As I See It...

by Jim Jorgensen
NAFA Dep. Exec. Dir.

experience will tell

Referring to the ATF bureaucrats who authorized the ill-conceived Fast & Furious Project that allowed hundreds of firearms into the hands of Mexican criminals, my brother-in-law recently asked…”WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?” My response was to enlighten him as to how most ATF bureaucrats become….bureaucrats.

Some say you don’t have to be a good field agent to be a good supervisor. Those spouting this nonsense are usually bosses who never made a case, or boss wannabees who never made a case (These are the folks who’ve spent most of their careers, including whatever short amount of field time they had….concentrating on wardrobe, working out at the gym and staying out of trouble.). Oh sure….oh sure….there are exceptions: In my 25 years on the job, I may have known of two or three who were good bosses despite having never investigated their way out of a wet paper bag. But these were the exceptions!

The question remains: Why is experience crucial? One need only look at ATF’s recent fiasco…the so-called Fast & Furious Project for the answer. Any street agent worth his salt could’ve told you….”You don’t let the guns walk!” Inexperienced supervisors, however, were apparently oblivious to the cataclysmic…the fatal results failure to heed that unwritten rule might cause. Perhaps the

best…the worst example of lack of experience wrecking fatal havoc is the 1993 ATF debacle near Waco, Texas. There…an inexperienced, desk-bound Washington, D.C. boss over-ruled agents on the ground who knew the lost “element of surprise” could get them killed.

Let’s put the lack of experience in another context: Would you want to have a surgeon with no experience cutting on you? What if this guy somehow became Chief of Surgery at a major hospital? Would he have the requisite experience to direct dozens of surgeons in his department? Would he have the experience base needed to make decisions effecting patients, doctors and the hospital? The answer is an obvious and resounding….”Hell…NO!” Yet…in the government…in Federal law enforcement somehow it’s apparently OK to have inexperienced special agents climb the ranks to upper management positions.

I guess the only virtue in this wacky system is that these inexperienced bureaucrats generally stay out of trouble…that is….until their poor decisions get someone killed!