If this is true, heads at BATFE need to roll.

Possibly literally if people are dead because of it.
Coming next will be more info on what the agents refer to as the Phoenix ATF office "walking across" ARs and AKs to pad their statistics and especially the one that may have killed the BP agent.
For the moment ignore the other stuff in that article and focus on this; followup here and here. From the last,
I’ve just been provided some additional details. The essence of what I’ve been told:

ATF’s Phoenix office allowed the guns to go across the border.

The ATF office in Mexico was denied permission to share this information with their Mexican counterparts. Believing this was wrong, they went over the heads of the Phoenix office and requested permission directly from headquarters in DC.

The higher-ups sided with the Phoenix decision to withhold the information from Mexican authorities.

That would make this an international law enforcement incident, would it not?
Uh, yeah, at the very least. Hey, new Congress, you want something else that needs real investigation? Here it is.


I'll now make note of something else from the first article:
Then there's this: An ATF Special Agent who went undercover in the Hells Angels is compelled to inform a dozen U.S. Senators of his ongoing legal battle against ATF senior management, including some startling and disturbing (to put it mildly) allegations:

[I]n retaliation for a settlement with the government, ATF recalled covert identification documents from me and my wife, and as a Significant Investigative Report, obtained only through discovery, demonstrates, the Hells Angels became the lead suspects in discovering the location of my home and burning it down with my wife and children inside. In the process, ATF scuttled the investigation and let the suspects go, never even questioning them. ATF has taken the process of retaliation to a new level, letting go of suspects of attempted murder against an agent’s family.

This mess has been around for a while. This guy managed to actually become a patched member of the Hells Angels, gathered evidence and testimony of everything from murder to drugs to prostitution to illegal arms dealing; then the BATFE brass and prosecutors managed to screw up the cases so badly that many of the accused went free, and some who were convicted were able to plead to much lesser charges. And then the HA found out who he was and went after him and his family, and BATFE did- well, I'd say 'squat to protect them' but that would give the agency too much credit. Considering how this agency treats honest cops, it's amazing there are still any in it.

No, I can't say "A few bad ones in the agency cause this" because it's been going on for too long in, from the sound of it, just about all branches; that's not a few bad apples, that's an agency with a very bad attitude.