‘Destroyed’ FBI and DEA gun parts found in criminal ‘ghost gun’

Both agencies were accused of failing in recent years to secure critical handgun parts that could easily be taken by anyone inside the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Agency’s training academy in Quantico, Virginia.

“We concluded that inadequate policies for the destruction of employee-issued firearms create a significant risk that firearms or their parts could be lost or stolen and used in subsequent crimes without accountability,” the advisory memo said from Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz to FBI Director Christopher Wray and DEA Administrator Anne Milgram.

The problem was discovered last year when an unidentified suspect was arrested with a “ghost gun,” typically made from kits that historically have not required a background check or registration.

While investigating the case, the DEA discovered that the barrel and bolt came from a DEA weapon that was scheduled to be destroyed in 2019. “According to DEA records, the slide and barrel were part of a DEA employee-issued firearm that had been destroyed three years earlier,” the memorandum states.

During his investigation, Horowitz determined that the parts likely came from unsecured barrels in which both law enforcement agencies stored employees’ weapon parts to be destroyed.

According to the report, virtually everyone who worked at Quantico had access to the “gun cleaning room,” where pistol parts were stored in open barrels.

“The weapons cleaning room was accessible to thousands of employees and contractors at Quantico, including FBI and DEA Armory employees, FBI and DEA academy instructors and students, cleaning staff, maintenance contractors and others. Because the weapons cleaning room was located in a shared building that also housed the Quantico cafeteria, security screening measures were limited to a Quantico access card, which was given to every person who had access to the Quantico premises. There were no security measures in place to ensure that the location where the slides and barrels were stored was secured, there were no documents as to who had access to the location or the DEA property, nor were there any documents as to whether when the slides and barrels were destroyed,” the memo states.

Worse, no agency had established guidelines for handling the parts.

“In fact, in the investigation leading to this memorandum, the OIG was unable to identify the person or persons who stole the DEA slide and barrel that were later recovered during an arrest,” Horowitz wrote in the memo.

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Since completing their report, both agencies say they have tightened security measures and established formal procedures for storing and destroying employees’ firearms. The FBI said it moved the unit that handles the weapons to Alabama in 2021.

But the IG continues to keep the authorities under pressure and wants follow-up reports to show it is taking better care of the weapons parts.