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ATF's black agents say they in particular have experienced such behavior. Although the "Good O' Boys Roundup" made news last week, ATF's leadership has long known of the annual affair and its racist trappings. The black agents' class action cited the event as just one of dozens of racist incidents. Dondi Albritton, who heads the bureau's Explosives Technology branch in Washington and is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said he once saw an invitation to the roundup that was printed on ATF letterhead and mailed in an ATF envelope. At this year's outing, racist slogans and T shirts were reportedly on display, including one with Martin Luther King Jr.'s face behind a target. Last week Magaw called for a Treasury probe of the event, and Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch scheduled a hearing for July 21. Said he: "I'm very upset about it. We're not going to sit around and let this type of stuff happen."
ATF's black agents describe a lonely, isolated life in a culture still dominated by attitudes carried forward from ATF's moonshine-hunting days. "With ATF it's always been the good ole boy system, white males from the Southeast," Albritton says. The generation of ATF officials who hired today's senior managers were typically men hired for their knowledge of Southern mores and their skill at outwitting deep-country bootleggers. Once these woodcraft experts reached positions of authority, says Larry Stewart, assistant special agent in charge of ATF's Atlanta office, "they hired people who looked like them, who talked like them, who had the same habits." As soon as Stewart began reporting acts of discrimination, he charges, he was repeatedly passed over for promotions and subjected to petty acts of reprisal.
One episode, which he describes as retaliation for his participation in the lawsuit, aggrieved him deeply. Stewart had led a group of ATF agents who took part in a complex 1990 investigation of mail bombings that killed an attorney and a federal judge. The arrest of the bomber prompted President Bush to invite all the participants to the Rose Garden for presidential commendations. Stewart wasn't invited. ATF also gave out awards to Stewart's agents, to his boss Thomas Stokes, even to the boss's secretary. But again, not to Stewart.
"When I found out ..."
He stops, turns away. "I'm sorry."
He tries again. "When I found out that Tom Stokes' secretary had been given an award ... when I found out that all my agents, that ATF internally was going to give them awards, when I heard that managers above me were given awards and I was not even mentioned--I don't think I have the words to describe how I felt, how hurt, how devastated I felt."
It is a mark of ATF's curious culture, however, that even the most critical agents often proclaim a deep respect for the agency and its mission. "I love this agency," Stewart says. "I love this agency so much I would work for it 24 hours a day if they'd let me." Vanessa McLemore, another class-action plaintiff, says she wanted to become an ATF agent since high school. "Deep down I'm happy. I would not go to another agency. I love what I'm supposed to do. What I don't like is not being given an equal opportunity to do it."