Posted March 30, 2017 1:56 pm by Comments

By Christen Smith

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives mismanages its highest-risk confidential informants, according to a federal audit released Tuesday.
The ATF employed more than 1,800 informants between 2012 and 2015 to gather intelligence, however, some carried higher levels of risk than others — due to their senior ranking positions in criminal organizations, for example — and required special permission before working on behalf of the agency.
An audit conducted by the Department of Justice’s office of inspector general shows this procedure — established by the attorney general’s guidelines for handling informants — wasn’t followed.
Guidelines specify the Confidential Informant Review Committee must provide written approval for the use of high risk informants, though the agency told auditors the committee never conducted such business during its meetings.
Review of the agency’s records identified 20 active informants who qualify as “high risk” whose files had not been reviewed by CIRC, according to the audit.
“Although the determinations not to categorize these CIs as high-level were made by ATF’s field divisions, ATF headquarters lacked an efficient mechanism for identifying, tracking, and reviewing these decisions,” the audit reads.
Another category of high risk informants includes those serving longer than six years. Audit findings show field offices sometimes deactivated these

Source: Guns.com

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