dispensed and received information.

Now, "Anonymous" is correct when in an earlier post, I characterized Shea in a typo as "president" of NFATCA when I meant to say "de facto president." I later corrected it. Brown is President of the NFATCA, but he and Shea have, until recently, been joined at the hip -- the Bobsey Twins of the NFATCA "go-along, get-along" ATF friendly leadership.

I now know that I also made an error about the inception of R.A. Bear in my open letter to Andy Traver. Here is what I told him last Friday on the blog and in email:

The cultivation and pressuring of informants, including those at the highest levels of industry associations such as the NFATCA, is doing your agency more harm than good when it is driven not by actual police work in furtherance of the law but by the desire on the part of CCO to root out and make unwarranted criminal cases against people they view as "poisonous weasels." This agenda-driven corruption of the process opens the ATF up to self-discrediting errors such as that represented by R.A. Bear. As best I understand the beginning of the story, the CCO wanted to "get" an honest man whose only "crime" had been to defy them in court. To that end they put pressure on all their snitches to come up with anything. One highly-placed informant, apparently on the hook legally and under pressure himself from the ATF, leaned on on another man who knew the target to rat him out for any irregularity. Caught in an awkward situation, unable to satisfy a man who himself could make economic trouble for him, he gave the informant a name -- R.A. Bear. From that point Mr. Bear took on a life of his own, a process which I was honored to assist in. We gave him friends, a life history, we paged him at gun shows and machine gun shoots and, on the orders of the CCO, your agents scurried hither and yon, chasing each and every clue and always coming up empty. CCO lawyers demanded to know about him in discovery depositions, always to be told truthfully under oath, "I know of no such person as R.A. Bear."

The error I made, however, actually gave Shea more credit than he deserved. Here is the more accurate story of the inception of R.A. Bear and the impregnation of that fertilized fictional ovum into the brains of the malevolent morons of the ATF Chief Counsel's Office. We begin by deconstructing the problematic portion of the paragraph above:

As best I understand the beginning of the story, the CCO wanted to "get" an honest man whose only "crime" had been to defy them in court. To that end they put pressure on all their snitches to come up with anything.

MBV: This part is true. (Although "defy" is way the ATF CCO looked at it, his actual sin in their eyes was to be an effective expert witness for the defense.)

One highly-placed informant, apparently on the hook legally and under pressure himself from the ATF,

MBV: This part is also true.

leaned on on another man who knew the target to rat him out for any irregularity. Caught in an awkward situation, unable to satisfy a man who himself could make economic trouble for him, he gave the informant a name -- R.A. Bear.

MBV: This part is not true. The truth, for one E. Daniel Shea, is even more damning. For it is Dan Shea, and Dan Shea alone, who first gave the suggestion of corporeal form to the stuffed child's toy as ATF "person of interest."

The story starts innocently enough years before, when a man we will call The Author needed a second phone. In his own words here is The Unlikely Story of Ramsey Bear.

Earliest known photo of ATF "Person of Interest" R. A. Bear.

In the mid 1980s, the author wanted a second telephone line in his home. In order to avoid confusion in the telephone directory with the first telephone line, he obtained the second phone line in the name of his daughter's toy bear, R. A. Bear. . .

(Later), the author began writing for MACHINE GUN NEWS. After MGN closed its doors, the author became an 8% owner of a limited liability corporation that was formed to print a new magazine called SMALL ARMS REVIEW. Dan Shea was the general partner of the LLC.

The author paid for a regular subscription to SMALL ARMS REVIEW. Not wanting to wait for the slow 3rd class delivery of the magazine, and wishing to have a second copy as a reference as well, he paid for a second subscription to SMALL ARMS REVIEW. This one to be delivered by 1st class mail. In order to avoid any confusion with his 3rd class subscription, the author used the name of Ramsey Bear for the 1st class subscription.

Nearly three years ago, Dan Shea emailed the author saying that if the author was not happy with the way that things were going at SMALL ARMS REVIEW, the he would buy the author's share of the LLC. The author was in the dark regarding the possible value of his share. He queried Dan Shea regarding the detailed financial information that would be required to make a proper evaluation. Some information was forthcoming but not nearly enough to make a proper evaluation.

Per the LLC's written Operating Agreement, any shareholder, or his CPA is permitted to audit the LLC's books during normal business hours. The author sent a forensic CPA to audit the LLC's books. After two days of work, the CPA reported that he was not being given access to sufficient information to complete his audit.

To no avail, many emails were exchanged between the author and Dan Shea to resolve this situation. As a consequence, the author retained a Nevada attorney and filed litigation to require Dan Shea to comply with the rules of the LLC's written Operating Agreement.

Afterward, at a meeting of the LLC's shareholders, Dan Shea stated, "I am not going to work with you any more." After this, none of the author's already submitted stories were printed in SMALL ARMS REVIEW and the author's paid 3rd class mail subscription to SMALL ARMS REVIEW ceased to arrive. Ramsey Bear's 1st class mail subscription continued arriving but after a few months, it too ceased. In Nevada at that time, the only known connection between Ramsey Bear and the author was that both of their subscriptions came to the same street address.

During the pre-trial discovery, the author was required to provide Shea's attorney with many items of information. All of the requested items were provided but one. Thinking it hilarious that Shea believed that Ramsey Bear was a real person, the author refused to provide any information regarding Ramsey Bear, saying that whatever the bear and the author did in the privacy of their home was not a concern of Shea's.

Several months later, during depositions taken during the Len Savage affair regarding the arrested MAC10 belt fed upper, Ramsey Bear's name came up again. Both Len Savage and an expert witnesses were asked if they had consulted with Ramsey Bear while designing the arrested upper. Both answered truthfully that they knew no person named "Ramsey Bear."

So, how did the bear's name come up in a deposition that was taken in Georgia? The author cannot say with certainty. At that time though, the only known person though who thought that Ramsey Bear was a real person was Dan Shea. Perhaps Dan Shea still believes that Ramsey Bear is a real person. In August of 2010, Shea's attorney tried to serve a subpoena on Ramsey Bear in order to require the teddy bear to appear for a deposition in Nevada.

The point is, how did ATF come to be interested in R.A. Bear enough to begin asking about him in depositions regarding Len Savage? How did this morph from a personal matter with Shea to an agency investigation of a stuffed child's toy?

What follows is what can be discerned from court papers filed in Nevada as well as ATF emails revealed as part of discovery in another case. About the same time as the Shea/Author controversy began, the ATF was very upset at Georgia firearms designer Lennis "Len" Savage for testifying against them as an expert witness in the Olofson case and others.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, at the same time Dan Shea announced that Small Arms Review would no longer accept articles by or about Len Savage (Shea later gave this account himself under oath).

Thus there appears to be an identity and confluence of interests -- political, economic and bureaucratic -- ATF wished to remove the "poisonous weasel" Len Savage from competition in federal court; Dan Shea had his own reasons, founded upon, by his own words and actions, an animus towards Len Savage.

Meanwhile, and not coincidentally in this writer's opinion, in what has now become known as "The Case of the Arrested Gun," the ATF seized a firearms component -- an upper designed by Savage -- in furtherance of an "economic Waco" in order to force him out of business and out of federal court and his status as an expert witness. This campaign was almost entirely driven by the malevolent morons in the Chief Counsel's Office.

However, as a result of that case and internal ATF emails provided under discovery, we know more than a little about the symbiotic relationship between certain NFATCA board members and the ATF at the highest levels, including Shea and his Bobbsey Twin John Brown. For example, Brown forwarded emails that Len Savage had sent to him privately on to the ATF IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ATF'S LITIGATION OVER THE "ARRESTED GUN."

It was as part of the ATF's search for anything to use against Savage and Shea's adoption of their anti-Savage cause, that Shea provided the name R.A. Bear. Now this could have been a cynical attempt by Shea to use the ATF's investigatory power to help him go after The Author, or it could have been ATF pressuring Shea -- who is rumored to have his own legal difficulties with the ATF, the usual pattern for ATF informant recruitment -- to give them something, anything, on Savage and his friends.

Once it became clear, through other means and venues, that the ATF had an intense interest in the whereabouts of one R.A. Bear and his relationship to Len Savage, the chase was on. In effect, Dan Shea gave the ATF a name to chase, but some of us members of the Coalition of the Willing Lilliputians fleshed out the phantom and gave him real form. And boy did they ever chase him.

The bare bones of this story initially came to me after I contacted Len for help with technical aspects of Absolved, although the story I gleaned was both absent names and incorrect in some details and later interpretation. The fault for that error is all mine, not that it exculpates Shea in any way. Quite the opposite.

The rest, as they say, is history, or at least it will be as soon as R.A. Bear "testifies" at a congressional hearing about "economic Wacos" to the utter discredit of Dan Shea, John Brown, the NFATCA and the ATF.

Fortunately, I was able to pull my bad copy of the letter to Andy Traver out of the mail before it left this morning, so I will be editing it to reflect this more perfect understanding of how Dan Shea, ATF informant, sandbagged that agency with the willing and eager assistance of the malevolent morons of the ATF Chief Counsel's Office.

The only mystery now is how will the net trolls of the NFATCA/ATF Anti-Defamation League explain this one.

Mike Vanderboegh
III

Help vindicate R.A. Bear. -- IT IS TIME TO DEMAND CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT HEARINGS INTO THE ATF'S SCANDALS.

The latest move to bring in the Chicago Gang's favorite gun grabber, Andrew Traver, to become ATF Director means, among other things, that the Obamanoids intend to try to choke off congressional oversight by saying, "See, we've got rid of that old woman Melson and the criminal fools in the Chief Counsel's Office, so there's nothing to see here, citizen. Move along."

Some heads, we hear, are already rolling. Some more will roll. The question is can we force a hearing (or force our witnesses into one already scheduled by means of pointed questions under oath). There are many ATF victims, whistleblower agents and experts who can testify -- David Olofson, Len Savage, Doug Friesen, Albert Kwan, Ryan Horsley among others. Certainly Zorro, of the Garand importation scandal and the dissident agents at CleanUpATF.org could also lend their testimony.

But the prime witness, the one personage which the ATF absolutely does not want to answer questions about is R.A. Bear, the child's stuffed toy which they spent two years and at least a million dollars chasing all over the country.

Offered up as a suspect when one of the ATF's highly placed snitches in the firearms community was pressuring an acquaintance of Len Savage's for information, R.A. Bear took on a life of his own. Popularized in this blog and others, he was paged at gun shows and machine gun shoots all over the country -- most notably at Knob Creek where agents ran all the way to the main gate to see if they could get a glimpse of the elusive Bear. The ATF Chief Counsel's Office asked witnesses about him under oath in depositions, always eliciting the response: "I know of no such person as Ramsey A. Bear."

So eager were they to wreak an "economic Waco" on Len Savage that they obsessed about a child's toy in an effort to frame an innocent man and destroy his business, simply because he had the temerity to testify against them in court on behalf of the agency's victims. All at a huge waste of taxpayer dollars.

The present day mantra of both corrupt political parties is the claim that they wish to abolish "waste, fraud and abuse."

Let's take them at their word and demand of the new Congress and Senate an investigation into the waste, fraud, abuse and crimes of the ATF. And they can start with their wild bear chase after a child's stuffed toy.

Call, write and email your congresscritters and senators today. Post this on gun discussion groups, clean government and libertarian blogs. Call and write the NRA and watch them squirm. Demand vindication for R.A. Bear.

(I have it on good authority that he will show up if asked.)

Mike Vanderboegh
The alleged leader of a merry band of Three Percenters.

Meet the ATF Snitch Day! Dan Shea, popularizer of R.A. Bear in the minds of the gun cops of the ATF, hosts a gunshow in Phoenix!

Earliest known photo of Dan Shea's best snitch work -- ATF "Person of Interest" R. A. Bear.

Yes, folks, now you can see a real ATF snitch up close and personal!

The Small Arms Review Show West will be held at the Arizona State Fairgrounds, Phoenix, AZ, Dec 3, 4 & 5, 2010. That's this week, R.A. Bear fans!

The Public Show Hours are as follows:

Friday, Dec 3th 12:00 pm -5:00 pm
Saturday, Dec 4th 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
Sunday, Dec 5th 9:00 am - 4:00 pm

Be sure and ask for him at the SAR table! Bring a stuffed toy bear as a present! Better yet, dress up as a stuffed bear and walk around claiming to be CPT R.A. Bear of the Dogtown Rangers! Go to the Friday meeting of the NFATCA and ask rude questions!

And remember, when you finally track down Dan Shea and shake his hand, tell him Mike Vanderboegh says "Hi!" Tell him I hope to see him at a congressional hearing real soon.

Somebody call Little Jimmy Vann.

I believe ATF is nothing if not diligent, and the day ATF finally catches up with Ramsis A. Bear (ATF looked hard at Knob Creek, and recently in Alaska) will be a red letter day. The reason is that when the final report on Ramsis A. Bear is written, it will stand mutely as a symbol of ATF's implacable diligence, and the results of that diligence. Whether it makes any difference in the case to which ATF is connecting things, remains to be seen. -- Avatar, posting on CleanUpATF.org.

Another clue to the identity of R.A. Bear?

-----Original Message-----
From: (REDACTED)
To: GeorgeMason1776@aol.com
Sent: Wed, Mar 3, 2010 3:40 pm
Subject: Captain Bear

The Captain gets around -

Canadian Medical Association Journal, Vol 130, Issue 1 17-23.

A clinical approach to common electrolyte problems: 3. Hypophosphatemia by C. Berkelhammer and R. A. Bear

Hypophosphatemia is a common disorder caused by decreased intake, increased loss or transcellular shift of phosphorus.

LATER: COL Robert "Mad Bob" REDACTED of the Dogtown Rangers has just now bruskly informed me that this is NOT our CPT R.A. Bear, subject of a quiet ATF nationwide manhunt, but rather a Dr. Robert A. Bear. "You think he's some sort of Canuck sawbones?!?" he fairly shouted. "Now," he continued, "my man R.A. is quick and deadly with a knife, but I don't reckon you could say it was exactly in the service of medicine." So my thanks to Julian for the email tip, but I think this has been but the latest fish in a whole package case of red herrings. Keep looking, Deputy Dawg, er, ah, I mean, Little Jimmy. Keep looking.

Flash Message to "Little Jimmy" Vann: CPT R.A. Bear spotted at gun show! Post on CleanUpATF.org discusses importance of his case (& others)

James P. "Little Jimmy" Vann stars in a remake of the Deputy Dawg Show, "The Chase of R.A. Bear, Episode No. 231."

Many thanks for CPT Jonathan Tuttle for forwarding this exchange of comments from CleanUpATF.org.

ATF Chief Counsel's Office Deputy Dawg James P. "Little Jimmy" Vann will be interested to note that CPT R.A. Bear has been sighted at a recent gun show. Better go and demand the security tapes if you want to see what he looks like, Little Jimmy.

In fact, if Irregulars watch this video of "The Nation's Gun Show" all the way to the end, the hands of the guy behind the table are said to be those of CPT R.A.Bear, S-2 of the Dogtown Rangers, wanted for questioning by the Chief Counsel's Office of the ATF.

More interesting in the long run than the extended ATF chase after R.A. Bear is Avatar's discussion of what the Obama administration really has in mind for the ATF and how Chief Counsel's Office screw-ups may play a role in that.

Enjoy.

Mike
III

PS: For the record, I am not a member of CUATF and do not participate in their discussions.

Implications of "Acting" Director and others for ATF Prelude to housecleaning or retrenchment?

Avatar posts:

Posted Yesterday, 06:56 PM

Many of the postings on CleanUpATF identify individual people, usually in the context of their alleged defectivenesses, and sometimes delve into discussions of institutional positions, but I've never seen an extended discussion of the implications of ATF having an "Acting" Director (Read: Deputy Director Melson), and various other "Acting" positions that have apparently not been filled for a long time. To have an "Acting" Director for any length of time --- at ATF, it is going on, what, 4 years now? --- is very bad for ANY FEDERAL AGENCY, not just ATF, for several excellent reasons:

1. It has long been understood that an "Acting" Director for any federal agency is not supposed to make waves, make any major changes, or do anything else other than keep the agency from running its ship into a lighthouse. By unspoken tradition, an "Acting" Director's responsibility is to be a good "steward" of the interests of the agency, nothing more.

2. Also by definition, an "Acting" Director lacks the suasion, image and power of a confirmed Director, so managers under him or her act accordingly, usually by behaving in narrow, conservative ways to avoid getting tossed under the bus if something truly monumental hits the fan.

3. If the "Acting" Director lacks credibility --- which is apparently the case with Deputy Director Melson --- ATF managers get antsy, and there's nobody to rein in ATF Counsel. It is my understanding that ATF Special Agents generally believe that Mr. Melson isn't streetwise, and lacks understanding of their job duties. It is also my understanding that the techies at ATF also dislike Mr. Melson, who is a qualified forensic scientist and no doubt understands that the Firearms Technology Branch (FTB), which makes judgments on classifying items as NFA firearms or not, is not an accredited laboratory and lacks scientific testing procedures. This is not a good combination.

Apart from "Acting" Director (Deputy Director) Melson's situation, it is also my understanding that there are currently two Deputy Director positions, and three Assistant Director positions, that are VACANT and that nobody has acted to fill them. If true, this is NOT a good institutional sign, for many of the same reasons it is bad to have a lengthy period of an "Acting" Director.

ANALYSIS: It is preposterous to think that Attorney General Holder is unaware that "Acting" Director Melson hasn't been nominated for Director. It is even more preposterous to think that EVEN IF nobody at ATF peached out a bunch of stuff to Attorney General Holder, that nobody at Main Justice wouldn't --- I am talking about things with the potential to "embarrass ATF politically" or "embarrass the Attorney General." Worrying that there WON'T be folks at ATF and/or Main Justice to try and curry favor (in fairness, to an extent, as part of their job responsibilities) would be like worrying that the Milky Way is going to go out.

It is worth noting that an increasing number of Federal District Judges and U.S. Attorney offices are discomfited with the approaches that ATF Counsel has taken in attempting to prosecute various firearm cases. Judge Thomas Zilly handed ATF its hat in the Albert Kwan case, for withholding exculpatory evidence. In the Friesen case, the U.S. Attorney was so reluctant to do a re-trial after a hung jury that James P. Vann himself was sworn in as the prosecutor (having never himself tried a case); after a Motion in Limine and a technical report of examination of 25 firearms (two Forms 2 were involved, for the same firearms) that didn't match NFRTR records wound up unperching the NFRTR, guess what happened? Answer: James P. Vann left town --- left the U.S. Attorney to handle the flawed prosecutorial theory ATF concocted, and the case got plea bargained out, 5 felony charges were dismissed in exchange for a plea to a misdemeanor and $25 fine (the statute of limitations had run out on the misdemeanor, and that had to be legally resurrected). A similar situation prevails in a case in Atlanta --- the U.S. Attorney declined to prosecute, but ATF mammysicked so loudly that, well, once again, an ATF attorney, Harry Foster, is now the prosecutor for the case. It is a case in which ATF took a bunch of plastic ties or chains or something and made an "upper" run full auto, and claimed it is a machine gun; however, ATF also took a bunch of OTHER "uppers" and conceded they would run full auto as well if these conversion devices were applied, BUT took the position that none of those other "uppers" were even firearms! Now, that's a hoot! Both sides turned in all their paperwork, the Judge has had it for more than 11 weeks now, and no decision --- I think if the Judge was going to simply rubber stamp what ATF said, he would have done that by now, but c'mon, what looks like a duck and walks like a duck and shoots full auto like a duck, isn't a duck? Having all this stuff on videotape makes this even more hilarious.

Seriously, these sorts of cases stink to high heaven, and there's no doubt the judges involved don't think much of what's going on. To his credit, in the Friesen case, District Judge Tim Leonard was fair and even-handed, and didn't let ATF get away with dumping 500,000 records on the defense on the Friday before a Monday trial, after ATF had previously said it turned over all the records.

I submit that the sad proceedings I've identified and described above would NOT have occurred if ATF Counsel was appropriately focused, and the ordinary working people at ATF didn't have their necks stood on to be moving cases forward even though the cases had or have no merit.

Finally, I believe ATF is nothing if not diligent, and the day ATF finally catches up with Ramsis A. Bear (ATF looked hard at Knob Creek, and recently in Alaska) will be a red letter day. The reason is that when the final report on Ramsis A. Bear is written, it will stand mutely as a symbol of ATF's implacable diligence, and the results of that diligence. Whether it makes any difference in the case to which ATF is connecting things, remains to be seen.

So what to make of all this? I'm surprised nobody has articulated this before, but it is possible that these vacancies are deliberate and planned, in order to precede some justification for cleaning house at ATF in some major way (imagine Attorney General Holder making news at a press conference: "I didn't know about this until recently, and I and my staff moved quickly to halt any practices that may be inappropriate, and the new team will be diligent in taking any corrective measures that may be necessary."). Nope, he's not gonna be going under any buses. It is also possible that these vacancies symbolize a cutting loose of ATF to viciously find its own internal way, by allowing and encouraging ATF to eat its own. Admittedly, all this is my personal speculation; I've got no "inside" information to make a definitive case for what is going on one way or the other, except that whatever is going on goes way beyond the norm for anything I've seen as a federal employee, but not as an ATF employee.

GunWriter responds:

Posted Yesterday, 10:33 PM

OK, I must live under a rock because I hadn't heard about this at all.

I just saw him at the Dulles Guns Show. He was watching someone's table when I went by and said hello. He said he'd been overseas but acted pretty normal. He didn't seem to be hiding. Does this have something to do with that big arrest at SHOT for inflating prices to pay a bribe?

Anybody know anything about what is going on?

Doc Holliday, a moderator at CUATF.org replies:

Posted Today, 09:56 AM

Gun writer and Avatar. When ATF uses these tactics, they are NOT, I repeat, NOT representing US, the field. We despise and are appaled what the attorneys have done to this agency. This win at all cost even when we are wrong mentality is not what we stand for. When the agencys must rely on tactics like you describe, we are all embarrased. It is also a huge signal when the United States attorneys office declines a case and a hack ATF Attorney pursues it. Not exactly what I think the AG and President Obama meant when they said transparency.

"This is James P. Vann. Why can't you lowly street agents find me this damned R.A. Bear?"

Washington Post's boo-hooing over ATF's "limitations" forced on it by the "gun lobby." My email in reply.

The Washington Post weeps "ATF's oversight limited in face of gun lobby." In a story by Sari Horwitz and James V. Grimaldi and starring all the usual federal guncop suspects familiar to Sipsey Street readers including "Waco Jim" Cavanaugh, the Post anguishes over their "lack of resources" and other terrible ordeals forced upon these tax-paid bureaucrats.

I could critique this, but I'm sure other bloggers such as David Codrea will do a better job at that. Here, however, is my reply email to the authors of this tearjerker.

-----Original Message-----
From: georgemason1776
To: horwitzs ; grimaldij
Sent: Tue, Oct 26, 2010 11:44 am
Subject: Are you intellectually honest enough to critically examine HOW the ATF does its business?

Because if you are, you might want to examine:

* The David Olofson case. -- A malfunctioning semi-auto rifle became the basis of a "machinegun transfer charge" even after the ATF's own experts initially found it was simply a malfunctioning semi-auto. The rifle was returned to the testers with the order to find differently. Olofson, a Wisconsin Army reservist and firearms instructor with a wife and kids was sent to federal prison. He is now out and available for interview.

* The lack of published standardized testing procedures and deliberately vague rule making. This is done deliberately so the ATF has the option of testifying both ways in a case depending up which is more advantageous to them.

* The joke that is the National Firearms Registry. People have been sent to federal prison based on ATF testimony that the weapon in question wasn't on the NFRTR and therefore illegal when the ATF is painfully aware that the not only is the NFRTR full of holes, but THEY ADD FIREARMS TO IT REGULARLY, even though there have been no machine guns imported or manufactured since 1986. This travesty was exposed in the recent Freisen case, and when that threatened to upset the ATF regulatory applecart, the feds folded and allowed Friesen to plead guilty to a paperwork violation with a fine of $25 after spending more than a million dollars to prosecute him. How's that for a waste of precious taxpayer dollars? I can put you in touch with experts who can rip the lying facade off this ATF scandal, if you are looking for the truth and not merely acting out an agenda.

* The "Economic Waco" that the ATF has waged for years on Georgia firearms designer Len Savage, as "payback" for his expert testimony on behalf of ATF victims such as Olofson and Friesen. Millions more have been wasted on their jihad against Len. I am told by my own sources within the Justice Department that there is a back story on that as well about an unlawful ex parte communication with a federal judge which is a scandal in itself.

* As part of the Savage persecution, ATF' wasted millions of dollars of resources searching for R.A. Bear, a man alleged by a highly placed ATF confidential informant (who used his position with friendly agents to get away with his own crimes) to be an "associate" of Len's. ATF agents searched nationwide for R.A. Bear, demanded to know about him from defense witnesses under discovery in the Savage case, only to find after years of search that "R.A. Bear" was the name of the stuffed toy bear belonging to the daughter of one of Len's friends who was being pressured for information on Savage by the confidential informant. Want to have some fun? Get in front of any of your ATF sources you used on that story and ask them about R.A. Bear and watch the blood drain out of their face.

* The existence of a website run by dissident ATF agents who have been victimized by their own agency, CleanUpAtf.org. Some of their stories of betrayal by ATF senior executives, especially the Chief Counsel's Office, should curl your hair if you have any.

* The inside story behind the granting of permission by the State Department, then denial, of the importation of Korean War surplus arms from South Korea. An ATF mid-level supervisor was ordered to produce a report to deny the deal. He has now come clean. Senator Jeff Sessions office is now interested in his case. It is my belief that the recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on "ATF Reform" was canceled out of fear that questions would be asked UNDER OATH of ATF command leadership about this and other misdeeds of the ATF Chief Counsels' Office.

Which begs the original question: Are you intellectually honest enough to critically examine HOW the ATF does its business? Or are you just a couple of agenda-driven hacks?

Mike Vanderboegh
Pinson, AL

An open letter to Andrew Traver on the occasion of his appointment to be Director of the ATF.

(NOTE: This letter was edited from its original posted form before mailing to Mr. Traver. The section on R.A. Bear was changed to reflect a more perfect understanding of the actual circumstances of the onset of the ATF's tail-chasing for Mr. Bear. See "The True Story of the Life of 'R.A. Bear': Inception & impregnation into the minds of the ATF via a highly placed snitch named Dan Shea of the NFATCA.")

An open letter to Andrew Traver on the occasion of his appointment to be Director of the ATF.

Dear Andy,

As the Internet commentator who scooped the rest of the media by announcing your pending appointment back in early July (obviously my sources within and without the ATF are far better than theirs), I would like to take this opportunity to discuss with you some unfortunate truths of the situation you will find yourself in when you take your seat as Director. You will by now have become familiar with my reputation as seen from the perspective of your former superiors on the fifth floor at ATF headquarters and Eric Holder and company at Main Justice. They do have their own opinions, informed mostly by their long, expensive, frustrating and ultimately futile search for a stuffed child's toy named R. A. Bear. You mustn't let all of their prejudices cloud your own judgment. For example, it is a demonstrated fact that my mother and father really were married.



But as "Uncle" Ho Chi Minh once cautioned, "Cherish your enemies for they teach you the best lessons." Try to think of me, for now at least, as your kindly, avuncular Uncle Mike, here to mentor you, to play Devil's advocate as it were, through the opening moves of the toughest job of your life. It is also in some ways the far most dangerous job you have ever undertaken -- and I mean that in all the senses of that word to every American all over the country. So I fervently hope that you will be smart enough to recognize the truth, regardless of whose mouth it comes from.

I'm sorry the administration apparently feels the need to sneak you in the back door by way of a recess appointment, but I'm sure that by now you're becoming aware of the many scandals that the boys at Main Justice don't want you asked about under oath -- and all it takes is one Senator who isn't on board to upset the entire apple cart.

This is not your fault, of course, though I understand that Main Justice was a bit concerned about a few specific details of your career at the long scandal-plagued Chicago Field Division.

No matter. You've jumped the bar and made it -- you are now the latest Acting Director of the ATF, if you keep track of them as they go by, as I do.

I always pay avid attention to the matter of who sits in your chair because up until now -- and at least until the IRS begins enforcing the "Health Care" mandate -- it has been the ATF of all the three-letter federal law enforcement agencies which has demonstrated by its mission and past talent for misadventure (Randy Weaver, Waco, David Olofson, etc.) the greatest aptitude for triggering the next American civil war. I have always taken a keen interest in understanding things that can make me suddenly and unexpectedly dead through no particular fault of my own save ignorance. For the same reason I keep track of neighborhood crime statistics, earthquake fault lines, tornado warnings, the behavior and habitat of poisonous snakes and the approximate location at any given time of my ex-wife so that I may give all of them a wide berth.

But of all of these threats to my existence it is the ATF which has drawn my consistent attention as the greater danger to my life, liberty and property.


Me and Paul Helmke. He tells me all his deepest, darkest secrets -- indirectly.

You know, Paul Helmke of the Brady Bunch is telling his citizen disarmament acolytes that you're "one of us" (them) and that they have every expectation that you are going to use the regulatory power of your new office to focus the entire weight of the ATF to enforce their agenda, even if it means bending or even breaking the law. You are, in their words, "going to push the outer edge of the envelope." Given your previous enthusiastic cooperation with the virulently anti-firearm rights Joyce Foundation, I can understand how they might think that even absent any back-channel conversations with you. They did their very best behind the scenes to get you where you are today so I can also understand how you might feel grateful enough to respond to their dangerous siren song.

And make no mistake, it IS dangerous -- very dangerous. As I wrote Eric Holder some time back when one of your agency's vindictive "economic Wacos" was threatening to turn deadly, there will be no more free Wacos. Don't take my word for it, but check with your analysts and with those of the FBI and CIA. Ask for a complete briefing paper on the Three Percent and the concept of "One Hundred Heads" introduced unexpectedly by an anonymous Marine Corps scout-sniper friend of mine.

These are unprecedentedly dangerous times and your agency has through arrogance, incompetence and both accidental and willful misadventure advanced its own front lines to the crumbling edge of an abyss. The advocates of citizen disarmament, wrongly believing that they have no skin in the game (that is, that they personally risk nothing by your obedience to their agenda) will be urging you to jump into that abyss, at the bottom of which is a ghastly civil war.

Please believe me when I say that it is in the vital interest of every American -- you, me, our children, everybody -- that you do not.

And it certainly need not come to that. Actually, you may be the right man in the right place at the right moment in history to avoid senseless, even unintended, violence on a vast scale.

Just as it took Nixon to go to China and Bill Clinton to accomplish welfare reform, you could take advantage of your unique position to reform the more dangerous habits of your agency.

Look, you know the culture and belief system of your agency as well as I know the culture and belief system of my friends. We call yours, with some justification we believe, "jack booted thugs." You call us "gun worshippers," "gun queers," "barrel suckers," and worse. We don't believe your agency has a constitutional basis to exist. Y'all don't believe that we have a right to question anything you order us to do, no matter how ill-considered, inconsistent or even malevolent it may be. Your employees, especially those of the Chief Counsel's Office, think it perfectly appropriate to misuse the power of their office to wreak havoc on innocent people's lives and families because of their political opinions. My folks think your folks could teach cockroaches some lessons about photo-phobia.

Mind you, even our folks understand that there are honest ATF street agents who chase real bad guys who commit real crimes. In fact, our understanding of your agency is far more informed and nuanced than you give us credit for, or indeed, far more than yours is of us. The ironic thing to those street agents is that they have as much trouble with the senior executive service (especially the Chief Counsel's Office) as they do with hardened criminals on the street and the sort of paperwork-chasing, agenda-driven investigations they are ordered into are really areas that they would prefer not getting into, for they believe such anti-firearm tail-chasing discredits the entire agency.

As the last election and numerous recent polls have demonstrated, belief in the legitimacy of the federal government and its power over the average citizen is at a modern nadir. Is this the fault of the people or the federal bureaucracy?

But it is not necessary to agree on the answer to that question to mutually understand that if the system is perceived by some to be illegitimate and hopelessly corrupt, that these people will take decisions based upon that belief -- decisions that could well lead to violence.

If as a result of studying recent outrages such as the railroading of David Olofson or the punitive "economic Waco" your agency has inflicted for years on Georgia firearms designer Len Savage in retribution for his testimony as an expert witness on behalf of defendants targeted by the ATF, we conclude that the agency is out of control and that -- even in federal court -- the rule of law no longer protects us, then surely you can understand our indifference to the notion that your position protects you.

In my own case, it was Special Agent Jody Keeku's framing of David Olofson which brought me off the benches and into the arena. If now your agency dislikes the results of my renewed attention to the darker recesses of their dungeons they have only Keeku and themselves to blame. To quote the American philosopher Frank Zappa: "Do you love it? Do you hate it. There it is, the way you made it." The Law of Unintended Consequences may be a bitch, but it is iron-clad and not subject to appeal or repeal, nor can it be manipulated, as your Chief Counsel's Office is so fond of doing, by unethical ex parte communication with federal judges.

And if the Founders' rule of law no longer obtains and it is merely naked power we are talking about -- that is to say, the law of the jungle -- then the hunter becomes the hunted and vice versa. Absent a mutual belief in the potency of the rule of law, the hitherto "law abiding citizen" must believe that such a corrupted system is merely a confidence game at his expense and if the law no longer protects him, then he must make his own arrangements. For if, after studying the Olofson case and others, we believe we no longer have the possibility of a fair trial in federal court, we still retain the right to an unfair gunfight with the ATF agents sent to our homes to arrest us on false charges.

That is where we are today. The question is, are you, Mr. Traver, going to reverse your agency's criminal drift under the shadow rule of the Chief Counsel's Office and execute the actual law in daylight under transparent rules and unambiguous regulations with verifiable testing procedures or are you going to embrace the Brady's citizen disarmament agenda and potential future violence?

Only you can answer that question.

On the off chance that you remember the oath you took to the Constitution when you first entered the service -- on the possibility that the law means more to you than an agenda provided to you by your putative sponsors -- in the hope that you are actually as honest and straightforward as you believe yourself to be -- I offer you below the results of my two decades study of the ATF. Just because I believe that your agency should be abolished doesn't mean that it is going to happen anytime soon. I live in the real world and see it with attentive eyes. So I offer these fixes in the interest of correcting the worst abuses of an agency I don't think should exist in the further interest of avoiding or at least postponing violence.

Even if you decide not to do a thing about any of these scandals, however, you should still study the list and possible solutions below. For even if you have no intention of correcting them, you will one day be called to testify under oath about them. Trust me. As sure as God made little green apples, the cockroaches of your agency are no longer in a position to avoid the antiseptic qualities of bright sunshine.

"Dans ce pay-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un admiral pour encourager les autres." "In this country it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others." -- Voltaire's Candide.

1. Deal with the Chief Counsel's Office incompetent shadow management of ATF. To paraphrase Shakespeare, "first thing you do is fire all the lawyers." For more than a decade the CCO has run ATF as a sorry parade of temporary management came and went. When a new acting director would come in, he would first turn to the guys who "knew stuff" at that rarefied level of ATF headquarters, the Chief Counsel's Office. Problem was, and is, they are not beyond setting up acting directors for a fall to further their own power and agenda (just ask poor Ken Melson) . Simply put, they don't like the competition that a director, a real director, gives them. You may simplify your life by firing anyone even tainted by the present CCO mafia and get some competent attorneys in there who feel bound by the law rather than an agenda. Being loyal to their oaths and to your direction wouldn't hurt either. In any case, the sight of incompetent and/or malevolent CCO lawyers being frog-marched out past the ruins of their government careers will certainly "encourage the others." Morale among the street agents will soar.

2. Once you have the CCO saboteurs out of the way. you can begin to deal with the sorry regulatory mess the ATF has been. First, understand that NONE of the databases your agency relies upon is without huge errors. The National Firearms Registry, the NFRTR, is particularly vulnerable to court challenge as demonstrated in the recent Freisen case. How is it, one must ask, that your agency continues to make new additions to the NFRTR every month when not a single new automatic weapon has been manufactured or imported since 1986? The answer of course is that the NFRTR is hopelessly faulty, and the additions that the ATF discovers in the process of inspections merely paper that over. YET PEOPLE GO TO PRISON BASED IN PART UPON THE NFRTR EVERY YEAR. How you fix this scandal absent another amnesty I do not know. It is your call, but you will continue to waste money on worthless prosecutions based upon it -- and wreck innocent lives -- if you continue to embrace the utter failure represented by the NFRTR.

3. If the ATF is to be an actual "law enforcement" agency, the rules and regulations must be both transparent and unambiguous and supported by verifiable testing procedures. As it stands, the ATF under the shadow rule of the CCO mafia has none of these. Part of this is the ambiguity of the laws you are called to enforce but most of it is simple bureaucratic inertia combined with the CCO desire to be able to argue either way in court, depending upon which they believe will be more likely to convict. The Firearms Testing Branch ought to promulgate clear written procedures that they can defend logically in court with scientific videotaped evidence that can be verified by independent experts. And their word, once given, should not be subject to tampering by enforcement agents, such as happened in the matter of David Olofson, when SA Jody Keeku sent his rifle, which had been determined to be a malfunctioning semi-automatic rifle by FTB back for "further testing" under conditions that guaranteed uncontrolled and dangerous full auto fire. Absent any effective challenge or verification, testing becomes subject to mere agenda-driven opinion and agency convenience, yet through its unchallenged presentation in court becomes law without any basis in demonstrable fact. This is a perversion of science, logic and law. To the extent that you let this scandal fester, the ATF will continue to be despised as a mere force operating under color of law and not a law enforcement agency. Happily you have the perfect man to accomplish this in Deputy Director Melson, for forensics testing and standards are his main meat. Absent the malevolent meddling of the current CCO mafia and given the clear authority to do so, he could probably set this part of your house in order without too much trouble.

4. More so than the NFRTR, the contradictory regulatory Gordian knot that the agency has tied itself in over definitions and lengths of destructive devices and pistol grip shotguns will have to be dealt with. Should you do an amnesty followed by a demand of forfeiture or registration of millions of hitherto unregulated shotguns currently in the hands of law-abiding citizens? Boy will that make a whole bunch of NRA members mad. The NRA management might even be forced out of its symbiotic, go-along to get-along mindset. And if you don't? Why, the Brady folks who now shower you with kisses will cover you with curses, because for them it is not about the law but the agenda -- their agenda. Either way you go, you will discredit your agency with SOMEBODY. Good luck with that.

5. Critics of the agency's missteps are not "enemies of the state." People who try to defend themselves against baseless charges are not legitimate targets for regulatory retribution. You should put a stop to all "economic Wacos" now in progress and forbid any more manipulation of enforcement to avoid embarrassing questions or even uncomfortable legal blow-back for CCO misdeeds. Stop the Don Corleone culture and attempt to make whole the damage it has inflicted on their victims. It is not a crime to be an effective expert witness against the ATF in federal court, nor should gun dealers be targeted for their political opinions. Until the law becomes more important than the agenda to the ATF, your agency will continue to pose a danger to itself and to the peace of the country.

6. The street agents are smarter than the muckety-mucks of the senior executive service, regardless of their pay grade. When the ill-considered Waco raid's cover was blown, it was a street agent who warned that the raid shouldn't proceed. He was ignored, to great loss of life. No one was inconvenienced for that deadly blunder, nor did their ATF careers suffer, unless you count the conscientious agent. To the extent that you give the street agents your own personal leadership and your own personal accountability, your people will take care of you. This is Leadership 101 and common sense, but it has been sorrowfully scarce in all of your recent predecessors. You should also understand that almost all whistleblowers are not bureaucratic traitors but merely honest folks trying to save the agency from the darker demons of the senior executive service's nature. Figure out a way to expedite the resolution of their complaints instead of trying to hide them and you'll be the darling of both parties on the Hill. It may run contrary to all agency history and bureaucratic reflexes, but it is nonetheless true.

ATF "Person of Interest": CPT R.A. Bear, Intelligence Officer, Dogtown Rangers Militia, in one of his many disguises.

7. The cultivation and pressuring of informants, including those at the highest levels of industry associations such as the NFATCA, is doing your agency more harm than good when it is driven not by actual police work in furtherance of the law but by the desire on the part of CCO to root out and make unwarranted criminal cases against people they view as "poisonous weasels." This agenda-driven corruption of the process opens the ATF up to self-discrediting errors such as that represented by R.A. Bear. As best I understand the beginning of the story, the CCO wanted to "get" an honest man whose only "crime" had been to defy them in court. To that end they put pressure on all their snitches to come up with anything. One highly-placed informant, apparently on the hook legally and under pressure himself from the ATF, gave them a name: R.A. Bear, the stuffed child‘s toy of the daughter of another man who the informant despised. What consideration the informant got for providing the name is unknown except to him and your agency. From that point Mr. Bear took on a life of his own, a process which I was honored to assist in. We gave him friends, a life history, we paged him at gun shows and machine gun shoots and, on the orders of the CCO, your agents scurried hither and yon, chasing each and every clue and always coming up empty. CCO lawyers demanded to know about him in discovery depositions, always to be told truthfully under oath, "I know of no such person as R.A. Bear." Now, one day soon, R.A. Bear will be present at a congressional oversight hearing, with full explanation from other witnesses under oath as to how he came to be the focus of an ATF bear hunt. If you want to prevent another such long, expensive, foolish and utterly self-discrediting trackdown at taxpayer expense, you should buy stuffed toy bears and send one each ATF employee this Christmas, as a reminder that when their agenda gets in front of the law and even common sense, you are not going to reward them for it.


8. Finally, your agency and other agencies in the federal government pay the Southern "Poverty" Law Center big bucks for "hate group" orientation. Stop it. They are by now very rich liars for money ($200M plus in assets and the 2009 IRS paperwork of SPLC indicates even a Cayman Islands account), and although they have provided political cover to your agency at critical points in the ATF's history, such as the Good O' Boys Roundup scandal, they are so factually challenged that any "intelligence" they provide nowadays is worthless. You are paying good taxpayer money to propangandize your employees with their agenda. And, as my Michigan farmer Grandpa used to say, they "don't know shit from shinola." I ask you, if we were actually as morally contemptible, intellectually challenged and cartoonish as they portray us with their conflationary propaganda -- or even if we really were just "gun queers" and "barrel suckers" -- could we have successfully made R.A. Bear real and had your agency chasing a stuffed child's toy for the better part of two years?

This gets back to old Uncle Ho's adage, "Cherish your enemies for they teach you the best lessons." The old murdering communist is burning in Hell, but he was right about that. If we are to avoid unwanted violence during your tenure as ATF Director, it is important that we see each others positions clearly and move, when we move, slowly and carefully. And keep your hands where we can see 'em.

Remember in every decision you make that there are now no more free Wacos and the Law of Unintended Consequences still trumps every best-laid plan.

But if you can get your traditionally agenda-driven cowboy agency actually under control and operating according to law, it will go a good way to minimizing the chance of an accidental discharge leading to the next American civil war.

With hope, but not much faith, I look forward to your tenure as ATF Director.

Good luck.

You're going to need it.

In fact, we all are.

Mike Vanderboegh
The alleged leader of a merry band of Three Percenters.

Note to the ATF: Me and CPT R.A. Bear will be at the AGCA show in Birmingham tomorrow.

If the ATF had a "Ten Most Wanted" list like their big brothers in the FBI, CPT R.A. Bear would be at the top.

Just in case you wanted to try again to track down the elusive CPT Bear. You've been asking around -- in fact, just about anybody you can find who's under oath in an ATF case gets asked about R.A. Bear. Or is it "Behr?" "Bare" perhaps? Or maybe "Bayer?"

You missed him at Knob Creek in October. You missed him in Indianapolis at the Indy 1500 gun show in January. You missed him at the S.H.O.T. Show when he shook A.D. Melson's hand. You even missed him in Alaska this week. (That one will probably cost you big time.)

Slippery bastard, ain't he? Care to try again? I'll be at the table at the back of the hall underneath the Sipsey Street sign and the Nyberg Battle Flag. I'll even be there Sunday, too. As to when I'll chat with CPT Bear, well, you'll just have to be there all weekend, won't you?

Mike Vanderboegh
The alleged leader of a merry band of Three Percenters

Just in case you missed it . . .

Be sure and go back to read my Open Letter to Andrew Traver from Friday which has been edited to reflect a more perfect understanding of the beginning of the R.A. Bear story. Also be sure and re-read yesterday's "The True Story of the Life of 'R.A. Bear': Inception & impregnation into the minds of the ATF via a highly placed snitch named Dan Shea of the NFATCA." It too was edited after input from close family members of R.A. Bear.

David Codrea warns us of a backroom deal. Oh, yeah, and Dan Shea is the ATF snitch who "ratted out" R.A. Bear.

"ATF attempting to reclassify small arms ammunition without public input." In the process he brings up the name of someone on CPT R.A. Bear's Christmas card list.

Well, uh, yeah. I don’t see anybody there representing my interests with my quaint “shall not be infringed” naiveté. I don’t see anyone making sure they “get this right” for those of us “extremist hatriots” who believe in the Second Amendment as articulated by the Founders.

And two things make me think I won’t.

First are these sentiments from NFATCA board member Dan Shea:

There are a few misguided crusaders on the pro-gun side who cross the line; probably the most dangerous people there are to us because they will sacrifice anyone and anything to their generally misguided and usually self-serving agendas.

"Self-serving," Mr. Shea? The liberty I’m going after will apply to all. Sorry, I’m just not a member of your exclusive five-plus-figures firearms club. Still, “misguided” is one of the nicer critiques.

One more thing that's a wide-open secret in the upper levels of the NFATCA: Dan Shea, current and former board member of the organization and its de facto president and ruler for life -- the power behind the scenes -- and Big Heap Editor Mojo of Small Arms Review is the ATF snitch who "ratted out" R.A. Bear and sent the agency on an expensive years-long chase for a child's stuffed toy.

Well-founded rumor has it that Shea has his own legal problems and was trying to curry favor. Licking the hand that otherwise would have spanked him. You're big on threats, Dan. Go ahead and threaten to sue me and let's see if we get past discovery.

Send any lawyers' insincere growls to:

Mike Vanderboegh
PO Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126

Looking forward to it. Just one more scandal the ATF is trying to desperately keep the lid on.

NOTE: The original post incorrectly stated that Dan Shea was past president of the NFATCA. The language above reflects his true status.

Sipsey Street Exclusive: The curious case of Serial Number A6042075. What exactly did the ATF & DOJ tell the grand jury in U.S. vs. Clark? A tale of machine guns, a well placed protected snitch, insider influence, contradictory rule making, doctored reports and double-standard "justice."

U.S. Attorney General Homer S. Cummings, FDR's federal law enforcement empire builder and father of the 1934 National Firearms Act.

Sipsey Street Exclusive: The curious case of Serial Number A6042075. What exactly did the ATF & DOJ tell the grand jury in U.S. vs. Clark? A tale of machine guns, a well placed protected snitch, insider influence, contradictory rule making, doctored reports and double-standard "justice."

By Mike Vanderboegh and "Ramsey A. Bear."

The assertion of federal power over guns and crime fit perfectly with Franklin D. Rossevelt's philosophy of using the government to protect ordinary American's from the hazards of modern society. . . the New Deal was nothing less than a radical retructuring of American government . . . Roosevelt portrayed gun control and crime fighting as simply one more element of the Neweal -- indeed, of the new America. . . "As a component part of that larger objective we include our constant struggle against the attacks of the lawless and criminal elements of our own populations." Because crime drained the economy, federal crime control, we argued, was essential for national recovery.

Roosevelt understood that, like many of his other New Deal reforms, a federal push in the field of guns and crime would face opposition from traditionalists committed to states' rights. . . The situation required a "New Deal for Crime." Just as Rossevelt sought to expand the power and reach of the federal government over the economy, he determined to expand its power and reach over criminals and their weapons. The man Roosevelt tapped to to lead the push was his attorney general, Homer Cummings. A bald man with a round face and piercing blue eyes, Cummings was a close confidant of the president. He wasn't the first person you'd expect to lead a revolution. One of Roosevelt's speechwriters called Cummings "the least dramatic man in the whole world." A a three-time former mayor and former chair of the Democratic National Committee, however, Cummings was well versed in politics, and Roosevelt knew he wouldn't back down in the face of public or political opposition. . .

Cummings realized that he needed troops to wage war -- in this case, a truly effective federal police force. The Justice Department aqlready had what passed for law enforcement agents in the Bureau of Prohibition and the Bureau of Investigation. Yet the former was being disbanded in the wake of the legalization of liquor and the latter was an underfunded agency devoted mainly to information gathering. The agencies were also hamstrung by the states' rights tradition. Because policing was a state function, federal agents didn't have the power to arrest people and weren't allowed to carry guns. Soldiers in a war on crime couldn't be effective armed with only notepads. . . Cummings lobbied for a significant reorganization of the Bureau of Investigation . . . Two years later, Cummings had the agency itself renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation to emphasize the new role of the federal government in fighting crime . . .

Gun control required legislation, not just good public relations. Prior to being elected president, FDR had served on the executive committee of the National Crime Commission . . . (which was) an early advocate for the creation of a federal police force and the passage of federal gun control laws . . . As Homer Cummings knew too well, there was ample precedent for the Supreme Court to strike down federal regulation . . . During the first three years of Cummings' tenure as attorney general, the Supreme Court struck down numerous landmark bills enacted to speed economic recovery. It was this dilemma that led Roosevelt in 1937 to propose his infamous Court-packing plan. The idea, which turned into a major embarrassment, was originally suggested by Homer Cummings. . .

Needing to find a way to restrict criminals' access to guns without being overturned by the Supreme Court, Cummings ingeniously proposed raising taxes on firearms. . . while Congress didn't have the power to ban guns directly, Cummings knew that . . . "the power to tax involves the power to destroy." . . . The gun control law adopted by Congress was entitled the National Firearms Act of 1934. The law imposed an onerous tax on machine guns and on short-barreled (or "sawed off") shotguns and rifles. . . Few law-abiding people had much interest in machine guns or short barreled shotguns, especially when the tax almost doiubled the price. Legitimate sales of these guns dried up almost immediately. . . It also required that owners of machine guns and short-barreled long-guns register with federal authorities and submit to fingerprinting within sixty days. -- Adam Winkler, Gun Fight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, Norton, 2011, pp.196-204.

FDR, with Homer Cummings and J. Edgar Hoover looking on, signs the NFA of 1934.

The requirement to register machine guns was embodied in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (known by the shorthand NFRTR). This list is the arbiter of legal machine gun ownership. If your weapon and name are on the list, you may play with your expensive toy to your heart's content. If not, you go to the graybar hotel for many years and pay an onerous fine. The errors in the NFRTR are legendary in the machine gun collecting community, which is represented, NRA-like, by the National Firearms Act Trade & Collectors Association (NFATCA). The current president of the NFATCA is John Brown. Other board members are Teresa Starnes, Jeff Folloder, Curt Wolf, Robert Landies, Dan Shea, Robert Segel and John Tibbetts. (Readers will recall that Dan Shea has appeared many times previously in the pages of Sipsey Street, most spectacularly in The True Story of the Life of "R.A. Bear": Inception & impregnation into the minds of the ATF via a highly placed snitch named Dan Shea of the NFATCA.)

Ramsey A. Bear & Friend. It is estimated that the ATF devoted two years and more than a million dollars to the search for this "vicious gun criminal" who was thought to assist (courtesy of confidential informants like Dan Shea) Georgia firearm designer and manufacturer Len Savage, whose court room testimony inconvenienced the ATF in several court cases. R.A. Bear stands ready to be called as a witness in the next ATF congressional oversight hearing.

These NFRTR errors were famously compounded by clerks who, over the years, would throw paperwork in the trash when their in-boxes overflowed. The ATF has previously been caught out as instructing its agents to testify that the NFRTR is "100 percent correct" even though they admit to each other within the agency that this is surely incorrect. Most recently, the Friesen case blew up in the ATF's face when it became evident that the accuracy of the NFRTR was going to be a central tenet of the defense's case. The DOJ folded and allowed Doug Friesen to essentially "pay fifty dollars and pick up the garbage" on a minor paperwork violation. The last thing the ATF/DOJ wanted was to have to defend the accuracy of the NFRTR in court, simply because it can't be done. And yet people are put in jail every week -- for long sentences with heavy fines -- based on the allegation that the weapons they are found in possession of are not listed on the NFRTR.

Such defendants can be found in the strange case of U.S. vs, Clark. Recall that U.S. vs. Clark is a Phoenix case, investigated and prosecuted by the same cast of tax-paid malefactors as Fast and Furious. An interesting motion was filed the other day in U.S. vs. Clark, with some relevant portions below:

Defendants Randolph B. Rodman, Hal Paul Goldstein, Lorren Marc Kalish and Idan C. Greenberg, by and through Counsel, respectfully move the Court for its Order authorizing disclosure of the minutes of the proceedings of the grand jury or juries returning the indictment in this case. As grounds for this motion, Counsel have a good faith belief that grand jurors were provided with erroneous and ambiguous guidance regarding the law of the case. Failure to provide accurate interpretations of the law eliminated the grand jury’s ability to return a true and fair indictment. Errors are found in the text of Count One and are set forth in more detail below. The transcripts will enable a review for context and the ability to assess the cumulative effect of the error.

Prior to indictment, this case was investigated as a conspiracy to violate Section 922(o) of Title 18. As part of the investigation and before an indictment, every machinegun identified in the indictment was submitted to the Firearms Technology Branch (FTB), the official Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) laboratory in West Virginia. There, the machineguns were examined and tested for the sole purpose of determining whether modifications made to 34 machineguns by Defendant Clark constituted new manufactures. No opinion as to the date of manufacture of any of the machineguns was rendered by any of the FTB experts who examined and tested the machineguns. The presence of substantive § 922(o) counts in the indictment means that the grand jury found probable cause without a single expert opinion.

Currently, a year and a half after indictment, there is good reason to believe that Count One will be prosecuted as a conspiracy to violate § 922(o) of Title 18. Count One is the keystone of this 106 count prosecution. Without conviction on Count One, very few of the remaining substantive counts survive. Access to the transcripts will permit timely and thoroughly briefed objections to the Conspiracy and substantive § 922(o) counts. Dismissal of an indictment is appropriate where violations of grand jury procedures “substantially influenced the grand jury’s decision to indict,” or raised a “grave doubt as to whether it had such an effect.”

What?!? Lying by omission or commission to a grand jury? Say it ain't so, Rick Vasquez! There is, according to my sources, an internal investigation of Mr. Vasquez and his relationships with confidential informants John Brown and Dan Shea. There is a larger investigation of the question of whether those two worthies transferred automatic weapons to employees of of the ATF in return for favors. Thus, I was more than a little interesting is this portion of the motion:

THE ATF CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION

The origin of the criminal investigation was unusual. In contrast to the opening of most investigations, it was ATF employees of the NFA Branch and the FTB lab (government employees not authorized to conduct criminal investigations) who first became suspicious of the existence of a possible violations of law. After the performance of several investigatory tasks (5), the matter was referred first to the Washington DC (Falls Church) Criminal Division and later to the Phoenix ATF Criminal Division for criminal investigation.

The matter was referred to the Phoenix Special Agent in Charge by way of a memorandum dated November 16, 2006 from an ATF Deputy Assistant Director at ATF Headquarters (The Office of Enforcement Programs and Services) (6). Prior thereto, faceless and nameless ATF employees of the NFA Branch and the Firearms Technology Branch had already interviewed ATF employees about the matter, had numerous contacts with the person in possession of SN A6042075, a suspected contraband machinegun; they had conducted an alleged laboratory test of the suspect gun; and had also returned the gun to the registrant after determining it was contraband and was illegal to possess. All this took place before the formal referral for criminal investigation on November 16, 2006.

The referral memo of the Deputy Assistant Director included the following points

_________________________________

5 The significance of this is that such conduct violates ATF internal procedures. When persons unfamiliar with criminal procedures conduct interviews or handle property in a criminal matter there is risk that evidence will contaminated. ATF employees other than Special Agents, are not authorized, trained or otherwise qualified to conduct criminal interviews of suspects, seize property, receive abandoned property, collect and preserve evidence, or submit property for a determination of its potential evidentiary value, etc.

6 This position, despite its title, is a regulatory function that oversees the programs and Services that support the main functions of ATF, including such service providers as the NFA Branch and the FTB Branch supra., and others. MOTION USGJ TRANSCRIPTS FINAL 011012.wpd Page 12 of 18

supporting the need for a criminal investigation in Phoenix:

1. George Clark, a Special Occupational Taxpayer in Arizona since 1993, converted MAC Models 10 and 11 machineguns into Browning Model 1919 machineguns;

2. Applications (7) to transfer the converted guns from Clark to various parties were found to have constant make and model designations but the caliber, barrel and overall lengths were at variance with descriptions in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (NFRTR);

3. One of the suspected machineguns, SN A6042075, caliber 9mm/45 cal., barrel lengths 5.57 inches and overall length 11 inches was then registered to a Virginia FFL, John Brown, DBA Battlefield Sports and that Mr. Brown transported this machinegun to the FTB lab in West Virginia for examination;

4. Significantly, the memo failed to disclose that prior to being in possession of SN A6042075, Brown had bought and sold at least two other M1919 machineguns and was a party in eight (8) applications to transfer models 1919 that had been converted from MAC models by Clark. It was also learned in review of discovery material that Brown was an ATF Confidential Informant;

5. The examination and testing of SN A6042075 was alleged to have been performed on October 31, 2006 by Richard Vasquez, the Deputy Chief of FTB; and

6. Vasquez concluded that the MAC Model 10 machinegun had been destroyed in the conversion process and that the Model 1919 was a new manufacture which triggered a requirement for Clark to file a Form 2 (notice of manufacture of a new machinegun). Since the Model 1919 was not registered, it was a contraband unregistered machinegun.

There are major problems with statements in the referral memo:

1. The memo cites neither to a statute, a regulation, a ruling nor any case law for the principle that the conversion of an NFA registered machinegun to another model constitutes the manufacture of a new machinegun and therefore requires a new registration. The conversion process described in the memo is a zero sum game. The MAC Model 10 machinegun that was converted was one machinegun lawfully registered and possessed before the conversion. Following the conversion, it was the same one machinegun albeit in a different configuration but nevertheless still one machinegun. The NFA is a tax statute and assesses tax on “machineguns,” per se, not models. The tax assessed and collected on every make, model, design, configuration of machinegun is set at the same uniform rate – $200.00 to register and $200.00 to transfer;

2. The Report of an Official Examination and Testing of SN A6042075 on October 31, 2006 is a canard, a complete, from whole cloth fabrication. Like a unicorn,

__________________________

7 At the time, 11/16/06, Ms. Stucko reported that 22 such suspect applications to transfer had been identified from a search of the NFRTR. The actual number charged in the indictment is 34 as others were discovered through investigation.

because it is impossible to find, it does not exist. The ATF FTB Laboratory has no record of receiving SN A6042075 for testing and examination on or about October 31, 2006. There is no report of such an examination in the FTB official system of records. The non-existence of A6042075's receipt in the FTB evidence log on October 31 and the non-existence of an FTB lab report was concealed from defendants throughout the discovery period. It was discovered only after Counsel’s specific requests for disclosure of the report were ignored for over a year. Finally, in October, 2011, Defendants received definitive proof that FTB has no record of receipt of that machinegun on or about that date. That fact was made known in response to a request for collateral items, i.e., for the pages of FTB’s evidence logs for October 31, 2006 and for any other entries in the FTB’s system of records. An agency capable of persisting in such deceit, patently false statements in a criminal investigation by top level ATF Headquarters Executives, is capable of much worse. (8)

THE ATF TECHNICAL EXAMINATIONS AND LAB REPORTS

Every machinegun in the indictment (approximately 80) was sent to the FTB lab for testing. Each was found to be a machinegun. However, they had been submitted to the lab for a determination whether they were manufactured after May 19, 1986. Such a finding is the ultimate proof at issue for a violation of § 922(o). The state of the government’s scientific evidence at the time of indictment was that it did not possess a single expert opinion about any machinegun submitted to FTB for testing (approximately 400) as to the date of manufacture, the place of manufacture and the identity of the manufacturer.

After the Court ordered deadline for completion of discovery had passed, on October 13, 2011, the government disclosed an undated report labeled “Supplemental Report of FTB 2008-514-KEM/FTB 2009-114-KEM.” (Supplemental Report). This report was prepared by Richard Vasquez, the government’s designated Firearms Expert Witness and purports (9) to supplement the time, these statements support an inference that government attorneys and witnesses polluted the grand jury process by the entry of erroneous statements of law. Taken at best, these remarks represent a profound misunderstanding of the rights and privileges, duties and obligations of a person in the status of a licensed manufacturer of firearms and a Special Occupational Taxpayer.

_______________________________

8 For more than a year, Defendants have requested confirmation of the existence of an internal investigation of ATF employees and regulated persons involved in this case and/or disclosure of the report of that investigation.(the ATF Office of Internal Affairs or Office of Professional Responsibility) Unlike a unicorn, the report of such an investigation does exist and it can be found.

9 The timing, authenticity and certification of this Report has not yet been challenged nor has the government provided any reasoning or authority for shifting lab reports. This is a Mr. Vasquez’s third modification of the official reports of another and bears no indicia that it is an official record of the ATF Firearms Technology Branch. The earlier official versions of the two reports contain no opinion that the conversions constituted a new manufacture.firearms expert. (One of the supplemented reports had been amended in February of 2011). Further, the report is not dated and bears no indicia that it is an official record of the ATF Firearms Technology Branch. The earlier official versions of the two reports contain no opinion that the conversions constituted a new manufacture.

Vasquez is in "a heap o' trouble," according to our sources. So, too, is the ATF. Insiders predict that the Clark case will go the way of the Friesen case, with all serious charges dismissed, afters years of investigation time and millions of dollars spent. A member of the Coalition of Willing Lilliputians, Alvin Wombat, provides this analysis:

I did a bit of serious nosing and reliably determined the following:

There is, absolutely, a sub rosa agenda by SOME people at ATF (I am not using a broad brush here) to systematically remove all of the registered/existing machine guns from civilians. The interpretation by SOME at ATF, fostered equally by ATF Counsel and SOME ATF Special Agents, is that the law was not enacted to preserve ownership of these existing machine guns, but instead to forcibly reduce the existing supply of transferable machine guns until it reaches zero.

There is some genuine sympathy developing for what Len terms ATF's "enforcement by ambush," i.e., concocting interpretations of what constitute violations of law; not publishing them or otherwise making them known; and "announcing" them by arresting people for serious felony (there is no other kind) violations of the NFA. David T. Hardy's recent observation in a blog on his site that ATF ought to, at a minimum based on the Administrative Procedures Act, make all of its pertinent Letter Rulings available to the public, including putting copies of them in a public Reading Room. The fact that ATF has issued many contradictory Letter Rulings is raising troubling legal issues.

It would be worth thumping Congressional washtubs to get the Congressional Research Service to once again address the Letter Ruling issue, in context of H.R. 126 (Fairness in Firearms Testing Act), because that would constitute a legislative approach to the issue/problem. The key to getting THAT done, in addition to the washtub thumping, is (A) getting some action on H.R. 126, and (B) getting somebody on the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security to take an interest in these aspects of enforcement.

I recognize that an important agenda is for the Congress to address the serious mismanagement of ATF from the top down, particularly the jacking around of ATF personnel---the retaliation, the increasingly crazy/contradictory enforcement. The "enforcement by ambush" aspect is just another example of ATF Counsel and top management abuse and failure to professionally administer the law.

5. In reading some of the Clark materials, it is impossible to conclude that the U.S. Attorney understands the law, and that ATF (through ATF Counsel) is not deliberately misrepresenting the law. The fact that this involves machine guns makes it politically dicey.

6. An angle to mess with this may be to put the ATF Letter Rulings in context with the Fairness in Firearms Testing Act; in particular, the practice of ATF to concoct standards to bring certain firearms into NFA status; like the re-testing in the Olofson case; and the crazy prosecution of Friesen (which revolved around what amounted to a firearm description).

Alvin Wombat.