There is no way to separate the government from those who operate the controls. When a drunk driver runs over a pedestrian it was not the car that was responsible, it was the operator. When ATF agents overstep their boundaries and become responsible for the deaths of innocent people, they need to be held accountable. When IRS agents allow themselves to serve a political end, as was acknowledged during the Clinton Administration, they need to be held accountable. We have allowed for these things to take place with the idea that some government agency put them up to it, but if we, as an employee of a business, or corporation are encouraged to provide insider information to investment brokers, we are responsible for denying that request or face criminal charges. We are also responsible for revealing the existence of that request to law enforcement.
The double standard exists to protect government workers from lawsuits arising from their duties. It would be easy, without these protections, to delay and deter criminal prosecution and the enforcement of state and municipal codes through legal maneuvers. That protection, however, should not and must not extend to government employees who have violated the law, whether through instruction or expediency.
The instance that brings this to the fore much more than any personal inconvenience I have suffered at the hands of over-zealous IRS agents and other officials, is Project Gunwalker. I urge anyone and everyone who reads this post to investigate more closely this issue. In Project Gunwalker there is specific and credible evidence that the ATF has been responsible for facilitating the movement of assault weapons into Mexico. Ostensibly this was done to track the flow of illegal weapons throughout the United States and determine if there was an infrastructure designed to move these weapons into Mexico, but when the investigation--Project Gunrunner from which Project Gunwalker has sprung--was not returning the sort of evidence it expected Project Gunwalker was put into effect which actually encouraged the flow of assault weapons into Mexico.
None of this would have been known were it not for the fact that two of the weapons being tracked by the ATF through the auspices of Project Gunrunner were found at the scene of Customs Agent Brian Terry's murder in the Arizona Desert. These weapons had been used by persons from south of the border. ATF officials have categorically denied allowing these weapons to migrate into Mexico in the face of incontrovertible facts.
This post is a plea to any and all who are good and decent agents of the ATF to come forward and tell the truth. It is time to take the medicine you would expect a suspect to take. It is time to help the people understand the ways and actions of this agency that is so totally dismissive of the responsible role it should play in law enforcement.
Until the actual employees (THE PEOPLE) of these organizations start to come clean and help to rectify the abuses of government they will remain the largest single reason the general public see a need to destroy these agencies and replace them with something more efficient. For example, the abuses of the IRS tend to make one more interested in a flat tax solution that would eliminate the IRS and replace it with a simple equation to be done at tax time.
Let me be clear (as our illustrious president likes to say) the PEOPLE of the ATF have a responsibility to be Americans first and Agents second. When they do so they will find support from the American people. If they do not, they deserve to be treated as none other than the suspects they daily look down upon.
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