Fast and Furious

The lethal fallout from a botched operation by the US Department of Justice which allowed almost 2,000 illegally purchased firearms to be transported from the streets of Arizona to drug gangs in Mexico has been laid bare in a scathing Congressional report, which concludes that it resulted in countless deaths.

A mixture of arrogance, over-confidence, and staggering ineptitude by the Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives [ATF] was outlined in a 51-page investigation by two Republican members of a House panel charged with getting to the bottom of what went wrong during a two-year operation called "Fast and Furious".

It tells how, between 2009 and this year, the ATF instructed agents to turn a blind eye to hundreds of AK-47 assault rifles, sniper rifles, and revolvers purchased from gunshops in Phoenix and en route to Mexico. They hoped to eventually recover them from crime scenes and build a complex conspiracy case that might take down the leaders of a major drug cartel.

In the event, the operation resulted in the arrest of a handful of small-time crooks. But it exacerbated an already-huge spike in violence on both sides of the border. Two of the guns allowed to "walk" into the hands of criminals were used in a shoot-out that killed a US border patrol agent, Brian Terry.

The damning evidence that the U.S. Department of Justice agency is a major supplier of cartel weapons will go in front of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this week, in what could be a damning indictment of the ATF’s senior leadership and Eric Holder’s leadership of the Department of Justice.

Attorney General Holder has apparently ordered the DOJ to fight Congressional oversight, with the DOJ and ATF ignoring seven letters and a subpoena from the committee. Neither Holder nor ATF Director Ken Melson will answer questions — which may lead to them being held in contempt of Congress.

Holder and Melson have little reason to tell the truth about what happened with Operation Fast and Furious, which may be the most incompetent ATF operation since the agency’s ill-advised 1993 raid of the Branch Davidian compound left four agents dead and 16 wounded. (After the raid failed, the Justice Department then had the FBI take over a siege which ended in the deaths of 74 men, women, and children.) In responding to the subpoena and the letters directed to the agencies by Congress, they may reveal not just glaring incompetence, but perhaps open a door to political motives for the gun-running that point higher in the Obama administration.

A bipartisan team of members of Congress heads to Mexico tomorrow as their investigation moves south of the border.

A chief Republican critic of a controversial U.S. anti-gun-trafficking operation was briefed on ATF’s “Fast and Furious” program last year and did not express any opposition, sources familiar with the classified briefing said Tuesday.

Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), who has repeatedly called for top Justice Department officials to be held accountable for the now-defunct operation, was given highly specific information about it at an April 2010 briefing, the sources said. Members of his staff also attended the session, which Issa and two other Republican congressmen had requested...

...At the briefing last year, bureau officials laid out for Issa and other members of Congress from both parties details of several ATF investigations, including Fast and Furious, the sources said. For that program, the briefing covered how many guns had been bought by “straw purchasers,’’ the types of guns and how much money had been spent, said one source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the briefing was not public.

“All of the things [Issa] has been screaming about, he was briefed on,’’ said one source familiar with the session.

Frederick R. Hill, a spokesman for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which Issa chairs, acknowledged on Tuesday that an ATF briefing on “weapons smuggling by criminal cartels” took place in April 2010 but declined to specify what Issa or his staff were told.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/critic-of-atf-gun-trafficking-program-raised-no-objection-when-briefed-last-year/2011/06/21/AGzvZ5eH_story.html

TheMercenary;741866 wrote:

Holder should resign. Or maybe you just consider a protest and inquiry over the deaths of the agents "political grandstanding". :rolleyes:

Fair&Balanced;741873 wrote:

Well certainly, no one knows more about political grandstanding when it comes to Holder than you. ;)

TheMercenary;741885 wrote:

Well except for the fact that Holder holds the highest office in the DOJ and the DOJ has been completely involved in this operation that not only has fueled the mass murder of Mexican nationals just across the border but now three of our own agents. Yea, Holder needs to resign and you should consider not trying to make excuses for this scum bag. This is Obama's Iran Contra. I wonder how agent Brian Terry's family would feel about you degrading his death to nothing more than "political grandstanding". I will send them a link to your comments.

Fair&Balanced;741942 wrote:

It has nothing to do with the senseless death of a federal agent as i result of what I said was a reckless operation. Shame on you for such an ignorant assertion

The lethal fallout from a botched operation by the US Department of Justice which allowed almost 2,000 illegally purchased firearms to be transported from the streets of Arizona to drug gangs in Mexico has been laid bare in a scathing Congressional report, which concludes that it resulted in countless deaths.

...James Cavanaugh, a former ATF commander, said stemming the flow of guns to Mexico is a Herculean task given the lack of law-enforcement resources and political will.

“I don’t see how it’s realistically going to slow down if we don’t make changes in resources, laws and policies,” he said. “It’s important because people are being slaughtered.”

Agents and prosecutors have been especially passionate in pleading for Congress to pass a specific law banning gun trafficking, and have repeatedly watched as courts threw out cases against straw buyers who made purchases that were technically legal.

The law ATF relies on most heavily to stop the flow of weapons south makes it illegal for someone to lie on a form at a gun shop, claiming to buy a weapon for himself when he or she is really buying it for someone else. Proving the person lied, however, is difficult and often judges treat the indiscretion as a paperwork violation deserving of light punishment, according to law enforcement authorities. Without a specific gun trafficking statute, authorities say, they often can’t do much as they watch suspicious activity.

“It’s upsetting,” said Michael Bouchard, ATF’s former assistant director in charge of field operations. “What are you supposed to do? No one in their right mind would let a gun go across the border knowing that it would kill a law enforcement officer or be used to kill others. But there’s no easy answer.”

http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=51668&pageid=&pagename=

Bill McMahon, ATF deputy assistant director, testified that of 100,000 weapons recovered by Mexican authorities, only 18,000 were made, sold or imported from the U.S. And of those 18,000, just 7,900 came from sales by licensed gun dealers. That's 8%, not 90%.

Fair&Balanced;742318 wrote:

From your source: 7,900 guns to Mexican cartels from licensed dealears; 10,00 from other (private sales, illegal sales, etc).

And rather than focus these 18,000 weapons from the US getting into the hands of Mexican cartels, you want to attribute any consideration of a programmatic or legislative fix as a "gun control plot"?

Between your "get Holder" obsession and now the "gun control plot", I dont see any serious interest on your part to really discuss the issue of thousands of US guns making their way into the hands of Mexican gangs and cartels.

Fair&Balanced;742326 wrote:

I get it

You want to focus on the failure, assign blame, and not address the larger issue.

Have fun.

Another point Melson clarified for investigators was that the ATF group carrying out the mission of Operation Fast and Furious was placed under the direction of the Arizona U.S. Attorney’s office. The U.S. Attorney in Arizona, Dennis Burke, is a political appointee of the Obama administration.

Melson appeared with only his personal attorney at the secret meeting with Congressional investigators. Melson was originally scheduled to conduct the interview on July 13 with Justice Department attorneys and his personal attorney present, but Melson abandoned DOJ representation after learning of a provision in his agreement to testify that allowed him to do so. (Issa staffer: Gunrunner investigation points much higher than ATF director)

“We are disappointed that no one had previously informed him of that provision of the agreement,” Issa and Grassley wrote to Holder on Tuesday afternoon. “Instead, Justice Department officials sought to limit and control his communications with Congress. This is yet another example of why direct communications with Congress are so important and are protected by law.”

Issa and Grassley wrote that Melson’s interview “was extremely helpful to our investigation.” They said Melson told them he did not review the “hundreds of documents” the DOJ is withholding until after the public controversy about the operation. Issa and Grassley said Melson claims he was “sick to his stomach” when he obtained the documents and learned the full story.

The DOJ has not been fully cooperative with a number of Issa’s and Grassley’s requests for documents and other evidence in this investigation. According to the July 5 letter, Issa and Grassley said Melson told them he asked the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (ODAG) to be more cooperative with Congressional requests for information, evidence and documents.

But problems highlighted by the so-called Fast and Furious investigation, which enabled at least 195 guns to cross into Mexico, point to what U.S. authorities say is a broader enforcement crisis. Their efforts to stop drug cartels from smuggling thousands of firearms into Mexico each year are handcuffed, they say, by a debilitating lack of resources and an absence of statutes to outlaw gun trafficking.

Without a targeted federal gun trafficking law, prosecutors are forced to rely on other statutes that agents and prosecutors say are difficult to enforce and riddled with loopholes.

Chief among them: a frequently used law against lying on the ATF’s Form 4473 at a gun shop – especially in claiming the buyer is purchasing for himself, rather than someone else. But court decisions have made this “straw buyer” charge difficult to prove and judges often don’t take it seriously.

http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/04/01/3893/weak-laws-paltry-resources-hinder-gun-trafficking-probes-say-atf-backers

Fair&Balanced;743762 wrote:

Carry on with your one-side crusade for justice or more accurately your obsession to "get Holder" rather than address the issues that could make a difference in gun trafficking on the border.

TheMercenary;743805 wrote:

What joke. What the hell do you think the whole discussion is about. The gun trafficking is being done by the ATF and the DOJ fool, that is the problem. I can't see why you continue to shill for the Obama administration and think this is a non-issue. I doubt seriously that this will go away esp after the next round of elections.

TheMercenary;741885 wrote:

This is Obama's Iran Contra.

classicman;743959 wrote:

H.R.1 (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act)
Operation Gunrunner is specifically named for funding in this final version.
Sponsor:
David R, Obey (D)
Co-sponsors:
Barney Frank (D)
Bart Gordon (D)
James L. Oberstar (D)
Charles B. Rangel (D)
John M. Spratt Jr. (D)
Edolphus Towns (D)
Nydia M. Valzquez (D)
Henry A. Waxman (D)

Gun trafficking to Mexico is a nationwide problem with consequences on both sides of the border. In response, ATF implemented Project Gunrunner in 2006 as a comprehensive strategy to reduce firearms and explosives related violent crime associated with Mexican criminal organizations operating in the U.S. and Mexico by preventing these organizations from unlawfully acquiring and trafficking firearms and explosives....

...Since its inception in 2006, and through Fiscal Year 2010, ATF’s Project Gunrunner has recommended over 1,100 criminal cases and in excess of 2,500 defendants for prosecution. To date, Project Gunrunner investigations have resulted in the seizure of over 10,000 firearms and nearly one million rounds of ammunition destined for Mexico.

...$10 million in ARRA funding is hiring 37 ATF employees to open, staff (via new hire and relocation of senior personnel,) equip, and operate new Project Gunrunner criminal enforcement teams in McAllen, TX; El Centro, CA; and Las Cruces, NM (which includes a subordinate satellite office in Roswell, NM.). Additionally, these funds support the assignment of two special agents to each of the U.S. consulates in Juarez and Tijuana, Mexico to provide direct support to Mexican officials on firearms-trafficking-related issues.

http://www.atf.gov/firearms/programs/project-gunrunner/

Special Agent Peter Forcelli, a senior ATF group supervisor in the Phoenix Field Division, stated that the typical sentence for illegal straw purchases is probation. He also stated that suspects have little incentive to cooperate with investigators or “flip” on higher-level cartel members...

Special Agent Forcelli testified that existing laws were “toothless.” He added: “Some people view this as no more consequential than doing 65 in a 55.” He added: “for somebody to testify against members of a cartel where the alternative is seeing a probation officer once a month, they’re going to opt toward, you know, not cooperating with the law enforcement authorities.”

Special Agent Lee Casa, an ATF field agent with over 20 years of experience, stated that the current practice of charging straw purchases for merely lying on purchase forms was ineffective: “I would say generally speaking there is not a lot of bite in the 924(a)(1)(A) statute as far as penalties and time, time that would be served.”

Multiple law enforcement agents who appeared before the Committee stated that their efforts to combat international drug cartels would be strengthened through the enactment of a federal statute specifically designed to criminalize the trafficking of firearms. Currently, there is no federal statute that specifically prohibits firearms trafficking. Instead, prosecutors attempt to charge traffickers with “paperwork violations,” such as dealing in firearms without a license.

Special Agent Casa reiterated this view during his transcribed interview. He stated: “There is really no trafficking, firearms trafficking statute, per se. It would be nice to have a trafficking statute per se or to enhance some of the penalties on even, on the straw purchasers, just to be a deterrent effect … so we can really hammer these people and just put them in jail.”

During the Committee’s hearing on June 15, Chairman Issa interrupted Committee Members who were asking questions of the law enforcement agents that he invited to testify. In particular, Chairman Issa objected to any questions about whether the nation’s gun laws could be improved to assist these law enforcement agents in their efforts to counter drug violence and firearms trafficking by Mexican drug cartels.

http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/investigative/documents/firearms_report_063011.pdf

TheMercenary;744556 wrote:

Tell it to the ATF agents that supplied the guns to the Mexican drug lords and the family of the agent killed by one of the guns supplied in their illegal operation.

Fair&Balanced;744585 wrote:

So the ATF agents who are concerned about the broader issue of legal straw purchases at guns shows and gun dealers dont matter.

And the deaths of innocent civilians and border agends as a result of the thousands of straw purchases every year that make their way to the drug cartels dont matter.

Evidently one death matters to you....so you can pin it on the ATF and DoJ. How very convenient and political.

So does that make you a shill for the NRA and their Republican puppets in Congress? You know the ones that have blocked a permanent appointment of a director of ATF for five years now and block every attempt to even explore the need for gun trafficking legislation.

TheMercenary;744702 wrote:

No what matters is the ATF committed crimes and broke the law while sending thousands of guns across the border to Mexico and fueling the deaths of most likely thousands of people not a mile from some of our major cities. You can spin this all you want. That fuck Holder and the head of ATF should be held responsible. I didn't "pin" anything on anyone, the ATF agents that are coming to the forefront to testify are the one's spilling the beans and the Congressional investigation and documents they have obtained support it. The ATF and Justice are stonewalling.

How many gun shows have you been to? There is no evidence that gun shows are a problem. That is propaganda. There are hundreds of gun shows every weekend all across the US.

Stop shilling for the Demoncrats and go back to being a paid lobbyist.

Fair&Balanced;744729 wrote:

It simply reinforces what an extremist you are.

Fair&Balanced;744802 wrote:

Like most issues, you clearly dont want to discuss it in a reasonable and rational manner. Again, no surprise there.

TheMercenary;744803 wrote:

Not with you, you are nothing more than a shill for all things Obama and Demoncrat. Not worth my time. And just like when you ran off with your Redux persona, I still think Pelosi is a cunt.:D

Fair&Balanced;744804 wrote:

Have fun.

Revelations about a U.S. sting program that backfired has provoked new anger in Mexico, where lawmakers and citizens already are upset about the flow of American weapons to Mexican drug gangs.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has been criticized for "Operation Fast and Furious" in 2009, in which it let people purchase weapons it knew would end up in criminals' hands in the United States and Mexico in order to track them and build a case against them.

Two AK-47 rifles connected to the program were found at the scene of the killing of a border agent in Arizona in December. The U.S. House held hearings on the matter in June, where witnesses questioned the reasoning behind the sting since it is difficult for the United States to prosecute criminals in Mexico.

The Justice Department’s effort to contain the Operation Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal is crumbling. Members of Congress are demanding full disclosure regarding the bizarre scheme to funnel guns to Mexican drug cartels, supposedly to help sniff out the higher-level bad guys. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. isn’t helping congressional investigators understand the rationale behind this breathtakingly dumb idea.

The so-called Fast and Furious program fit right in with the White House contention that gun shops in the Southwest have been contributing to violence in Mexico. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), part of the Justice Department, started the operation as a sting to arrest purchasers in border states who purportedly were engaging in illegal cross-border arms trafficking. The scheme spun out of control, and the agency reportedly wound up telling gun dealers to proceed with sales even after dealers had raised red flags about certain buyers. In this way, the ATF may have become an accomplice to the smuggling of some 1,700 weapons into Mexico, allegedly leading to the death of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry near Nogales, Ariz., in December 2010. Two Fast and Furious weapons were discovered at that crime scene, and other such weapons have been found after the deaths of untold numbers of Mexican citizens.

The video shows Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, who would resign nine months later after less than a year's service, telling reporters at a Department of Justice briefing of major policy initiatives to fight the Mexican drug cartels.

"The president has directed us to take action to fight these cartels," Ogden begins, "and Attorney General Holder and I are taking several new and aggressive steps as part of the administration's comprehensive plan."

At the president's direction, Ogden said, the administration's plan included DOJ's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives "increasing its efforts by adding 37 new employees in three new offices, using $10 million in Recovery Act funds and redeploying 100 personnel to the Southwest border in the next 45 days to fortify its Project Gunrunner," of which Operation Fast and Furious would be a part.

As we have noted, Attorney General Eric Holder himself gave a speech to Mexican authorities in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on April 2, 2009, taking credit for Gunrunner as well as Fast and Furious for himself and the Obama administration.

Holder told the audience: "Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels. My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner."

Listen to the Podcast
Subscribe through iTunes
The administration's animus towards private gun ownership and the Second Amendment surfaced during the 2008 campaign, when President Obama spoke of bitter Pennsylvania townsfolk clinging to their guns. The Chicago Tribune noted that candidate Obama thought the District of Columbia's total gun ban was constitutional, an opinion with which the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed in its Heller decision.

Fair&Balanced;744823 wrote:

So the latest twist is the fact that Obama increased funding for Operation Gunrunner, the anti-trafficking program started by Bush is somehow scandalous? Shame on Obama!

And a speech that Holder made in April of 09 is taking credit for Operation Fast and Furious which didnt begin until later that year?

Now that is a stretch only a true wing nut could believe.

And more paranoia about taking away the guns from law abiding citizens. :tinfoil:

"Internal ATF emails seem to suggest that ATF agents were counseled to highlight a link between criminals and certain semi-automatic weapons in order to bolster a case for a rule like the one the DOJ announced yesterday [Monday]."

Townhall has obtained the email which states "Can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same FfL and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks Mark R. Chait Assistant Director Field Operations."

Once again, liberals and the Obama Administration are focused on guns rather than criminals and federal government incomptence. Operation Fast and Furious is looking more and more like a set up from the beginning to push Obama and Holder's radical anti-Second Amendment agenda as they used law abiding gun shop owners to enable government officals to break the law, then turned around and blamed the very same gun shops for illegal gun trafficking, despite those shops being forced by ATF to help ATF agents carry out Operation Fast and Furious, and now, those shops are being punished through new Justice Department gun control measures. Obama and Holder both have long records of being outspoken opponents of gunrights and both support the reinstatement of the "assault" rifle ban, better described as a ban on semi-automatic rifles. From the June issue of Townhall Magazine:

President Obama is calling for "commonsense" gun reforms, but as a man with a long a history of acting to limit Second Amendment rights and advocating gun control who tapped an attorney general with the same ideology -- and possibly the biggest gun trafficking scandal in U.S. history with his name written all over it -- is the president really calling for reforms or more government control?

As an Illinois state senator, Obama endorsed and spoke in support of an outright ban on ownership of all handguns and favored the licensing and registering of gun owners. Before his run for public office in 1996, Obama filled out a questionnaire expressing his support for a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.

TheMercenary;745360 wrote:

BUSTED!!!!!!!!

Yea, there is no plan to derail Second Amendment rights..... sure.



http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2011/07/13/operation_fast_and_furious_designed_to_promote_gun_control

On Dec. 11, 2009, 23-year-old Uriel Patino walked into a shopping-center gun shop in Glendale, Ariz., and allegedly bought 20 AK-47 assault rifles. A month later, he allegedly bought 10 more on a single day from the same shop – Lone Wolf Trading – and two weeks after that bought another 15.

By February 2010, authorities say Patino had become a regular customer, hitting the store every few days. On Feb. 15 alone, court documents say he bought 40 AK-47s.

But ATF is powerless to immediately stop these sales, said the bureau’s former official, Bouchard, because there’s nothing illegal about buying a large number of assault weapons.

“It doesn’t look right, but under the law, there’s nothing wrong with it,” he said.

Bouchard said ATF doesn’t have enough agents to put every straw buyer under surveillance, so getting a conviction often means getting a confession. In Fast and Furious, the investigative trail eventually allowed agents able to get wiretaps on Patino and use them to try to prosecute the person orchestrating the scheme. Patino was ultimately charged with 33 others. But the probe dragged on for more than a year.

A straw buyer must sign a form at the gun shop declaring that they are buying the guns for themselves. Lying on the form is a crime. But in order to prove the lie, a prosecutor often must prove what the straw buyer was thinking when he or she bought the gun. Unless that straw buyer immediately delivers the weapon to someone prohibited from purchasing a firearm – like a convicted felon—all the buyer has to claim is that the gun was bought for personal use.

http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/04/01/3893/weak-laws-paltry-resources-hinder-gun-trafficking-probes-say-atf-backers

Griff;745487 wrote:

You do realize that a 22 cal rifle is very much unlike a 7.62mm AK-47?

Fair&Balanced;745511 wrote:

I'm not interested in taking away any citizens rights, but when someone can walk into a gun store and buy 40 AK-47s at a time with no reporting by the dealer....

TheMercenary;745708 wrote:

Cite asshole.... when and where did that happen, unless of course you are talking about the DOJ scumfucks and the ATF that let it happen. They watched it happen at major gun dealers on the border and then tried to use them as examples as to why the system is broken... when those fucks set the whole thing up to, as the latest emails show, enact more restrictive gun laws.

Put up or shut the fuck up....:D

ZenGum;746033 wrote:

Yeah, all those AK-47s really helped in Libya, didn't they?

Fair&Balanced;745714 wrote:

You can rant and rave and call me names, but it wont change the fact that until these regulations were issued last month, there was no requirement for dealers to report multiple sales of these weapons. I cited an example described by an ATF agent and the lack of adequate laws to respond.

I'm open to discussing it with anyone on the other side of the gun issue who wants to discuss the issue rationally and respectfully. There is no point in any further discussion with you.

ZenGum;746033 wrote:

Yeah, all those AK-47s really helped in Libya, didn't they?

TheMercenary;746140 wrote:

I don't think the US sent them.

Urbane Guerrilla;746024 wrote:

The most effective physical defense against any genocide imaginable is the reverse of this: a selective-fire individual weapon over every mantle and two hundred rounds ready ammunition. Whereupon we'd all be Switzerland. Which is notably free of that genocide thing.

Fair&Balanced;746166 wrote:

:corn:

Mercenary and Guerrilla extreme theater of racism and genocide.

DEA Accidentally Finds Guns from ATF "Gunwalker" Case (Credit: CBS)
In advance of a hearing later today, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a report containing new testimony and allegations in the ATF gunwalker case. According to the report, Carlos Canino, Acting ATF Attache in Mexico, calls the strategy his agency employed: "The perfect storm of idiocy."

"We armed the [Sinaloa] cartel," Canino told investigators. "It is disgusting." Canino will be a key witness at the hearing.

But it's not just the Sinaloa cartel. Documents obtained by Congressional investigators show weapons - sold under ATF's watch in Operation Fast and Furious out of the Phoenix office - have been used by at least three Mexican drug cartels: Sinaloa, El Teo and La Familia.

In other words, Congressional investigators say the very agency charged with preventing weapons from falling into the hands of violent cartels south of the border ... instead facilitated it.

The Oversight Committee has used internal documents and information to showing where Fast and Furious weapons have shown up and been used in Mexico. It reveals more recoveries than Department of Justice has disclosed to the Committee in official answers ... and yet it's still only a partial picture.

The Department of Justice had no comment on that aspect of the report.

The first large recovery of weapons sold to suspected drug cartel traffickers under ATF's watch was on Nov. 20, 2009 in Naco, Sonora, Mexico. All 42 weapons (41 AK-47s and a giant .50 caliber rifle) traced back to Fast and Furious suspects. Some had been bought, turned around and delivered to the cartel practically overnight.

Yet ATF allowed the acquisitions and dealings to continue for more than a year, until December of last year, when Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. Two Fast and Furious assault rifles were recovered at the murder scene.

On a recent visit to Mexico, the Oversight Committee was allowed to view bullet holes in one of two Mexican government helicopters recently shot at by cartel members ... including a .50-caliber round that penetrated the bulletproof-glass windshield. Officials recovered Fast and Furious weapons among the suspects' cache.

Also, for the first time, Congressional investigators disclose names of some Justice Department officials whom witnesses, ATF agents, say knew about the controversial gunwalking operation.

Nobody at the Justice Department has publicly acknowledged approval of or a role in the case. President Obama has said neither he nor Attorney General Eric Holder authorized the operation, and Holder asked the Inspector General to investigate.

But according to ATF witnesses, on March 5, 2010 ATF intelligence analysts told ATF and Justice Department leadership (including Main Justice Trial Attorney Joe Cooley) that straw firearms purchases in Fast and Furious had exceeded 1,000 and the weapons were ending up in Mexico. When concerns were raised, one witness present quoted Cooley as saying the movement of so many guns to Mexico was "an acceptable practice." The Justice Department had no comment on that.

In other testimony, former ATF Attache to Mexico Darren Gil repeated information he gave in an exclusive CBS News interview several months ago. He told investigators that the Justice Department's Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, Lanny Breuer, was well aware of Fast and Furious, and referred to the case supportively when visiting Mexico.

ZenGum;746155 wrote:

When the government has artillery, tanks, an air force and an army with modern discipline and command structures, the civilians get massacred no matter how many selective fire individual weapons they may have.

Rifles in homes do not make genocide impossible.

Fair&Balanced;746166 wrote:

:corn:

Mercenary and Guerrilla extreme theater of racism and genocide.

A few weeks ago we brought you a story from Sharyl Attkisson who was reporting on a scandal inside the ATF concerning the agency allowing guns to walk across the border. Soon the worst fears of many ATF agents were realized when Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered by a Mexican drug gang member using one of the guns the ATF let walk. It turns out that the ATF was not the only agency that knew about this “gun walking” policy. The DEA, ICE, Homeland Security, and an Assistant United States Attorney all had knowledge that ATF superiors were instructing agents on the ground to allow guns to flow into Mexico in the hopes they would be able to catch larger targets. Rene Jaquez, an ATF special agent, spoke out about what he sees as some of the darkest days in the history of the ATF.

Reporting from Washington— In March 2010, the No. 2 man at the ATF was deeply worried. His agents had lost track of hundreds of firearms. Some of the guns, supposed to have been tracked to Mexican drug cartels, were lost right after they cleared the gun stores.

Five months into the surveillance effort — dubbed Operation Fast and Furious — no indictments had been announced and no charges were immediately expected. Worse, the weapons had turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and the ATF official was worried that someone in the United States could be hurt next.

Acting Deputy Director William Hoover called an emergency meeting and said he wanted an "exit strategy" to shut down the program. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for decades had dedicated itself to stopping illegal gun-trafficking of any kind. Now it was allowing illegal gun purchases on the Southwest border and letting weapons "walk" unchecked into Mexico.

But those at the meeting, which included a Justice Department official, did not want to stop the illegal gun sales until they had something to show for their efforts. Hoover suggested a "30-day, 60-day or 90-day" exit plan that would shut Fast and Furious down for good — just as soon as there were some indictments.

But indictments did not come for another 10 months. By then, two semiautomatics had been recovered after a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed south of Tucson, and nearly 200 had been found at crime scenes in Mexico.

By now, “Gunwalker” and “Fast and Furious” have both entered the national lexicon. And although the amount of information known about the operations varies from person to person, the majority of Americans know they have something to do with the selling of guns to “straw purchasers” in the U.S., who were supposed to smuggle the guns into Mexico and put them in the hands of cartel members, who were then to be arrested.

What most people seem not to know is who exactly was behind the Gunwalker and Fast and Furious operations. Was it the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives)? Yes. Was it also Attorney General Eric Holder? Well, there’s no doubt he was instrumental in Gunwalker, and it’s now known that his chief of staff was briefed on Fast and Furious. So how about President Obama? What did he know? According to information that has surfaced during ongoing investigations by Rep. Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R.-Iowa), it’s certain that knowledge of Fast and Furious went all the way to the White House.

And let me say at the outset that no matter how much you do or don’t know about Fast and Furious, the one thing we must all accept is that it provides a picture of a federal agency, the ATF, gone rogue, and of government at its worst and most dangerous. For regardless of what this operation was implemented to be when it began under the auspices of Gunwalker in 2009, it is now the reckless operation that flooded the streets of Mexico and Phoenix, Ariz., with upwards of 2,500 weapons (34 of which were .50 sniper rifles with an effective lethal range of approximately 2,000 meters).

Griff;749593 wrote:

Merc "forgot" his link.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=45398

Also late Thursday, Sen. Charles Grassley's office revealed that 21 more Fast and Furious guns have been found at violent crime scenes in Mexico. That is up from 11 the agency admitted just last month.
“The Justice Department has been less than forthcoming since day one, so the revisions here are hardly surprising, and the numbers will likely rise until the more than 1,000 guns that were allowed to fall into the hands of bad guys are recovered -- most likely years down the road," Grassley said in a statement released Thursday.
"What we’re still waiting for are the answers to the other questions the Attorney General failed to answer per our agreement. The cooperation of the Attorney General and his staff is needed if we’re ever going to get to the bottom of this disastrous policy and help the ATF and the department move forward.”
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Grassley, R-Iowa, said they are expanding their investigation into the scandal on Thursday. In a strongly worded letter to Anne Scheel, the new U.S. attorney for Arizona, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee requested interviews, emails, memos and even hand-written notes from members of the U.S. attorney's office that played key roles in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) program.
Issa and Grassley said they want to speak with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Emory Hurley and Michael Morrissey, along with Patrick Cunningham, chief of the office’s Criminal Division.
Not only do congressional investigators want to "make sense" of details of the operation that allowed more than 2,000 guns to "walk" and later turn up at crime scenes on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, but they want to known why Hurley -- who knew almost immediately the guns found at Terry's crime scene belonged to Fast and Furious -- tried to "prevent the connection from being disclosed."
In an internal email the day after the murder, Hurley, and then-U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, decided not to disclose the connection, saying " ... this way we do not divulge our current case (Fast and Furious) or the Border Patrol shooting case."
“The level of involvement of the United States Attorney’s Office … in the genesis and implementation of this case is striking,” wrote Issa and Grassley.
The two claim witnesses have told them that recently reassigned Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley may have also prevented ATF agents from doing their jobs.
“Many ATF agents working on Operation Fast and Furious were under the impression that even some of the most basic law enforcement techniques typically used to interdict weapons required the explicit approval of your office, specifically that from Hurley,” the letter states.

Reporting from Washington— Newly obtained emails show that the White House was better informed about a failed gun-tracking operation on the border with Mexico than was previously known.

Three White House national security officials were given some details about the operation, dubbed Fast and Furious. The operation allowed firearms to be illegally purchased, with the goal of tracking them to Mexican drug cartels. But the effort went out of control after agents lost track of many of the weapons.

The supervisor of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation in Phoenix specifically mentioned Fast and Furious in at least one email to a White House national security official, and two other White House colleagues were briefed on reports from the supervisor, according to White House emails and a senior administration official.

But the senior administration official said the emails, obtained Thursday by The Times, did not prove that anyone in the White House was aware of the covert "investigative tactics" of the operation.

EXCERPT 3

Dealer: The most damning thing that you guys got to be aware of I think hypothetically is was there, you have to ask yourselves this first I'm just throwin this out there, was there a communication that hypothetically the US Attorney's office uh was entertained with the DOJ in reference to any ballistics tests or anything? Is there any way any of these idiots..

Agent: The problem is I mean we're not investigating that case.

Dealer: I know the FBI is.

Agent: And he's (Dodson) assigned to the FBI. I, I have not, I don't have any way of knowing what he has access to. And that's on the FBI. I mean that's on them. If they consider him, don't consider him an operational security issue, that's their f-----g fault. But I don't have access to that sh--, I don't know I have no idea what the FBI.

Dealer: (unintell.) I know you don't...I'm saying that's a whole parallel issue.

Agent: Right.

EXCERPT 4

Dealer: What about the emails copies he's got?

Agent: Those emails are a year ago that's why I wonder what he I mean

Dealer: Let me help you out. Here's what I smell. There's a reason you ran (unintell.) about not talking about any of your other agents out there.

Agent: Yeah.

Dealer: You got some rats in there honey...

(Crosstalk)

Dealer: I'll tell you some of these motherf-----s, I don't know if they're giving it to Dodson, I think they are, somebody's got some inter-agency copies not just this sh--.

Emails show top Justice Department officials knew of ATF gun program
Memos from 2010 show some in senior positions were aware of tactics used in a surveillance operation in which firearms were allowed into Mexico in a failed effort to catch drug cartel leaders.

The term "gun walking" is central to the failure of Fast and Furious. Agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders and arrest them. But they lost track of more than 2,000 weapons, and the Mexican government says some of them have turned up at about 170 crime scenes there. Two were recovered at the scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent's slaying in Arizona in December.

Justice Department officials have said repeatedly that they knew nothing of Fast and Furious tactics until ATF whistle-blowers went public this year with allegations that guns were being illegally purchased with the ATF's knowledge.

Justice Department officials, who asked not to be identified because of the ongoing investigations into Fast and Furious, said that although senior department officials knew that guns were "walked" in the Wide Receiver investigation, they were unaware that ATF agents were using similar tactics in Fast and Furious.

Jason Weinstein, deputy attorney general in the criminal division, brought up both cases in an October 2010 email, apparently concerned that they were going to overlap.

WASHINGTON - New documents obtained by CBS News show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress.

On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing,
"I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."

Yet internal Justice Department documents show that
at least ten months before that hearing, Holder began receiving frequent memos discussing Fast and Furious.

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the Oversight & Government Reform Committee, suggested Sunday that Attorney General Eric Holder has been withholding facts regarding the so-called "Fast & Furious" gunwalking scandal, and indicated that law enforcement could be concealing possibly illuminating evidence.

Issa appeared skeptical that Holder had known as little about the "Fast & Furious" operation as he indicated in a May 3 Judiciary Committee hearing, when he said, "I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast & Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."

Issa disputed that timing, and said Holder "clearly knew more than he said when he said he only first heard of this program a few weeks before.

Documents obtained by CBS News earlier this month indicate, too, that Holder had been briefed on "Fast & Furious" as far back as July 2010.

Issa said he believes there may have been another gun found at the scene of Terry's death - a weapon he dubbed "weapon number one" - and that if that gun exists and is proven to be the murder weapon, it would conclusively tie "Fast and Furious" to the murder.

"If weapon number one [which] appears to be missing were ballistically matched, we would have an absolute rather than the inconsistency," he said.

BigV;765634 wrote:

mercy you're a big sorry hypocrite.

in this thread, you go berserk about the government's actions that resulted in the death of some americans, but in the case where the other americans were killled by the actions of our government, you cheer.

dude, I totally get it when you say one wasn't the same as the other, fine. but you can't say that you invoke the LAW in one case (here) but ignore the LAW in the other case (there).

That just shows your hypocrisy, not even your nuance, or your judgment. You only demonstrate that you want what you want when you want it, and you're really flexible on when you're willing to invoke the rules. Like a child.

TheMercenary;765687 wrote:

The terrs gave up their "Rights" when they went to the other side IMHO.

TheMercenary;765687 wrote:

:lol: You really think big about yourself.

Pete Zicato;765691 wrote:

This comment is about as dumb as they come. This statement is totally antithetical to the goals and purpose of the US.

Cause he's a big man in many ways. You could take a lesson.

n an astonishing admission, Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress that a lack of gun control was to blame for the government selling guns to Mexican drug cartels.

Holder sent a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Charles Grassley, ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary, regarding recent revelations he was briefed on Operation Fast and Furious much earlier than he told Congress.

Operation Fast and Furious was a plan by government officials to permit illegal aliens to purchase and take weapons across the border. Once the guns crossed the border, agents often lost track of them. The guns have since been found to have been used in several crimes in the U.S., resulting in at least one death, border patrol agent Brian Terry.

In May, Holder appeared before Congress. At that time he was asked specifically when he first heard about Fast and Furious. Holder responded, “I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”

Recently released documents reveal that Holder received memos referring to the program in July, 2010. A July 5 memo said, “Operation Fast and Furious” involved a “firearms trafficking ring.”

Holder downplayed his Congressional testimony and claimed he misunderstood the question.

After being challenged by Issa for his answer, Holder fired off a letter to Congress claiming that he had never read the memos, and it was the responsibility of his staff to brief him on what they considered important.

Holder then went on to say that the reason the ATF was unable to prevent the weapons from being sold to the cartels was a lack of gun control and registration.

TheMercenary wrote:

Interesting. And this has little to do with Fast and Furious and the crimes by Holder and the Obama Administration... right?

TheMercenary;765982 wrote:

Where is the outrage?

http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/20/where-is-the-outrage-over-fast-and-furious/

TheMercenary;765982 wrote:

Where is the outrage?

http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/20/where-is-the-outrage-over-fast-and-furious/

After weeks of stonewalling by the Department of Justice, a clearer picture of what its top officials knew about BATFE’s Operation Fast and Furious, and when they knew it, is slowly beginning to emerge.

On Tuesday, Lanny Breuer, Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism about his knowledge of BATFE’s gunwalking operations, and his support for gun control.

In April 2010, Breuer says, he knew that BATFE agents had allowed hundreds of guns to be illegally purchased and smuggled to Mexican drug cartels in 2006 and 2007 as part of Wide Receiver, a Tucson-based operation similar to Fast and Furious, which was hatched out of Phoenix. Nevertheless, nearly a year later, when BATFE was accused of allowing guns to walk in Fast and Furious, Breuer suggested that he was convinced to not consider the allegations seriously. “I recall that both the leadership of ATF and the leadership of the United States Attorney's Offices in Arizona . . . were adamant about the fact that [gunwalking] was not, in fact, a condoned practice,” Breuer said. And as noted last week by the New York Times, last February the Justice Department sent a letter to Congress stating “A.T.F. makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transport into Mexico.”

Seeming to corroborate the 2007 date Breuer mentioned, the Associated Press reported today that a briefing paper prepared in 2007 for then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey “outlined failed attempts by federal agents to track illicitly purchased guns across the border into Mexico.” But why Breuer did not give more attention to the gunwalking claims made against Fast and Furious is as unclear to him as to the rest of the country. “I regret that in April of 2010 that I did not draw the connection between Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious,” Breuer said. “Moreover, I regret that even earlier this year, I didn't draw that connection.”

When it became Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s turn to question Breuer, the zealous anti-gun crusader from California tried to shift the focus of the hearings from battling international crime to battling those of us who support the Second Amendment.

The exchange between the two gun control supporters speaks for itself.

Feinstein: Mr. Breuer, in June of this year, I received a letter from the ATF. . . stating that 29,284 firearms [were] recovered in Mexico in '09 and 2010, and submitted to the ATF Tracing Center. With those weapons, 20,504, or 70 percent, were United States sourced. . . . Is it fair to say that 70 percent of the firearms showing up in Mexico are from the United States?

Breuer: Thank you, Senator, for the question, and for your leadership on this issue. . . . Of the 94,000 weapons that have been recovered in Mexico, 64,000 of those are traced to the United States. We have to do something to prevent criminals from getting those guns, Senator. . . .

Feinstein: . . . .“[W]e have very lax laws when it comes to guns. . . . And so the question comes, do you believe that if there were some form of registration when you purchase these firearms that that would make a difference?

Breuer: I do, Senator. . . . Today, Senator, we are not even permitted to have ATF receive reports about multiple sales of long guns, of any kind of semiautomatic weapon or the like. . . . Very few hunters in the United States or sports people and law-abiding people really need to have semiautomatic weapons or long guns. . . .”

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has been co-leading Congress’ investigation of Fast and Furious with Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), disagreed with Feinstein’s and Breuer’s claim that 70 percent of guns seized in Mexico come from the United States. “I released a report that I would like to ask be made a part of the record,” Senator Grassley said. “It refutes the numbers referenced early that 70 percent of the guns in Mexico came from the U.S. The answer isn't to clamp down on law abiding citizens or gun dealers.”

While Mr. Breuer’s testimony shined a glimmer of light on who knew what and when they knew it, about the BATFE’s most disastrous operation since the 1993 Waco raid, it obviously did not, nor was it intended to, lead Congress or the American people to a proper understanding of how many firearms have been smuggled to Mexico without BATFE’s help, since the Mexican drug cartels began waging war on their country. As has already been reported, many of the “guns traced to the U.S.” from Mexico were seized in that country many years ago, but have been only recently submitted for tracing at the urging of the BATFE. And to complicate things further, Mexican officials have acquiesced to BATFE’s urgings by submitting multiple trace requests on single guns.

Meanwhile, former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke in Arizona, who resigned in the wake of a congressional probe into Fast and Furious, has admitted leaking a sensitive memo about a federal agent who blew the whistle on the operation.

Mr. Grassley, Iowa Republican, said in a statement late Tuesday the leaked memo was “deemed so sensitive by the Justice Department” it was not provided to Congress, except in a secured room at Justice headquarters.

The leak targeted ATF Agent John Dodson, who told a House committee in June that ATF superiors told him to stand down and watch as weapons flowed from gun dealers in Arizona to drug cartels in Mexico as part of the Fast and Furious operation.

Mr. Grassley said the Justice Department has confirmed that its inspector general continues to investigate the leak, “which means there are others who may be involved in drafting and distributing” the leak to the press.

William Lajeunesse of Fox News has a big report today that suggests Holder’s Justice Department might not have taken congressional injunctions against Fast and Furious whistleblower retaliation to heart.

In fairness to Holder, it’s been a contention of his for the past several weeks that he doesn’t really pay much attention to internal memos, intelligence briefings, and stern warnings from angry members of Congress, so he might have missed it when Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) said “any attempt to retaliate against whistleblowers for their testimony today would be unfair, unwise, and unlawful.”

Six months later, Lajeunesse took stock of the situation, and found “those in charge of the botched operation have been reassigned or promoted, their pensions intact. But many of those who blew the whistle face isolation, retaliation and transfer.” Here’s the scorecard for the Fast and Furious management team:

Acting ATF Chief Ken Melson, who oversaw the operation, is now an adviser in the Office of Legal Affairs. He remains in ATF's Washington, D.C., headquarters.

Acting Deputy Director Billy Hoover, who knew his agency was walking guns and demanded an "exit strategy" just five months into the program, is now the special agent in charge of the D.C. office. He, too, did not have to relocate.

Deputy Director for Field Operations William McMahon received detailed briefings about the illegal operation and later admitted he shares "responsibility for mistakes that were made.” Yet, he also stays in D.C., ironically as the No. 2 man at the ATF's Office of Internal Affairs.

Special Agent in Charge of Phoenix Bill Newell, the man most responsible for directly overseeing Fast and Furious, was promoted to the Office of Management in Washington.

Phoenix Deputy Chief George Gillette was also promoted to Washington as ATF's liaison to the U.S. Marshal's Service.

Group Supervisor David Voth managed Fast and Furious on a day-to-day basis and repeatedly stopped field agents from interdicting weapons headed to the border, according to congressional testimony. ATF boosted Voth to chief of the ATF Tobacco Division, where he now supervises more employees in Washington than he ever did in Phoenix.

Meanwhile, key whistleblower ATF agent John Dodson was shuffled off to an FBI task force, and can’t even get into the ATF building with his access pass anymore. The brass said that contact with him “was detrimental to any ATF career.” U.S. attorney Dennis Burke admitted leaking documents to discredit Dodson.

Other agents found themselves demoted, reassigned, and generally floating in career dead zones. The pattern is consistent enough to be disturbing, and several of the agents involved have been disturbed enough to call for investigations. They’ll probably get about as far as the family of murdered U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, which spent Thanksgiving digesting the knowledge that the Obama Administration had sealed the court records in his case. Even the judge’s reason for sealing the case was sealed. Some very provocative details leaked out before all the envelopes were glued shut, but we should probably say no more about it, because the Attorney General told us not to.

And to think that Attorney General Eric Holder is getting testy about congressional calls for his resignation. After all, the Justice Department has nothing to hide, right?:

The Obama Administration has abruptly sealed court records containing alarming details of how Mexican drug smugglers murdered a U.S. Border patrol agent with a gun connected to a failed federal experiment that allowed firearms to be smuggled into Mexico.

This means information will now be kept from the public as well as the media. Could this be a cover-up on the part of the “most transparent” administration in history? After all, the rifle used to kill the federal agent (Brian Terry) last December in Arizona’s Peck Canyon was part of the now infamous Operation Fast and Furious. Conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the disastrous scheme allowed guns to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels.

Link via Judicial Watch. The murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent is related to the Justice Department willingly turning over thousands of guns to Mexican criminal gangs, and Obama administration is hiding information about his death from the public. Amazing.

Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation "Fast and Furious" to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.

PICTURES: ATF "Gunwalking" scandal timeline
In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the "big fish." But ATF whistleblowers told CBS News and Congress it was a dangerous practice called "gunwalking," and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

ATF officials didn't intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called "Demand Letter 3". That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or "long guns." Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.

On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF's Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:

"Bill - can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks."

Considering that the latest memo has ATF and DoJ officials plotting how to use Operation Fast and Furious as a political tool to push for more restrictive gun-control legislation,

BigV;779031 wrote:

you forgot your tinfoil hat smiley. you know, the one that keeps your head safely protected from facts and shit.

classicman;779061 wrote:

V, Have you paid ANY attention to this issue or watched any of the coverage on it or are you just defaulting to your standard position?

Cuz you really should.

BigV;779105 wrote:

I think you should have indicated that you were quoting another source for your recent post, when at first blush it looks like you're making statements of your own.

Second, at whatever level of attention I've been giving this issue, I am asking for ...(snip)
But I'm interested in more factual evidence. If you have that, and I don't, share it, won't you?

won't do my home work for me

come back for a more intelligent discussion

classicman;779153 wrote:

Really? Lets start a little more broadly with the overall issue, ok. Forget the memo that guy was talking about. Thats got very little to do with this issue. Why you are so fixated on that is beyond me. The memo isn't an issue right now. Get an overall understanding of whats happened first.

--snip

what the motivations were, who knew what and when did they know it, etc, etc. For sure.

Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar has filed a resolution in the House of Representatives pushing for vote of “no confidence” in Attorney General Eric Holder.

In a statement, Gosar denounced Holder’s continued refusal to comply with lawfully issued subpoenas and other official congressional requests for information.

“It is imperative that the citizens of our nation have confidence in our Attorney General,” Gosar said in the statement. “After months of evasive answers, silence and outright lies it is time that Congress speak up on behalf of the many people who have or will fall victims to the firearms in the flawed gunrunning operation Fast & Furious.”

There are currently 55 House members and two members of the Senate demanding Holder’s resignation, along with four GOP presidential candidates and two sitting governors. Many of those in Congress who have called for Holder’s ouster have also signed on to Gosar’s resolution.

Gosar’s no-confidence resolution is similar to a symbolic effort California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff spearheaded against Bush administration Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in 2007. Gonzales eventually resigned in a flurry of political pressure from Congress and the media.

Already, far more members have demanded Holder’s resignation than did Gonzales’, yet most media outlets have underplayed the issue. Holder did react harshly when TheDC confronted him a White House event on Nov. 29, alleging that TheDC is somehow “behind” the calls for his resignation and demanding that TheDC stop reporting on them.

Mexican authorities have arrested a reputed enforcer for the country's most powerful drug cartel -- a man also alleged to have amassed weapons from the U.S. government's failed Fast and Furious gun-smuggling operation (link, in Spanish, includes video).

Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, 33, is also wanted by U.S. officials on drug-trafficking charges in El Paso. Mexican and U.S. authorities say he served as a top lieutenant to Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and the Sinaloa Cartel and was in charge of operations in the border state of Chihuahua (link in Spanish).

It was there, in the violent city of Ciudad Juarez, that a raid by Mexican police in April 2011 turned up high-powered assault guns purchased illegally through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives "Fast and Furious" program. As the Washington Bureau's Richard A. Serrano reported last fall, the discovery confirmed that Fast and Furious weapons were reaching the ruthless Sinaloa organization and that the geographic spread of the "walked" guns was wider than originally thought.

aptured along with Torres Marrufo were two assault rifles and two automatic pistols, along with fake press ID badges, which Ramon Pequeno, head of the police anti-drug division, said the gangsters apparently used to move around more freely. Torres was presented to journalists over the weekend; standing handcuffed between masked, heavily armed federal agents, he wore blue jeans and a burgundy T-shirted emblazoned with the word, "Armani."

MRC analysts reviewed the Big Three network evening and morning news shows and found that while CBS aired 29 stories and 1 brief on Fast and Furious, ABC aired only one brief on the June 15, 2011 edition of Good Morning America. That was still better than what NBC did on their morning and evening news programs, as the gunwalking story has never been mentioned on either NBC Nightly News or the Today show.

Evidence photos just turned over to Congress under subpoena show a frightening stash of grenade parts, fuse assemblies and more than 2,000 rounds of ammunition. It was all hidden in a spare tire of an SUV crossing from the US to Mexico in 2010. The accused smuggler, an alleged drug cartel arms dealer named Jean Baptise Kingery, was questioned by agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) but released.

Documents handed over to Congress by the Justice Department shed new light on missteps in the grenades case, and how ATF tracked the suspect for years.

ATF started watching Kingery in "2004 related to AK47 purchases," according to an internal email, "it is believed that he is trafficking them to Mexico." A full five years later in late 2009, ATF also learned Kingery was dealing in grenades: he'd ordered 120 grenade bodies on the Internet.

Grenades are weapons of choice for Mexico's killer drug cartels. An attack on a casino in Mexico last year killed 53 people.

Documents show ATF secretly intercepted the grenade bodies Kingery had ordered, marked them, and delivered them to him on Jan. 26, 2010. Their plan was to follow Kingery to his weapons factory in Mexico, with help from Mexican authorities Immigration and Customs (ICE).

The plan to allow Kingery to traffic grenade parts into a foreign country and track him to his factory drew strong internal objections.

"That's not possible," wrote a lead ATF official in Mexico. "We are forbidden from doing that type of activity. If ICE is telling you they can do that, they are full of [expletive]..."

The Justice Department Inspector General is investigating the Kingery case along with ATF's Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed thousands of assault rifles and other weapons to "walk" into the hands of Mexican drug cartels in a failed attempt to take down a major cartel.

There are some similarities between the Kingery grenade case and Fast and Furious. The chief suspect in Fast and Furious, Manuel Celis-Acosta was stopped by law enforcement three times but released -- while allegedly trafficking firearms for cartels. It wasn't until weapons linked to him turned up at the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry that ATF finally charged Acosta.

The Kingery case and Fast and Furious were both supervised out of ATF's Phoenix office by Special Agent in Charge Bill Newell. It was Newell who wrote an email and delivered the bad news about Kingery to Washington DC headquarters: Mexican officials "lost Kingery" even though "they had plenty of notice and descriptive info."

Rewind to 2009. The fight over ObamaCare is raging, and a few news outlets report that something looks ethically rotten in the White House. An outside group funded by industry is paying the former firm of senior presidential adviser David Axelrod to run ads in favor of the bill. That firm, AKPD Message and Media, still owes Mr. Axelrod money and employs his son.

The story quickly died, but emails recently released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee ought to resurrect it. The emails suggest the White House was intimately involved both in creating this lobby and hiring Mr. Axelrod's firm—which is as big an ethical no-no as it gets.

Mr. Axelrod—who left the White House last year—started AKPD in 1985. The firm earned millions helping run Barack Obama's 2008 campaign. Mr. Axelrod moved to the White House in 2009 and agreed to have AKPD buy him out for $2 million. But AKPD chose to pay Mr. Axelrod in annual installments—even as he worked in the West Wing. This agreement somehow passed muster with the Office of Government Ethics, though the situation at the very least should have walled off AKPD from working on White-House priorities.

It didn't. The White House and industry were working hand-in-glove to pass ObamaCare in 2009, and among the vehicles supplying ad support was an outfit named Healthy Economy Now (HEN). News stories at the time described this as a "coalition" that included the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the American Medical Association, and labor groups—suggesting these entities had started and controlled it.

House emails show HEN was in fact born at an April 15, 2009 meeting arranged by then-White House aide Jim Messina and a chief of staff for Democratic Sen. Max Baucus. The two politicos met at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) and invited representatives of business and labor.

Dear Chairman Issa and Ranking Member Cummings:

On behalf of the National Rifle Association of America,
I am writing in support of the Committee’s resolution recommending
that the House find Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. in contempt of Congress.<snip>

Heightening the NRA’s concerns—and requiring our involvement
—is the White House’s use of this program to advance its gun control agenda.
The White House actively sought information from the operation to support
its plan to demand reporting of multiple rifle sales by the nearly
9,000 federally licensed firearm dealers in border states.

It is no secret that the NRA does not admire Attorney General Holder.
For years, we have pointed out his history of anti-Second Amendment advocacy and enforcement actions.<snip>

This is an issue of the utmost seriousness and [COLOR="DarkRed"]the NRA will consider this vote in our future candidate evaluations[/COLOR].

If you have any questions about our position on this issue, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,
Chris W. Cox
Executive Director
NRA

"Since taking office, Attorney General Holder has seized on the violence in Mexico to promote the lie that &#8220;90 percent&#8221; of firearms used in Mexican crime come from the U.S.; to call for bringing back the 1994 Clinton gun ban; and to justify the illegal multiple sales reporting scheme, which amounts to gun registration for honest Americans who buy long guns in southwest border states."

DanaC;816492 wrote:

Don't understand why Obama used his executive privelege on this. It's toxic ffs.

DanaC;816816 wrote:

In which case......wtf use his executive privelege?

In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, Holder's deputy said
that the attorney general properly withheld the documents under "executive privilege,"
which allows President Barack Obama to keep private documents on internal government discussions.

"The department will not bring the Congressional contempt citation before a grand jury
or take any other action to prosecute the attorney general," said Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

Lamplighter;816483 wrote:

Politics supercedes all else...

NRA Statement on Fast & Furious

Ammoland
posted June 21, 2012

An internal Justice Department review released today criticizes senior DOJ officials
for their roles in the failed Operation Fast and Furious gun-smuggling program,
but clears Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. of personal knowledge about
the two major accusations from congressional Republicans.

The 471-page report from the DOJ inspector general's office, released this afternoon,
presents a comprehensive review of Operation Fast and Furious and will be the subject
of a hearing Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Relations Committee,
chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).<snip>

[QUOTE]"In the course of our review we identified individuals ranging from line agents and prosecutors
in Phoenix and Tucson to senior ATF officials in Washington, D.C., who bore a share of responsibility
for ATF's knowing failure in both these operations to interdict firearms illegally destined for Mexico,
and for doing so without adequately taking into account the danger to public safety
that flowed from this risky strategy,"

"We also found failures by Department officials related to these matters,
including failing to respond accurately to a Congressional inquiry about them."

"It is unfortunate that some were so quick to make baseless accusations
before they possessed the facts about these operations — accusations that turned out to be without foundation and that have caused
a great deal of unnecessary harm and confusion,"

"I hope today's report acts as a reminder of the dangers of adopting as fact
unsubstantiated conclusions before an investigation of the circumstances is completed."