Middle and senior management, not grunts. The "grunts" ratted out the bosses. Even Wikipedia has that much info. None of this is new really. The ATF has had a built-in cultural dysfunction in middle management ranks for decades. Intense arrogance and zero accountability lead to bad decisions. Such attitudes created the Ruby Ridge and Waco incidents. Countless lesser disasters that rarely make the news too. Every time, the ATF can count on the American left/right political battles to take focus off the agency. People may get shifted around, but no real punishment is given. We shall have to wait and see if anything meaningful comes out of this.

Who told you that? Of course it existed. Everyone on every side said so. What did not exist was realism from our conservative "leadership". Those idiots try to make political hay out of the latest ATF debacle. Well the ATF has been creating bloody debacles for decades. Every time they do they can count upon America's two political parties to grab hold of the crisis for their own use. The spotlight always leaves the guilty. The arrogant and the incompetent within the ATF always get away with their latest incomprehensible invention of a new way to get the wrong people killed.

This is what I've been writing to assorted policians about since the story first broke. ATF middle and senior management has long been the real problem. No other Federal agency comes close to the ATF's history of bloody disasters. The record of this cultural failure goes back at least 40 years, to the Ken Ballew shooting. But rarely is anyone truly punished. People may be reassigned, receive "demotions" or what have you. But in the end they are still working, earning a paycheck and do not go to jail. One way to punish them is to revoke security clearances permanently. This is a major impediment to working on many Federal agencies or contracts at a high level. It is not enough, but it is a start at punishing the ATF.