David Espinosa, a former senior assistant director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said in an interview Sunday that he was in charge of the weapons section while the bureau was in the midst of building the gun-tracking system on a computer at the FBI’s headquarters. “If things started going wrong… and it was being monitored by somebody that wasn’t our folks, what could I do? I’m not an expert in these things,” Espinosa said.
According to the New York Post, the weapon-tracking program had gone from being an experimental operation involving some of the feds’ most elite gun runners to a system “widely used and maintained by federal agents in every major city in the country.” It was first announced in late 2001 by then ATF director L. Patrick Black, an ally of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft whose Justice Department was in the midst of an investigation into illicit gun shipments.
The announcement was followed by congressional hearings in late September 2001 and on October 24 the FBI, along with police forces around the country, began a full-scale operation to try to track the weapons and trace their destination. They hoped the operation–which lasted six long months that ended November 17–would turn up enough evidence to arrest the fugitives who made them disappear. It didn’t.
During his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Select Committee last month, former ATF director Robert R. O’Neill acknowledged the inadequacy of the program, which was still operating during the 9/11 attacks. He said the program “failed” because it didn’t address such basic factors as which agencies in a given city could be trusted to follow up on stolen guns, and how local police would work with national officials to find them.
FBI Director Robert Mueller testified before congressional committees in 2007 about the failure of the program. His former chief of staff, Chris Swecker, was also called to discuss the failure at a congressional hearing last fall.
Asked whether the department continued using the system to keep its eyes outside the US borders, Mueller said to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee: “You would have to ask the agency and the officers at the FBI and the ATF about that. Certainly, we continue monitoring what’s going on in that regard. We’re not going to take any actions to make our system more secure. That’s a decision that rests with the local communities to make.”
Last week, John Ashcroft,