Federal law enforcement officials have ignored more than 100 recommendations from the Department of Justice Inspector General, including several related to the ‘Fast & Furious’ gun-walking scandal and FBI telephone surveillance practices.
A DOJ Office of Inspector General (IG) report released Tuesday said Justice Department officials have yet to review the watchdog’s recommendations concerning Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and other law enforcement agencies to prevent another gun-walking scandal. Those recommendations are among 109 that remain undone despite being made at least three years ago.
Also undone are the IG’s recommendations that the FBI do a better job of training and guiding agents on the limits of their authority under federal law to access phone billing and call records.
The Fast and Furious scandal involved ATF’s Arizona field office, which let licensed firearms dealers sell weapons to buyers with known links to Mexican drug cartel leaders in the hope of being able to connect them to specific crimes.
U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in a December 2010 firefight with suspected drug smugglers using a gun traced to the ATF program. The IG issued a 471-page report on the incident and federal law enforcement’s failures in September 2012.
Justice Department officials had not completed work on the IG’s 109 open recommendations as of March 31.
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