FBI, ATF Battle for Control Of Cases

The new law turned the rivals into Justice Department siblings but might have deepened their estrangement.

It is unclear who conceived the transfer, but then-ATF Director Bradley A. Buckles recalled that the Justice Department "seemed like a natural home for us" because the ATF had become primarily a law enforcement agency.

Grassley saw a way to heighten collaboration against terrorism. "I was well aware of the conflict between ATF and FBI, but I thought it would all be put to the side once they got under the same department," he said.

The Bush administration's first proposal left the ATF in the Treasury Department. What ensued was "a mad scramble," Buckles said. "We were just a loose piece that they hadn't figured out what to do with."

With little fanfare, the final bill transferred the ATF's law enforcement functions to Justice while leaving tax-collecting employees at Treasury. But the agents who became part of the Justice Department on Jan. 24, 2003, didn't really move at all. Their supervisors stayed the same, as did their work.

A few things did change. Congress added the word "explosives" to the name of the ATF, which had been the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

And the law spelled out that in addition to violent crime, the ATF could investigate acts of "domestic terrorism."

Less than two months later, in March 2003, a North Carolina farmer drove his tractor into a pond on the Mall, keeping police at bay for 47 hours as he threatened to set off bombs. The FBI and ATF both asserted jurisdiction, even though the U.S. Park Police was the lead agency, sources said.

It was becoming clear that the lack of planning would have consequences. Who would control explosives cases? How involved would the ATF be in fighting terrorism? When is a bombing considered terrorism?

Within days of the tractor episode, the ATF fired a shot in a long series of battles at Justice Department headquarters, documents show. Emboldened by its new name, the ATF sought to become the department's primary responder to all of the nation's estimated 3,500 annual explosives incidents and to coordinate the on-scene investigation even for domestic terrorism.

The FBI, which had always taken the lead on terrorism, fought back. Other disputes flared: Who would train bomb-sniffing dogs and bomb squads, and what would be done about competing ATF-FBI "bomb data centers" -- vast databases used in explosives investigations?

An August 2004 memo from then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft decreed that the bomb data centers and most explosives training would be consolidated under the ATF and that the agency would train all Justice Department bomb-sniffing dogs.