FBI, ATF Battle for Control Of Cases

As agents battled in Texas, clashes escalated in Washington. The FBI was resisting Ashcroft's directive to consolidate the bomb databases and most explosives training under the ATF. Ashcroft, who left the Justice Department in 2005, declined to comment. Deputy Attorney General Mark R. Filip would not address the Ashcroft memo but said in a statement that the FBI and ATF "have worked together to build a unified law enforcement response to threats presented by criminals and would-be terrorists. . . . We at the Department expect that."

The FBI responded to Ashcroft's order by saying, "Are you kidding?" a former high-level Justice Department official said. "They couldn't digest it, couldn't accept the notion that their terrorism responsibilities would still be fulfilled and yet they wouldn't have responsibility or control over these certain things. . . . These are very hot and deep-seated conflicts."

FBI officials have not transferred to the ATF the bomb data center they have operated since 1972, saying it analyzes key terrorism intelligence. "Such a shift . . . would seriously impede the FBI's counterterrorism efforts," the bureau argued in a position paper circulated at the Justice Department's highest levels in early 2007.

The paper criticized the ATF for "marketing efforts" promoting the ATF's role in fighting international terrorism.

The Justice Department's inspector general has called the databases duplicative -- the ATF's dates to 1975 -- but local police often feel compelled to check both when investigating bombings. "It's killing time, manpower and resources," said one large-city bomb squad commander. "It's dysfunctional."

The agencies still run separate training academies and classes that are widely considered duplicative, even though two congressional committees also urged in 2004 that training be consolidated under the ATF.

"The FBI is doing the exact same classes that we are," one ATF agent said. "It's chest pounding -- we're better than they are, and they're better than we are."

Officials said they are trying to iron out the bomb data center issue and offer more training together.

Then there was the dogfight. When the Ashcroft memo came out in 2004, the ATF had been training bomb-sniffing dogs for more than a decade. The FBI didn't have a program.

In 2005, the FBI began training dogs to sniff out peroxide-based explosives. An FBI "white paper" sent to the deputy attorney general's office in early 2007 described how the program is superior to the ATF's peroxide training.

ATF officials, some of whom learned of the FBI initiative from the media, were so upset that they issued an order banning ATF-trained dogs from participating in the FBI program, according to the FBI document and law enforcement sources.

In a joint interview recently at FBI headquarters, top ATF and FBI officials vowed to work together, even if some in their ranks are determined to resist.

"We are two very proud agencies that have done tremendous work to protect the American public, and we do that with vim and vigor every day," said William J. Hoover, the ATF's assistant director for field operations. "Anytime you have individuals who are that passionate about their job, if they feel they are somehow being encroached upon, rightly or wrongly, they are going to bring issues like this to the forefront."

"But we work cases together every day," Hoover added. "I really believe there's a lot more good going on."

J. Stephen Tidwell, an FBI executive assistant director, said conflicts can occur "when that pride in agency comes through, and all that is sometimes going to cause some friction. . . . But I would characterize the relationship right now as as good as it's ever been."

Joseph Persichini Jr., head of the FBI's Washington field office, said he works smoothly with his ATF counterparts. "There's no room for error," he said.

Even as the current leaders try to work in tandem, they are finding it hard to overcome their history.

A fierce dispute among the FBI, the ATF and the Department of Homeland Security has helped delay for nearly a year the national strategy to protect the United States from improvised explosive devices, or IEDs -- a top Bush administration priority. The president directed that the plan be ready by last July. It is unclear when it will be finished.

Sources said the ongoing negotiations over the ATF's role in the plan have become the latest framework for the broader FBI-ATF battle over control of explosives cases, along with conflicts within the ATF over how hard to fight the FBI.

"We are working through each and every [IED] issue that has been bogged down," Hoover said.

Tensions spilled out publicly when the Center for Strategic and International Studies held an IED conference in Washington in October. David Heyman, director of the center's homeland security program, said FBI and ATF agents clashed over who would be on the panel and exchanged sharp words during the conference.

"It was such bad blood that if either agency was going to be there, the other wasn't going to be," said Heyman, who threatened to cancel the conference.

There are still issues at even routine crime scenes. When a Liberty University student was arrested near Lynchburg, Va., last May with a homemade explosive device in his car the day before the Rev. Jerry Falwell's funeral, the ATF interviewed witnesses for two days before the FBI tried to take over, citing domestic terrorism, sources said. Supervisors worked it out, and the ATF kept the case.

Terry Gaddy, the local sheriff, said he was aware of the tension but tried to stay out of it. "It's not my fight; it's theirs," he said.

The lack of information-sharing can have potentially deadly consequences. In Chicago, an undercover ATF agent bought a loaded gun from an FBI informant and was arrested, according to a 2007 Justice Department inspector general's report.

The report quoted an FBI supervisor as saying he was "truly concerned" that FBI and ATF violent crime task forces are "seriously going to be duplicating" gang investigations. It said a top Justice official asked the two agencies to coordinate task forces, but they disagreed over who would lead them.

And a newer battle is emerging: tobacco smuggling. It is integral to the ATF's mission, but the FBI is interested because terrorists have used tobacco profits. Several times in recent months, sources said, the FBI put counterfeit cigarettes on the market and found an unknowing buyer: the ATF.

Some question whether the ATF can survive. "It just doesn't make sense to have two agencies . . . responding anytime a bomb goes off," one Justice Department official said.

Grassley said Congress might have to step in.

"Anybody who wants to be attorney general in fact as well as in name ought to end this yesterday," he said.

Staff writer Sari Horwitz contributed to this report.