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In its early days, according to some current and retired agents, ATF often overstepped its bounds. The gun laws were full of opportunities for making felony cases against otherwise solid citizens accustomed to America's wide-open gun trade. At the same time, the arrival of serious gun control in the 1968 Gun Control Act radicalized the N.R.A., prompting the association to shift its emphasis from promoting marksmanship to gutting the act and harrying the enforcers. In 1980 the N.R.A. produced a film, It Can't Happen Here, in which Representative John Dingell of Michigan, then a member of the N.R.A.'s board of directors, states, "If I were to select a jackbooted group of fascists who are perhaps as large a danger to American society as I could pick today, I would pick BATF." (The bureau later shortened its logo to ATF.) The N.R.A.'s campaign was so effective that in 1981 President Reagan announced he would make good on a campaign promise to dismantle ATF. But he underestimated the depth of respect accorded the bureau among other law-enforcement agencies and was forced to backpedal. He announced later that he would still demolish ATF but assign its agents to the U.S. Secret Service. ATF agents, who saw the shift as conferring instant prestige, loved the idea; the N.R.A., however, realized it was about to lose one of its best fund-raising assets. Suddenly the N.R.A. rode to ATF's rescue, blocking its demise. The reversal drew an acid appraisal from New Jersey Representative William Hughes, who accused the association of retreating because the Secret Service "might actually take the functions seriously and not be so easy to intimidate."
The bureau survived, but as a shattered agency. An internal Treasury review, completed in October 1981 but little known outside the bureau, produced a portrait of an agency in agony, "grinding to a standstill." Unsure of its mission, it was readily buffeted by shifting political winds. Said the report: "There is widespread distrust of top management. There is little unity within the organization. Morale is very poor. This situation goes far beyond the normal criticisms and complaints which are leveled against management in any organization."
THE RISING TORRENT of anti-ATF rhetoric has nurtured the perception that ATF agents are justifiable targets for heckling, if not outright assassination, an attitude that Ron Noble, Under Secretary of the Treasury for enforcement, likens to the 1960s protest ethos that branded all police officers "pigs." ATF's opponents, he says, don't loathe the bureau itself, just the laws it must enforce. "So what do you do?" he asks. "You attack an agency that not very many people know a lot about." Says a supervisory agent: "If you can't get the laws overturned, you pound on the agents. Because if you pound on them long enough, they'll turn around and say, 'Why bother?'"