Letter
from John Ross' Attorney to Director of BATF
We spoke to Mr. Jeffries to
ascertain the validity of this letter. It is real, and he told
KeepAndBearArms.com that their preference for this letter is wide
distribution. ~~ KABA
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.