ATF terminates whistleblower Cefalu

Calling it “a Hindenburg of a losing case,” and predicting “ATF just substantially amplified the damages award that Cefalu will…recover at trial,” he goes on to state “It's well-known that ATF management and their viciously corrupt counsel are, for the most part, brutally self-serving and mean-spirited. But this Cefalu termination is nevertheless surprising in its utter incomprehensibility under the circumstances. [More]

Today's early morning Gun Rights Examiner report shows continued in-your-face retaliation.

Cefalu on Fox Tonight

From CleanUpATF:

Who: ATF Special Agent Vince Cefalu
What: Appearing on Fox's National Cable Television Program America's Nightly Scoreboard
When: TODAY! 6:05 eastern / 3:05 pacific
Where: Nationwide on your television.
Why: Because ATF retaliated against Cefalu for blowing the whistle in the face of  Congressional warnings and DOJ representatives stating that this never happens
How: Because ATF management does not care what anyone says, tells them to do or the law states

Background information: Breaking: ATF heeds Issa's 'no retaliation' warning by...retaliating

ATF Agent: 'Only way to track guns would be with crime scenes and dead bodies'

"We’re joined by Vincent Cefalu, an ATF Special Agent who helped blow the whistle on Operation Fast and Furious and has since faced retaliation. 'We allowed these guns to continue on in the hopes of establishing some sort of chain, or iron pipeline, which was so far from the truth,' Cefalu says. 'The only way to [track] the guns would be with crime scenes and dead bodies.'" [More]

Today's second Gun Rights Examiner report features an inconvenient truth.

Cefalu on Huckabee

I've just received notice that ATF whistleblower Vince Cefalu will be on Huckabee tonight. The Fox News program begins at 8 p.m. Eastern.

If you're not familiar with Vince's story, you've got some catching up to do.

ATF whistleblower Cefalu calls on Romney to address Fast and Furious gunwalking

“As one of the ATF whistleblowers involved in the Fast and Furious case, we EXPECT President Romney to follow through, support oversight and most importantly consequences and accountability for those responsible for the death of two of our brothers Agents Terry and Zapata AND the 300 innocent Mexican citizens,” Cefalu wrote to the campaign. [More]

Today's Gun Rights Examiner exclusive report welcomes an important voice to the exasperating quest to get Romney to back up his fine words with a commitment.

Upcoming Appearances

Fox News' "Freedom Watch" with Judge Napolitano (Dobyns and Cefalu)
Wednesday, July 27th at 8:00pm Pacific/11:00pm Eastern. [More]

My interview with Dobyns is here. I have Cefalu tentatively coming on the show next week.

ATF whistleblower Cefalu wins stay on termination

“[T]he agency’s removal of Mr. Cefalu on these grounds constituted a violation of his First Amendment right to free speech and, thus, the merit system principle,” the OSC alleged. [More]

This morning's Gun Rights Examiner report notes someone who's just begun to fight.

ATF whistleblower Cefalu parking lot termination secretly recorded

Riehl, seen talking to Cefalu through his Jeep window and reportedly telling him he couldn’t leave because he had to sign papers, had been criticized on the CUATF forum, and Gun Rights Examiner is attempting to track down audit reports to determine what an independent assessment reveals about the allegations there. But the bottom line is, an employee with over 25 years of service who has been a leading spokesman for whistleblowers was unceremoniously canned in a public parking lot by senior division management. [More] 

This evening's Gun Rights Examiner report presents an exclusive video featuring Denny's Un-American Parking Lot Slam.

Removing Evidence

AmmoLand Editors Update 8:48pm ESt 6/7/2016 The Lip TV files a Copyright Takedown Notice with Youtube to prevent AmmoLand News from showing a small clip of their video of Ms. Soechtig breaking the law. [More]

I guess these people have never heard of the Streisand Effect.

You can't stop the signal. This is going to follow Couric, Soechtig, The Lip and Epix around as an irrefutable indictment against their integrity.

Good.

And YouTube is run by little bitches, too. They removed the soundtrack from the Cefalu parking lot termination video because the car radio was playing in the background.

NRA Talks to Cefalu

Good interview. [Watch]

ATF settles termination case with whistleblowing agent Cefalu

“[Y]ou still have to reconcile not only keeping the managers responsible for this on your payroll, but promot[ing] them,” he continued. “You have been aware of the perjury, false statements ... gross mismanagement and waste, fraud and abuse by members of your executive staff and field managers and have done nothing. In fact you went to heroic measures to defend them. [More]

This evening's Gun Rights Examiner report notes bad habits are hard to break when there's no personal downside and plenty of incentives to keep them.

Destruction of badges labeled ‘juvenile act’ by ATF whistleblower

Cefalu also stated he'd received information from an individual prepared to give sworn testimony that he was present when  ATF managers  were communicating “specifically regarding the ongoing investigation into the destruction of my badges and stated in substance ‘I just talked to IA, it sounds like they are just going to make this go away.”
 
That appears to be exactly what happened. [More]

Today's Gun Rights Examiner report looks at some anger management issues coupled with childish behavior, that is, SOP for dealing with whistleblowers at ATF. 

Can't You Hear the Whistle Blowing...?

"I learned from an insider that other ATF Special Agents (not SA Cefalu) came forward and testified last week, called ATF bosses liars, and that the next hearing is February 9th." [More]

Vanderboegh gives us more reasons to challenge our trust.

Anybody actually find it a challenge?

Today, on The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance Radio

Interview guest: Whistleblowing ATF agent Vince Cefalu

• NRA's "Fire Holder" campaign
• DHS fertilizer control
• SAF: Lauds lawsuits
• New Virginia Tech gun scare
• Victims stabbed at NJ crime prevention event
• Mexico homicides
• RFID chips in guns
• Interview
• ICE ammo raid in El Paso
• Gunwalkin' with Vanderboegh

Join me at 7:00 am Pacific/10:00 am Eastern on NBC 1260 AM/96.1 FM, Scottsdale, or click "Listen Live."

Archives are here.  They're posting by the week and replacing the show at each day's link the evening of the broadcast date. Also note encores are being rebroadcast on Saturday.

Spread the word on this, OK? Nobody else is doing a daily exclusive gun rights broadcast in a major market during morning drive time, and if this works, it could not only create an opportunity to spread to other markets, but also open doors for efforts by others.  We complain our voice is not heard in the media--here we've got a foot in the door at an NBC affiliate station to promote a full-blown no compromise message.  Just a few short months ago I certainly would never have predicted I'd see that happen--or that I'd be a  part of it.

Lineup subject to change without notice.

Veteran agent: Feinstein did not act on ATF abuse, corruption evidence

And Feinstein, who according to Cefalu’s account, washed her hands of the matter, is no exception, saying “perhaps mistakes were made, but I think this hunt for blame doesn’t really speak about the problem.” [More]

Today's Gun Rights Examiner report notes you don't have to hunt all that far and all the blood didn't get washed off.

Cefalu on Dobbs

We do need to get Lou on board about that "botched operation" terminology...

Crash and Burn

Mr. JONES AND Mr. BRANDON SERIOUSLY? This in and of itself should get you fired. A half million dollars for drones nobody can fly? Have you ever heard of a trial run? I bought a drone for $300 and got aerial video the first day. If this aint waste fraud and abuse what is? The tax payers are gonna love this. [More] 

Vince Cefalu notes some defective remote-controlled drones, and also some that came in a box.

It appears BATF-U's tendency to pull this crap will not stop with the director's departure.  Still, the new guy deserves his own identity-- maybe somebody could come up with better lyrics:

Brandon! 

B. Todd abandoned him

What do you do when you're Brandon

And you're out on a limb? 

Today, on The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance Radio

• Interview: Jay Dobyns on Vince Cefalu
• Interview: Doug Ritter, Knife Rights
• Democrat Gunwalker hearings
• I Left my Rights--in San Francisco
• Obama press conference
• An anti-gun bigot
• Vanderboegh on Gunwalker
• More as time permits

Join us at 7:00 am Pacific/10:00 am Eastern on NBC 1260 AM/96.1 FM, Scottsdale, or click "Listen Live."

Archives are here.  It looks like they're going to post by the week and replace the show at each day's link the evening of the broadcast date.

Spread the word on this, OK? Nobody else is doing a daily exclusive gun rights broadcast in a major market during morning drive time, and if this works, it could not only create an opportunity to spread to other markets, but also open doors for efforts by others.  We complain our voice is not heard in the media--here we've got a foot in the door at an NBC affiliate station to promote a full-blown no compromise message.  Just a few short months ago I certainly would never have predicted I'd see that happen--or that I'd be a  part of it.

Lineup subject to change without notice.

New Examiner "Review" Criteria May Explain What Staff Refuses To

Long-time readers who have supported my work deserve an explanation, so here's an update for those of you who have been wondering what's going on with Gun Rights Examiner. Sorry it's so long -- there are many pieces to consider.

I've been writing for them since 2008, and never had a column pulled before. Now they've sunk two in a row, and have clammed up on their reason, to boot.

A full week after Examiner.com "unpublished" my Hastert column, and five days after they torpedoed my follow-up column about a media subscriber news service including that story in an alert to members, they still have not responded to multiple inquiries asking why. That's in spite of their instruction to "Contact support with any questions."

That they would  let a content provider spend hours researching, writing, publishing and publicizing an article, pull it, and then go into hiding, is indicative of the "leadership" routinely endured over the years, and leads to natural speculation as to what "offense" against "standards" could have possibly occurred this time. If tough to know what's allowable when anti-gun "progressives" are permitted to outright lie and call gun owners who believe in their rights "ammosexuals" (that's actually a keyword tag on the Examiner site).

It looks like that assumption was wrong -- albeit with no explanation followed by the silent treatment, it was an understandable conclusion to jump to. They just sent out an email to their list defining new criteria for both acceptability of an article as "newsworthy," as well as general editorial criteria for all articles.

Understand that Examiner does not submit all articles to the Google news feed. They have requirements, like the story must be under 48 hours old, you have to link to sources they consider credible, you can't reference other Examiner links, you can't use the first person, etc. That's been understood, even if it's self-defeating for those of us who actually dig out stories on our own, as opposed to linking to what someone else has uncovered and rewording it to take advantage of keyword and topic trending. In other words, those of us doing investigative journalism, where we are the ones breaking stories, and where we have nothing else to refer to as a source but our own prior work, are penalized for deviating from the content farm model.

They now appear to be extending that to all articles, not just the ones submitted to the news feeds. And it appears not complying with "review criteria" they just sent out today may be the reason behind "unpublishing" articles published a week ago.

Their criteria, incidentally, corroborate the valuing of search ranking manipulation over content. Case in point, from the Examiner Support Center "Basic Editorial Requirement writing Tips":

Please refrain from using one-sentence paragraphs, paragraphs consisting of only a few short sentences or paragraphs made up of incomplete sentences whenever possible. Google rejects pieces that are formatted that way.

Compare that to Purdue University's Online Writing Lab, teaching journalism students how to write:

Tips for Writing a Lead ... Brevity: Readers want to know why the story matters to them and they won’t wait long for the answer. Leads are often one sentence, sometimes two.

The "review criteria" also list some of the "sins" committed in my Hastert and follow-up articles:

Self-promotion: Not allowed in article content. No click-baiting or product marketing is permitted ... Third Person: Avoid first-person references ("I," "me," "my," etc.) The focus of the article should be on the story, not on the person writing it.

That depends on the meaning of the term "self-promotion." and the qualifications of  the person making that assessment. My columns never contain "click-baiting or product marketing." What they do contain are references to original work that no one else has uncovered, and if not called to reader attention, will remain unknown to everyone but me. We certainly know the "mainstream media" has no interest unless it's to take a story uncovered by small fry, bigfoot it, and claim it as their own.

Yes, my Hastert story contained a link to one of my articles from 16 years ago, an open letter I wrote to him (that was subsequently published in a Libertarian Party publication at the request of one of their officials), and that necessitated a first-person reference. It couldn't be helped.

Everybody and his brother are "reporting" on the Hastert scandal and charges the guy's got himself embroiled in. Not one writer was informing gun owners about his betrayal of their interests when he was Speaker, and how in spite of that, he was still given an "A" rating from NRA. That's legitimate information for a gun rights advocacy readership to be aware of. It's not my fault no one else knew about and was reporting that. I guess the Examiner solution for original and unique offerings is to "unpublish" and suppress them.

Using that criteria, that reference to self or to prior works of original investigative journalism is verboten, let's look at some of the other stuff, allowed in the past, but now evidently in violation of the new criteria:

My FOIA-based exposé on the fake Ceasefire "PSA" that yielded a permit saying “Actors are interviewed on camera in a fake gun store” comes immediately to mind. It included my email correspondence with the Mayor's Office and also linked to my piece at The Shooters' Log. Is that "self-promotion" or is that telling and expanding on a dimension of a national interest story no one else is? And for that matter, if they're going to be consistent why hasn't that article been "unpublished"?

How about my other stories resulting from FOIA requests I filed? Who is going to report on those if not me? We know the "partial response" I got from ATF proved a whistleblower had been called on the carpet for talking to the Senate. We also know the Senate was publicly pressured -- by me -- to interview and protect Gunwalker whistleblowers in the first place.

As a matter of fact, look at all the reporting Mike Vanderboegh and I did on this before anyone in major media said word one about Fast and Furious. By Examiner's "review criteria," this all needs to be pulled from the site. And future stories -- and Mike has arranged to share documentation with me on a huge one -- cannot, as a matter of their "rules," appear there.

So what else, just off the top of my head, must go?

It looks like I can't tell readers how ATF claimed -- to me -- an Administrative Procedures Act exemption from their recent ammo ban "framework" trial balloon. Nor can I tell them how -- after my reports -- the "real reporters" discovered the B. Todd Jones leaving ATF for NFL story, or the Armatix management split story, or how an anti-gun "filmmaker" broke the law regarding bringing imitation firearm onto school premises without permission, or...

Nor can I include links in future articles to information vital to understanding a complex and ongoing story that appears nowhere else, such as the series of reports I have done containing exclusive information on the Reese family case, John Shipley, ATF's Vince Cefalu and Jay Dobyns, the '68 GCA and other legal challenges, and those are just off the top of my  head as topics where I have to refer and link to earlier reports I posted in order to validate claims. And who knows what this will do to the innumerable source documents I alone have archived on Scribd? How is linking to my account there not "self-promotion"?

I guess I can forget about telling you things I'd like you to help be a force multiplier for. That's a major reason I do this, to provide information that no one else does or will, and to then rely on activist readers to help me bypass "legitimate media" gatekeepers. And sometimes, the action just happens to center on my activities. So if I interview Rand Paul, or appear on a television panel, or get interviewed on a network show, or help write lyrics to a song for a political video produced by a multiple-award winning filmmaker and premiering on a nationally-syndicated radio program, or give a speech in front of a state house, those are all things I'm evidently no longer allowed to tell regular readers about in my column -- a column I started and expanded to a national presence on the premise and promise that I could.

That's in spite of a pledge made to me by Examiner only three months ago after one of their reviewers had rejected my ATF ammo ban piece from news feed submission on the grounds that I did not link to a recognized news source.

"As for the main premise of my story having no link, what am I supposed to do when this is original investigative journalism based my telephone conversation held today with an ATF official identified as the point of contact on a new proposed rule?" I asked. "There IS no other source to link to, as no one else has this development but me. I repeat: What am I to do?"

This was the last official word received on the matter:

Click to enlarge

I guess the "welcome" has been pulled back, or at least my being able to identify myself as the one who made the story happen in the first place, and to reference and link to an exclusive in follow-up reports.

Several of you have reached out to me, asking if I want you to do anything, maybe write to Examiner. Thanks, but no. These conditions are intolerable. I'm probably going to need to post a bare minimum article once a month just to keep them from declaring my account inactive and not sharing page view revenues from past articles, but it looks like their rules will no longer allow me to do much of the original stuff that requires self-referencing and linking.

How this will play out and if I'll land anywhere else is anybody's guess, but it doesn't look promising. Ultimately, I have to admit the failure to figure a way out of the box is mine, as my stuff is unacceptable to big boy media as well as to "lobby groups." That's because I do this to say what I want to say.

I'll keep writing for the magazine as long as they want me, and also do occasional contract assignments that don't dictate information-stifling restrictions, but without a replacement gig, this is probably going to require stepping back and refocusing energies on something that values my efforts enough to actually pay the bills. For now, look for this blog and all of my social media activity to be limited to dreaded "self-promotion."

UPDATE: Well, that was quick. At least it shows they can move when motivated. They fired me, and warned me not to show anyone the termination notice because that would violate a confidentiality agreement.  I'll match their agreement violations over the years against mine if they want to pursue this, because I maintain this is definitely in the interests of pursuing a story about cheesy Examiner.com practices:

[Click to enlarge]