Very Special Agents

by Moore, James

• ISBN13: 9780252070259
• ISBN10: 0252070259
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

"From Chicago's Al Capone to Waco's David Koresh, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms has taken on America's most ruthless criminals and single-minded fanatics. InVery Special Agents, a longtime ATF veteran delivers the first full disclosure of the bureau's controversial exploits.When James Moore joined the ATF at Newark, New Jersey, in 1960, it was an arm of the Internal Revenue Service with one job: to catch the Mafia bootleggers whose Prohibition-style distilleries each cheated Uncle Sam of $20,000 a day in tax revenue. During his twenty-five years of service, Moore saw the ATF shift into the enforcement of gun laws, be reborn as a separate bureau, and take on the bombings and arson cases that most officers of the law wrote off as impossible to solve.From heartstopping undercover sting operations to explosive face-to-face confrontations with mobsters, murderers, bombers, gang members, and terrorists, Very Special Agents takes the reader to the heart of the action. Moore's personal, from-the-hip history of the ATF spans the long-running war against Mafia dons and drug dealers and agents' daring infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan, Hell's Angels, and other groups that advocate violence and bloodshed. He covers the cutting edge forensics work that helped crack the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings, and he provides an insider account of the raid on the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas. Moore also discusses the ATF's rivalry with the FBI and the bureaucratic hairsplitting and political power games that, in his view, impede the government's ability to short-circuit crime."

Author Biography

James Moore: retired ATF agent

Table of Contents

Introduction	xiii
It Was in the Bleak December	1	(15)
Three Detectives	16	(15)
Gentlemen Don't Boast	31	(20)
End of a Hundred-Year War	51	(14)
New Battlefields	65	(14)
New Ammunition for the Government Gun	79	(14)
Attacking Terrorism	93	(15)
Underworld Armorers	108	(14)
``Unsolvable Crimes''	122	(12)
Ladies and Gentlemen in White Coats	134	(8)
The Birth of a Bureau	142	(12)
Strike Force	154	(23)
Significant Criminals	177	(16)
Fire	193	(15)
The Circus	208	(10)
The Spring of '81	218	(16)
A Wonderful Plan to Kill ATF	234	(10)
The Un-Terrorists	244	(34)
Deja Vu	278	(7)
Waco	285	(23)
Fallout	308	(15)
Afterword	323	(2)
Appendices
A Endnotes	325	(26)
B ATF Mission Statement	351	(1)
C Job Description, ATF Special Agent	352	(4)
D Sample Page: ATF Explosive Incident Report	356	(3)
E Special Material re FBI	359	(7)
F Facts/ History re Proposed Merger of Treasury Investigative Bureaus	366	(6)
G History of ATF Name Changes	372	(2)
H Federal Firearms Licensed Dealers	374	(2)
I Miscellaneous Studies and Statistics	376	(4)
J Value of the Gun Control Act of 1968	380