Monster Media 1994 #1/monster.zip/monster/TEXT/BATFWACO.ZIP/BATFWACO.TXT

Text File | 1994-01-10 | 11KB | 248 lines

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Source: The SPOTLIGHT, January 17, 1994 edition
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The way the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) has
been involued in setting up law-abiding citizens in trumped-up
firearms charges was discussed by a former BATF informant on the
October 27 broadcast of The SPOTLIGHT's nightly call-in talk
forum, Radio Free America, with host Tom Valentine.

Valentine's guest was Don Stewart who is currently under fire
from the BATF for his efforts on behalf of one of the BATF's
victims in the Waco, Texas holocaust.  An edited transcript of
the interview follows.  Valentine's questions appear in boldface
[in square brackets, here].  Stewart's responses are in regular
text.
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     Ex-BATF Operative Talks About Bureau, Raid at Waco

  [You have been accused by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
  Firearms of "harboring a fugitive," namely Paul Fatta, the No.
  2 man in the Branch Davidian group in Waco.  However, Fatta was
  not, in fact, a fugitive.  So the BATF's charges are phony,
  then?]

That's right. But you would be surprised to see how many people
have been brought up on phony charges by the BATF.

  [That's why we're having you back as a guest.  You know some-
  thing about the BATF since you not only worked in the past as an
  informant/operative for the BATF but also the FBI.]

Yes, I was involved in undercover operations.  It's nothing very
exciting.  You work undercover, finding people dealing in drugs
in large quantities or in terrorist weapons etc.  You end up
giving them a free vacation.

  [How did you get into this business?]

It was a long time ago, by accident, in the Midwest.  How I got
into it was that some people were doing a lot of harm to some
people I knew and the local law enforcement officials didn't
seem as though they wanted to do anything about it.

So as a juvenile I infiltrated the group and secured the
necessary information on what they were doing.  I then tried to
make contact with someone who might be able to put them out of
business.  I was directed to the BATF.

  [After your first dealings with the BATF, then, they came back
  to you for further work?]

Actually, I took a year's hiatus and went to another part of the
country.  At that point our paths crossed again, and they were
very eager to have me work for them.  The BATF was very enticing,
and I finally did go to work for them.  It was around the same
time I began doing undercover work for the FBI.

  [You thought at the time these guys were doing good?]

Well, you must realize the BATF did not come into existence
until December 16, 1968.  At the beginning their job was to
monitor the sale and transfer of large quantities of automatic
weapons.

The Warren Commission had recommended that the Treasury
Department have a separate unit monitoring firearms manufacture
and tracing.  In basic theory it wasn't that bad of an idea.
However, like many things, it went from what the people were
told it would be, into a nightmare, in a very quick period of
time.

  [When they hire a person like you as a covert operator, how do
  you get paid?]

Cash.

  [When did you finally decide things weren't right with these
  agencies?]

In 1976 I quit working for them on both moral and ethical
grounds.  It was very difficult breaking with them as I was a
good producer, and they spent a year and a half harassing my
family and doing every kind of stunt in the book to get me to go
back to work for them.

  [This would be hard to believe except that now we have con-
  crete evidence of how they tried to get Randy Weaver to do,
  under pressure, the kind of things you were doing voluntarily
  before you decided to quit.]

I was never an agent of the BATF or FBI. I was a contract
operative only.  When I was working for them, I never sensed
anything evil or violent about them.

However, as I worked with them I noticed they were never really
any longer interested in pursuing criminals but were more
interested in technical violations--paper charges.

As one agent put it: "It's safer to 'do' an honest citizen who
puts down '.23 caliber' instead of'.22 caliber.'  It's the same
statistic--the same crime record--but the honest citizen doesn't
shoot back."

You see, when the BATF picks up an individual, they don't have
to bring a conviction.  What the courts or the U.S. attorney,
for example, do with the individual doesn't affect the BATF's
statistics.  All BATF has to do is open an investigation, do an
arrest or do a seizure.

  [So the BATF pushes to work up these statistics?]

The agents have to do it at least once a month to justify their
job.

  [We have a lot of that in our government.]

The BATF agent's worst nightmare is that there might not be
enough crime in an area.  Then what happens is that BATF agents
are transferred out of the "nice" areas to places like Detroit,
East Los Angeles, South Miami--areas where the agents are needed
and where they might get harmed.

  [Essentially, then, agents in the "nice" areas will trump up
  charges in order to justify their continued stay in that
  region?]

Yes. It's called "creative crime."

  [The Randy Weaver affair and the Waco business must have re-
  ally appalled you.]

Yes, for several reasons. It was very reminiscent of what they
did to my family back in 1976 after I stopped working for them.
It appears as though sawed-off shotgun capers are one of their
favorite ways to entrap someone.

  [So you went through one of these same BATF entrapment at-
  tempts.]

Yes, and it was very well documented by a criminal investigative
reporter, Wayne Wilson, for the Sacramento Bee in a major
front-page story.

After making sure I was unable to work, by finding out where I
was working, through Social Security, and getting me fired, they
also managed to make it difficult for me to live anywhere.  My
landlords didn't want my kind of money.

So, I went to work by going to gun shows, buying up used and
broken guns and repairing them and selling them.  So they sent
someone in to purchase a shotgun.  However, he wanted the
barrels particularly short.

The reporter, Wayne Wilson, measured the barrel and then hid
inside the closet.  He had put his initials inside the barrel.
The BATF informant took the shotgun and the BATF came back three
days later and said I had made a mistake on the barrel and it
was under legal length.  They told me I could "work it off."

I told them they had better go back and check the portion of the
barrel that was cut off and that they would find the reporter's
initials and the date inside.

  [So you set up the BATF.  Did anything further happen?]

Believe it or not, after that an employee of the state of
California contacted me at the gun show.  His name was Howard
Godfrey.  He told me I was wasting my talents and that I should
go to work for the California State Department of Justice.  He
arranged for me to be hired, and I worked for them for three
months.

I discovered, however, that the BATF had bribed an employee in
the California office and that the guy who had hired me was a
BATF agent posing as the director of the California state
Criminal Investigation Division.  I confronted them with this,
and he said: "Now you can work for us for free.  If you don't,
we'll put you in jail on a charge, and who knows what might
happen to your wife and kids?"

That's when the Sacramento Bee took my story and published it.
The publicity resulted in my being "burned"--that is, the BATF
had no more use for me as an informant since I was publicly
identified as such.

  [What happened at Waco?  Why do you think it happened?]

Waco was a unique situation for the BATF to justify more gun
laws and a bigger budget.  They were going into congressional
budgetary hearings that very week.  Also the search warrant was
getting old, and they had spent eight months practicing the
raid.  So they went.  They thought it was going to be easy.

In fact, one of the agents, interviewed as they retreated, said:
"We were outgunned.  We assumed we were going against unarmed
women and children."

  [Were the BATF agents truly outgunned?]

That's a total fabrication.  The BATF opened fire first.  One of
the supervisors shot one of his own people as he came out of the
horse trailer on the Branch Davidian grounds.  Somebody shouted:
"Shot fired.  Man down."

It's my understanding that when David Koresh saw the BATF raid
beginning, he stepped out with a small child and an elderly man,
and he said: "Stop, stop.  There are women and children in here.
Let's talk."

At that point one of the BATF supervisors shot his own agent by
accident.

The people that had the weapons trained on Koresh opened fire
and hit him three times.  The old man and the child were killed.
Then random firing began, through the walls and windows.

The BATF gunmen were using a particularly cruel type of bullet.
The bullet had a copper jacket, was hollow all the way through,
with a heat-treated steel sleeve.  When a bullet hits a person,
it cuts through the person.  The bullet blows open a hole in the
skin.  If the bullet hits in a critical portion of the body, the
person will quickly bleed to death.

  [To think the BATF was using this kind of weaponry on American
citizens.  It sounds to me as though the BATF wanted a "show"--
that they expected to go in and bring out a lot of illegal
weapons, but an accident set off the shooting.]

From people I've talked to in the BATF, it looks that way.  They
wanted to bring out the people and the weapons in front of the
television cameras.  This would have been a civil seizure that
would have been tied up in the courts for years.

In the meantime, however, they would have gotten the publicity
and justification for bigger budgets and a pat on the back.

  [A BATF agent has been quoted as saying they made one big mis-
  take--going in there to begin with.]

That's right.  The search warrant was defective to begin with.
If the judge would have read it, it was mostly an indictment for
child abuse etc.  They window-dressed the search warrant to
inflame the passions of the judge so he would not look at the
framing of the warrant.