Didn't Reagan, well before the Waciaso, call ATF a rogue agency that should be disbanded?
You've overlooked the BATF complicity as a *death squad* in arranging political murders, one reason most gutless politicians are afraid of taking them on. The question is only one of at what level or how high up in the bureau such activities are directed and controlled.
The second Big Mistake of Altamont was the hiring of Ralph "Sonny" Barger and a contingent of Hell's Angels to keep the peace.Barger, it has since been divulged, was an informant and hit man on the payroll of the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). When Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver fled the country for Algeria, the ATF negotiated with Barger to "bring Cleaver home in a box." He often made deals with law enforcement in exchange for dismissal of charges against fellow Angeles. Barger was even hired by federal agents to kill immigrant farm labor activist Cesar Chavez, and may well have if Barger hadn't first been arrested by police into the Bay area on a prior homicide charges. 7
The accusation arose in the death of Servios Winston Agero, a drug dealer. In a surprise courtroom maneuver, Sonny took the witness stand and confessed to his arrangement with local police and federal agents. Over a period of several years, he testified, he had brokered deals with Oakland authorities to give up the location of hidden cache's of automatic weapons, mortars and dynamite in exchange for the dismissal of all charges against member of his motorcycle gang. This was a deal he had brokered with Edward Hilliard, then a sergeant at the Oakland Police Department's vice squad. Hilliard refused to comment when questioned by reporters. The defendant admitted for the record that he sold narcotics for a living, forged IDs, and slept with a pistol under his pillow. On several occasions, though, Barger refused to respond to questioning and was fined $3,000 by Judge William J. Hayes for each demurral.
Deputy prosecutor Donald Whyte asked the "spiritual" leader of the Hell's Angeles, an admitted federal operative, to name officers who asked him to "kill someone." Barger squired and claimed that he could not recall, exactly, but att5empted several phonetic variations of a possible name. 8 Even in the courtroom, it seems, he was not about to risk retaliation by government contacts.
But the deal was exposed anyway by ATF whistle-blower Larry Shears. The agent told his story to narcotics agents, and they gathered evidence on the murder plan before talking to the press. Shears announced that Barger had been contracted to kill Chavez, an assassination ordered by agribusiness magnates in the San Joaquin Valley. Chavez was only alive, Shears reported, because there had been delays. The first came when AFT agents insisted that certain files first be stolen from the farm union. The arson of union offices was attempted by hired hands, another delay. Confirmation of these allegations came three weeks later when union officials complained to reporters that there had been recent "arson attempts against [farm] union offices. Others have been riddle with bullet holes, and on at least two occasions, attempts were made to steal records in the union offices."
The next glitch in the Chavez assassination, Shears said, came when the hit man, Sonny Barger, was arrested for the Agero murder. To support his statements, Shears waved a federal voucher at reporters signed by Senator Edward Kennedy, a payment of $10,000 to Shears for services rendered as an informant to narcotics agents and the IRS." 9
In March 1989, according to wire releases, Sonny Barger was convicted with four other Angels for conspiracy to violate federal firearms and explosives laws in a variety of plots to kill members of rival motorcycle clubs. Barger and Michael Vincent O'Farrell were sentenced in US District Court, Louisville, Kentucky, for their part in the transport of explosives with intent to kill. Barger and three others were slapped with additional counts for "dealing with a stolen government manual." Barger was freed on parole three years later. The mystery of his early release was dispelled by the Tucson Weekly in 1996--it seems Barger had a political guardian: "You can talk about the biker tradition," a law enforcement source explained, "the Harley, the patch that they've killed for, but in the end, what's most important is money. Hell's Angeles is represented in 18 countries now. They're probably the largest organized crime family that we export from the US. At the center of this global expansion is Oakland-based International President "Sonny" Barger, who's had his hand on the throttle of Hells Angels' money and mayhem machine since the late '50s, despite occasional prison stints. When Barger was released from prison in 1992, an estimated 3,000 people attended his party.... Some influential people might get bought. I can't tell you that Colorado Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell received any money.... I do know that he used his influence to try to get Sonny Barger out of prison." 10
Barger's booze-swaggling, two-wheeling entourage were paid killers. And since the carnage at Altamont, the Hell's Angels have twice attempted to kill the Rolling Stones. In March, 1983, a witness called himself "Butch," his true identity protected by the federal witness program, testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee about plots to kill the Stones. "There's always been a contract on the band," he admitted under questioning. There were "two attempts to kill them that I know about. They will some day. They wear they will do it." The vendetta, Butch said, originated with the killing at the Speedway concert, and was motivated by the failure of the Stones to back the Angel prosecuted for the killing. The first attempt to assassinate the entire band took place in the mid-'70s. "They sent a member with a gun and a silencer" to a hotel where the Stones were staying. The hit-man "staked out the hotel, but [the Stones] never showed up," said the government informant. And in 1979, the Angels' New York chapter "were going to put a bomb in the house and blow everybody up and kill everybody at the party." But this conspiracy sank with a cache of plastic explosives, accidentally dropped overboard from a rubber raft. Killing the Stones, he testified, was an "obsession" with the bike gang." 11
They ceased to be a legitimate federal agency the day they were moved out of the Internal Revenue office, 1 July 1972, and even then only the collection of the taxes on alcohol and tobacco were legitimate. Those functions stayed with Treasury when BATFE was recentely moved to Justice and was renamed. Either taxing or restricting the right of the people to keep and bear arms is an infringement of that right, prohibited by the Second Amendment, and thus illegitimate.
That's not to say that they don't have few other legitimate or at least worthwhile functions, such as providing expertise on arson and explosives. Those functions properly belong in other agencies, such as the FBI.
The BATF(E)'s abuses did not start with Waco. Part of the reason the Firearms' Owners Protection Act was enacted during the Reagan adminsitration was to reign in the BATF, and eliminate or modify some of the laws they were abusing.
I'm inclined to agree with you. They recently raided all the indian smoke shops here in Washington state. What infuriated me is that fact that our asinine governor couldn't get his own state people or tax officials to keep enforce the revenue and taxes missed because of a double standard law. So he called D.C. and got the SS to do his dirty work for him. What makes this infuriating to me is only ONE news source (a TV station in Spokane) in the state reported the story, and they were quickly GAGGED under the guise of "ongoing investigation". The streets are much safer now that tribal nations have been cut off from the smoke suppliers .