John Richardson comments on ATF renaming their headquarters after Elliot Ness, I guess like the FBI has named theirs after J. Edgar Hoover. John thinks this is actually appropriate:
To summarize, Ness didn’t get his man, he had questionable morals, he probably was an alcoholic, he covered up a crime, he couldn’t manage his money, and he was prone to wild exaggeration about his accomplishments. When you look at that summary of Ness’ life and career, who better to represent the modern day ATF?
Zing!
Ness is, in my opinion, the REASON the ATF has the institutional culture it does. “Screw the rules, screw due process — it’s a Holy Crusade, and that means we can beat the bad guys by being even BETTER bad guys in our righteous cause!”
Whereas the FBI’s institutional culture was VERY deliberately manipulated to be overtly straight edge (even the guys doing illegal black bag jobs knew the IDEAL of the FBI was to have pristine honor and be KNOWN for being above question, even if it meant losing a few cases).