been appointed. Columnist Nat Hentoff published a columnrnabout some of the abuses detailed in the letter in the WashingtonrnPost on January 28, 1995, and a few months later I also publishedrna column about some of them, as well as others that hadrncome to my attention, in the Washington Times (March 28,rn1995). Gun rights activist and expert David Kopel of the IndependencernInstitute, who had been one of the original cosignersrnof the letter, discussed some of them in an article in NationalrnReview (March 20, 1995), and from time to time they havernbeen mentioned by one writer or another. But aside fromrnthese, there has been no media attention to these cases as arnwhole or to the dangerous trend that they represent.rnTaken together, the cases of federal law enforcement abusesrndiscussed in the January 1994 letter to the President, coupledrnwith several other cases that have come to light since then, constituternjust such a pattern as the callers to the television showrnwere suggesting—a pattern that amounts to a federal law enforcementrnsystem seriously out of control and operating wellrnbeyond the limits of the law. These cases, of course, are extremernand unusual (at least as far as we know), and we can presumernthat such incidents do not occur in the United States everyrnday. Yet, given the lack of public attention to them and thernapparent absence of any interest on the part of any branch ofrnthe government in correcting them or restraining the agentsrnand agencies responsible for them, there is less and less reasonrnwhy such cases should be unusual. If some correction and restraintrnare not administered, the day will come—perhapsrnsoon—when cases like these are not extreme or unusual butrnroutine.rnOne case that was discussed in the letter to President Clinton,rnas well as in James Bovard’s book Lost Rights, was that ofrnSan Diego businessman Donald Carlson. On August 26,1992,rnCarlson’s home was raided by a DP’A and U.S. Customs Servicernforce on the basis of a warrant that alleged his house was arnvacant drug storehouse. Carlson had arrived at his homernaround 10:30 that evening while his house was under surveillance.rnHe could have easily been arrested at that time, but itrnwas not until after midnight and after Carlson had retired thatrnfederal agents smashed through his front door. Carlson believedrnhis house was under attack by robbers and reached for arnfirearm to defend himself. He was shot three times, once in thernback after he had been disarmed. Although he survived, Carlsonrnsays he will have “lifetime medical expenses” because of hisrninjuries, in addition to the costs of extensive repairs to his housernafter the feds ransacked it. No drugs or illegal weapons werernfound on the premises, and it turned out that the agents had reliedrnon a paid informant called “Ron” who later told the LosrnAngeles Times that he had never actually identified a specificrnhouse as a storing location for illicit drugs.rnThe ATF was apparently not involved in the Carison case,rnbut in a similar raid conducted on September 5, 1991, against arnwoman named Sina Brush in New Mexico, ATF agents as wellrnas some 60 other federal agents from the DEA, the NationalrnGuard, and the U.S. Forest Service participated. This time therncharge was that Brush and two of her neighbors possessed illegalrndrugs. No drugs were found, but Brush and her daughter,rndressed only in underwear at the time of the nocturnal raid,rnwere handcuffed and forced to kneel in the middle of the roomrnduring the search. As in the Carlson case, the agents had usedrnan unreliable informant and had entered without knocking.rnBoth Brush and Carison were considerably luckier than DonaldrnScott. Less than two months after the raid on the Carisonrnhome in San Diego, agents from the DEA and the Los AngelesrnCounty Sheriff’s Department in October 1992 burst intornScott’s ranch home in the Santa Monica Mountains under thernclaim that they were looking for illegal marijuana plants.rnScott’s wife began screaming when she saw the unidentifiedrnmen breaking into their home, and Scott himself, 61 years old,rngrabbed a handgun to defend himself and his family. A deputyrnsheriff shot and killed him. No marijuana plants or other illegalrnsubstances were found.rnIn the Scott case, it appears from a report written by a VenturarnCounty district attorney that the initiative came from thernsheriff’s office rather than the federal government and that thernwhole raid was motiated by a desire to seize Scott’s valuablernreal estate under assets forfeiture laws. A “primary purpose ofrnthe raid,” the report found, “was a land grab by the Sheriff’srnDepartment.”rnTwo other cases involving the ATF that were not mentionedrnin the letter to the President concern the Katonarnfamily of Bucyrus, Ohio, and the Lamplugh family of VVellsboro,rnPennsylvania. In the former case, Louis Katona III was arnpart-time police officer and gun collector who continued tornbuild on the extensive firearms collection begun by his father.rnOn May 8, 1992, the ATF launched a raid on his home to seizernthe gun collection, valued at many thousands of dollars. Thernpremise for the raid was the allegation that Katona had forgedrnthe name of the local police chief on forms required under thernNational Firearms Act for registering certain kinds of firearms.rnIn fact, Katona had left the forms at the police chief’s office forrnhis signature, the chief’s administrative assistant had signedrnthem, and Katona had later picked them up. The ATF’s casernagainst him relied on the fact that the chief himself had notrnsigned the forms and the assumption that Katona had forgedrnthe chief’s name. Katona was later indicted for the alleged forgeries,rnbut the case was dismissed.rnKatona knew of the ATF plan to search his house and cooperatedrnwirir it, but during the four-hour raid the federal agentsrnbecame abusive and started taking photographs of various Sovietrnflags and communist Vietnam war memorabilia displayedrnon Katona’s walls. They showed interest in photographing onlyrnthe communist paraphernalia, not Katona’s own uniforms,rnmedals, and awards, which were displayed on adjacent walls.rnDuring the raid Mrs. Katona, several months pregnant, arrivedrnat the house and tried to enter the vault areas where her husbandrnkept his gun collection. She maintains that an ATF agentrnpushed her violently against a wall and forbade her to enter thernvault rooms. That night she began hemorrhaging and subsequentlyrnmiscarried, she says as a result of her manhandling bvrnthe ATF.rnHarry Lamplugh was also a gun collector and gun dealer, andrnon the morning of May 25,1994, he saw armed men in uniformrnrunning around his house. The armed men turned out to bernATF agents, who were looking for illegal firearms. According tornLamplugh, his wife, and their lawyer, former ATF Assistant DirectorrnRobert Sanders, the agents ransacked his home and office,rnseizing not only business records containing the names ofrnsome 70,000 of his clients and business associates, but alsorncountless personal records, including birth certificates, marriagernand baptismal records, mortgage records, and medicalrnrecords. Lamplugh was suffering from cancer and says thernmedical records were essential to his proper treatment, as werernbottles of medication the ATF agents spilled indiscriminatelyrnFEBRUARY 1997/13rnrnrn