ATF UNDER SIEGE

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But last December Magaw rehired the men. ATF had discharged them two months earlier, after both had spent nearly a year on administrative leave at full pay. The settlements granted the men full back pay for the brief period of their formal terminations, expunged their records of all disciplinary action, and restored their past salaries and their eligibility for law-enforcement pensions. It did, however, strip them of their official status as federal investigators empowered to carry guns and enforce federal law. Magaw says he took into account the men's long years of service and his opinion that their performance was partly ATF's fault for training them poorly in the first place. Despite ATF's concessions, the settlement is punishment enough, he says.

Jim Jorgensen, an ATF agent and deputy executive director of the National Association of Treasury Agents, disagrees. "It just really sends the wrong message to the public," he says. And with the start of the latest congressional investigation of Waco, public perception has again become a matter of intense concern. If history is any guide, this new round of scrutiny will once again blow the agency into a period of angst and self-doubt. "We've always been defensive," says Charlotte ATF agent in charge Paul Lyon. "We have always been susceptible to light breezes--it doesn't even take a full storm." But this week the agency is bracing itself once again for gale-force winds that may well threaten its survival.