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From: bobworn@aol.com
Subject: SNET: BATF intimidation of "Unintended Consequences" author
Date: 10 Jul 2000 23:14:33 -0400
To: BOBWORN@aol.com

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Subj:   BATF intimidation of "Unintended Consequences" author
Date:   7/10/00 8:24:51 PM CDT
From:   JDavidson@cbjd.net (Jim Davidson)
To:       bobworn@aol.com


JAMES H. JEFFRIES, III
ATTORNEY AT LAW
3019 LAKE FOREST DRIVE
GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA 27408 
TELEPHONE: (336) 282-6024

30 June, 2000


Honorable Bradley A. Buckles, Director 
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms 
United States Department of the Treasury 
650 Massachusetts Avenue, Northwest 
Washington, D.C. 20226


Re: Mr. John Ross
St. Louis, Missouri

Dear Mr. Buckles:

I represent Mr. John Ross of St. Louis, Missouri. Mr. Ross is an investment 
broker and financial adviser with a respected investment firm in St. Louis. 
He has degrees in English and Economics from Amherst College. Mr. Ross is 
very active in community and public affairs. He is the grandson of President 
Harry Truman's press secretary, Charles Ross, and was himself the Democratic 
Party candidate for the United States House of Representatives from the 
Second District of Missouri in 1998. In short, Mr. Ross is an upstanding and 
productive member of his community.

Mr. Ross has had a lifelong interest in firearms and is both a Federal 
Firearms Licensee and a Special Occupational Taxpayer under the National 
Firearms Act. Of central importance to the purpose of this letter is the fact 
that Mr. Ross is also the author of Unintended Consequences, a highly popular 
novel about the trials and tribulations of legal gun owners and dealers in 
the United States. Although the book is manifestly a work of fiction, it 
accurately depicts documented historical events in the long and sordid 
history of misconduct by personnel of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and 
Firearms. The book is in its fifth hardcover printing with some 50,000 copies 
in circulation and has become enormously popular among the gun owners of the 
United States. Because the book is highly critical of the Bureau of Alcohol, 
Tobacco and Firearms, it appears that some in your agency have undertaken to 
suppress it and to intimidate its author.

Honorable Bradley A. Buckles - page two

For example, in 1997 the book's publisher became aware that individuals 
purporting to be BATF agents had threatened vendors of the book in at least 
three different states with "problems" if they did not cease their sales of 
the book. A full-page ad in Shotgun News offering a $10,000 reward for the 
identity of these individuals put a stop to that particular business. 

Now we have learned that in late May of this year agents from your St. Louis 
field office have engaged in an official effort to enlist Mrs. Ross, who is 
amicably separated from her husband as an informant against her husband. On 
or about May 24 2000, at about 7:30 a.m. two agents approached Mrs. Ross on 
the street while she was walking her dog, identified themselves by displaying 
their BATF credentials, and proceeded to inquire what she thought about her 
husband's book. When she was noncommittal the agents terminated the 
conversation and departed. This contact had been preceded in previous weeks 
by pretext telephone calls to Mrs. Ross, by what were undoubtedly your 
agents, in an attempt to draw her out about her husband's book. An agent, 
using the pseudonym of Peter Nettleson, and pretending to be a great fan of 
Unintended Consequences, sought Mrs. Ross's agreement that the book was, in 
fact, "a manual for the murder of federal agents." [1]

I note in passing that best-selling author Tom Clancy in recent books has 
murdered a Director of the FBI, the President of the United States, the 
entire Congress, the Supreme Court, the entire cabinet, the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff and a few lesser functionaries. I presume he has not thereby become 
subject to investigation by your literary critics.

1. As an experienced federal prosecutor I am fully aware of what is going on 
here. Disgruntled former spouses are a prime source of intelligence for law 
enforcement, having as they frequently do both a strong bias against the 
subject of the investigation and the proximity and intimacy to know many 
things not available to others. A structured approach such as this required, 
according to your manuals, formal agency approval. It required the investment 
of time and effort in setting up the approach: determining Mrs. Ross's new 
address, learning her new telephone number, physical surveillance to 
determine her routine so that she could be approached in a way that she could 
not simply shut the door and where there would be less risk of confirming 
witnesses, the use of a female agent to lessen any apprehension at being 
approached publicly by strangers, etc.

Honorable Bradley A. Buckles - page three

What kind of people are you? Is there no honor within the ranks of your 
agency? It has long been clear, from repeated court decisions and 
congressional committee reports, that your agents have no familiarity with 
the Second, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth
Amendments to the United States Constitution. Now it appears that they have 
not even been introduced to the very first Article of the Bill of Rights.

I am writing to express our outrage about this conduct and to formally demand 
that your agency cease and desist from this
unconstitutional abuse of power. I am contemporaneously making formal Freedom 
of Information Act and Privacy Act demands upon BATF for the records and 
files pertaining to Mr. Ross, his book, and these events.

By copies of this letter I am requesting the Inspector General of the 
Treasury Department to formally investigate this unlawful
conduct and the Attorney General to investigate to determine whether Mr. 
Ross's civil rights are being violated by the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.


Sincerely yours, 

[signed]
James H. Jeffries, III


cc: Attorney General of the United States
Inspector General, Department of the Treasury 


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--

Mr. Jeffries is a retired U.S. Dept. of Justice lawyer, retired colonel in 
the Marine Corps Reserve, and currently practices firearms law in Greensboro, 
NC. He is a graduate of the University of Kentucky College of Law, former 
Note Editor for its Journal, and a Life Member of the North Carolina Rifle 
And Pistol Association.


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