ATF vs. FBI

The Rivalry Inside the DOJ

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) have been rivals even before ATF entered the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2003. The FBI mindset has always been they are the tip of the spear and should be running all major investigations while perceiving ATF and other agencies as smaller and not at their caliber. The FBI has over 35,000 employees according to their website while ATF has slightly over 5,000 employees. ATF is a very specialized federal agency mainly dealing with federal firearms violations, explosives, and to a lesser degree with alcohol trafficking and tobacco diversion while the FBI deals with an array of violations from counter-terrorism, espionage, white collar investigations, public corruption and other federal violations. In 2022, I wrote and published a short read on Amazon titled, “ATF vs. FBI: The Rivalry Inside the DOJ.” I included an excerpt from my book.

ATF and the FBI have butted heads for years over lead status on cases and jurisdiction. The Unabomber, First World Trade Center attack, Waco, Olympic bombing in Atlanta, Oklahoma bombing, and D.C. Snipers just to name a few.

Theodore John Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber was a former mathematics professor that resigned from UC Berkley and moved to Lincoln, Montana in 1971 to live self-sufficiently with nature. Between the late seventies and mid-nineties, Kaczynski mailed or hand-delivered sixteen sophisticated bombs that killed three people and injured twenty-three others. After the…