over the carpets. The Lamplughs also say that one of the ATFrnagents seemed deliberately to step on one of their pet houserncats and then picked it up and slammed the animal into a tree,rnkilling it. Throughout the raid, the Lamplughs say, the ATFrnagents used abusive language, calling Harry Lamplugh arn”motherf—ker” and threatening Mrs. Lamplugh with incarcerationrnin a “cell full of lezzies” unless she informed on her husband.rnThey also reportedly told Lamplugh, “We don’t mindrnyou selling guns to niggers because they just kill each other.”rnThe Lamplughs and their son were later charged by a federalrngrand jury with several counts of federal firearms law violationsrnand a count of perjury. Those charges are still pending.rnMy column on these and similar abuses by federal law enforcementrnagencies was carried in the Southern Partisan magazinernin its first quarter issue of 1995. Some months later I receivedrna copy of a letter to the magazine from one of its readersrnwho had seen my column and written the ATF for an explanation.rnThe ATF had sent him a six-page letter, dated Septemberrn21, 1995, purporting to refute the contents of my column,rnwhich was largely based on the letter to President Clinton ofrnJanuary 1994. The “refutation” consisted mainly of denyingrnthe veracity of the Lamplugh and Katona families—denyingrnthat Mrs. Katona had been pushed against a wall, denying thatrnpets had been abused or killed in the Lamplugh residence, emphasizingrnthe legality of the warrants used in the raids, andrndownplaying the dismissal of charges in the Katona case andrnthe absence of charges in the Brush case. With respect to Katona’srnalleged forging of the forms, the letter recounted the testimonyrnof forensic scientists at the trial that the forms werernsigned by someone other than the police chief and concludesrnmerely that “The Court found that the Government did notrnprove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Katona was the onernwho forged the signatures (as opposed to someone else).” Itrnnever reveals that Katona never claimed that the police chiefrnhimself had signed the forms or that they had been signed byrnthe chief’s assistant (who testified at the trial).rnThe letter, signed by Patrick D. Hynes, Assistant Director forrnLiaison and Public Information at the ATF, also denied thatrnATF agents’ faces were painted or that they were wearing camouflagernuniforms in the raid on the Brush residence (I had neverrnsaid they were). The letter spent two pages on the Katonarncase in response to my one-sentence allusion to it in my column.rnWith one exception, the ATF letter failed to contradictrnmuch of anything of significance that I had said in the columnrnor had been alleged in the letter to President Clinton. It madernno reference at all to the Scott and Carlson cases I had discussedrnin some detail (the ATF was not involved in these tworncases), Mr. Hynes touchingly closed his letter with an affirmationrnof the high calling of the ATF:rnYour concern that the law be adhered to is the same concernrnthat motivates our agents to protect the law-abidingrncitizens of this Nation against those who choose to live byrnanother standard. ATF agents are sworn to respect andrnuphold the law, and it is within this valued frameworkrnthat we operate.rnFor all I know, the ATF may be correct in its account of therndetails of the searches, but some weeks after publishing the columnrnin March and well before I had seen the ATF’s response, Irnwatched a video produced by the National Rifle Associationrnabout the Lamplugh and Katona cases in which both familiesrnoffer their sides of the story (the video narrator says the ATF declinedrnto be interviewed for the video). The account of theserncases here is largely based on the interviews of the two familiesrnin the video, and quite frankly I find them just a bit more persuasivernthan Mr. Hynes. In the video, both Mr. and Mrs. Lamplughrnand Mr. and Mrs. Katona give detailed, graphic, and oftenrnemotional descriptions of the raids, the conduct of thernagents, their abusive language, their aggressive and oftenrnthreatening behavior, their ruinous treatment of the propertyrnand private papers of the “suspects,” their apparently deliberaternkilling of a pet cat, their assumption that the targets of the raidrnwere not only guilty but hardened and dangerous criminals,rnand their lack of respect for the minimal rules of civility andrnproper procedure. Both Harry Lamplugh and Louis Katona recountrnrepeated instances of anonymous harassment by thernATF, including the slashing of tires on their cars, the placing ofrndead animals on their doorsteps, harassing phone calls, andrnharmful and untrue rumors spread about the men among theirrnfriends and business associates. The denials in Hynes’s letterrnseem to be based entirely on reports of internal ATF investigations,rnwhich consisted merely of interviewing the ATF personnelrninvolved and recording their denials of the two families’ allegations.rnIn the light of what is now known about thernsuppression of internal reports at the FBI with regard to thernRandy Weaver case, that is just not enough to be persuasive.rnBureaucrats, in camouflage or not, protect their own.rnThe cases of ATF and other federal law enforcement abusesrndiscussed here are not alone. Similar but less disastrous incidentsrninvolving the ATF can be recounted going back to thern1970’s, and last spring in St. Louis the ATF was at it again.rnAround 9:30 P.M. on April 30 last year, what the St. Louis PostrnDispatch (May 2, 1996) describes as “more than a dozen menrnin black garb” kicked in the door of the home of Paul and PattyrnAlueller. The men threatened to kill the family dog, which hadrnbecome frantic, told Mrs. Mueller to lock the dog in a bathroomrnand to sit down on a couch, and at gunpoint bound PaulrnMueller’s hands with plastic wrap and pushed him prone ontornthe floor. The intruders started yelling “ATF,” but the Muellersrnhad no clear idea what that meant. Only an hour later did thernarmed gang produce a search warrant. In the meantime, as thernPost Dispatch story describes the raid, “The agents wentrnthrough the house, emptying shelves and boxes filled withrnChristmas ornaments and magazines. They tracked mudrnthroughout.” After an hour, they told the Muellers they werernlooking for illegal weapons and showed them the search warrant.rnThen they ransacked the house for another half hour.rnUnable to find any weapons, legal or illegal, they departed asrnswiftly as they had come. “For the first 30 seconds,” PaulrnMueller told the newspaper, “I thought they were burglars andrnI was going to die. If they could do this to us, they could do thisrnto anybody.” “Was this something like Waco?” Patty Muellerrnasked.rnThis time the story made the papers a few days later, and thernATF acknowledged that it had blundered. A police informerrnhad told the ATF that the Mueller home contained a largerncache of machine guns and that illegal weapons were being distributedrnthere. It turned out the informer had made up the story,rnbut the crackerjacks of the ATF fell for it and nearly killed anrninnocent family merely on the informer’s claims. The localrnhead of the ATF office said he would apologize to the Muellers.rnThere was no word about damages, and so far no word fromrnMr. Hynes about the concern for adhering to the law “that mo-rn14/CHRONICLESrnrnrn