Posted on 07/13/2011 10:05:58 AM PDT by RummyChick
Just received a pdf of this letter sent yesterday to John Morton, Director of ICE. It is apparent that at some point, the Obama administration is going to have to respond to questions about Tampa-Honduras gunwalking. I will post the pdf link when I have it.
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/
July 12, 2011
The Honorable John Morton Director U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department of Homeland Security 500 12th Street, S.W. Washington, D.C. 20536
Dear Director Morton:
We are concerned about recent reports that suggest similarities between “Operation Castaway,” a firearms trafficking investigation led by the Tampa Field Offices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and “Operation Fast and Furious,” an ATF program that provided firearms to Mexican drug trafficking organizations. Specifically, reports indicate that firearms under “Operation Castaway” may have been provided to dangerous criminal gangs in Honduras, including MS-13.
If true, these reports raise serious questions about the leadership of the ICE and ATF Tampa Field Offices. We support ICE’s efforts to disrupt criminal syndicates that traffic in firearms, drugs, and other illicit substances. However, when those efforts serve to fuel the operations of criminal enterprises through the provision of firearms, they must be stopped and those responsible must be held accountable. In an effort to address this issue, we would appreciate your response to the following questions.
1. What role did ICE agents and leadership play in “Operation Castaway?”
2. Can you confirm whether “Operation Castaway” included a gun walking scheme that allowed weapons to be trafficked to Honduras? If so, have any of these firearms ended up in the possession of the notorious MS-13 gang?
3. How many guns have been allowed to pass into Honduras and how many have since been accounted for?
4. Were these weapons subject to any special monitoring processes once they left the United States?
5. Is “Operation Castaway” still ongoing? If so, are you, in coordination with the ATF, planning to terminate the program?
We find it extremely troubling that the United States government would willfully allow weapons to be acquired by dangerous criminal and drug trafficking organizations, in direct contravention of our strategic and national interests. We look forward to receiving your responses to these questions in a timely manner.
Sincerely,
Gus Bilirakis, U.S. Representative, Florida, 9th District
Michael McCaul, U.S. Representative, Texas, 10th District
Candice Miller, U.S. Representative, Michigan, 10th District
The list, ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
http://www.nachumlist.com/gunrunner.htm
http://candicemiller.house.gov/about/index.shtml
Congresswoman Miller is currently serving her fifth term after first being elected to office in November 2002. She proudly sits on two committees: the House Committee on Homeland Security and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
http://mccaul.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=2§iontree=2
HOMELAND SECURITY
Congressman McCaul has spent six years as a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security. He currently serves as the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Management. The subcommittee has oversight jurisdiction of all Department of Homeland Security operations
I personally believe that “Castaways, Gunrunner, Gunwalker, Fast & Furious” were put in place to allow US purchased firearms to be used in Mexico and The United States by crimnals to justify more anti-gun legislation and regulation. This is not just crinimal but an attempt to subvert the our constitutional rights. The BATF needs to be seriously pared down and re-directed and ANYONE in government that had knowledge of it should be prosecuted.
Keep up the drumbeat!
If a person conducts a straw purchase for a prohibited individual, the buyer is subject to a 10-year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine.
If the prohibited individual commits murder with the weapon, the buyer can be charged as an accessory to murder, or, in the case of federal crimes, charges equal to the principal.
See below:
The U.S. criminal code makes aiding and abetting a federal crime itself a crime:
(a) Whoever aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures the commission of an offense, is punishable as a principal.
(b) Whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another would be an offense, is punishable as a principal.
SipseyStreetIrregulars must have forgotten to include all the other pages of signatures from the rest of the folks in Congress.
/sarc.
Any chance Sheriff Joe (or like-minded CLEOs) could be persuaded to start pressing charges as indicated?
Gus currently serves on the Committees on Homeland Security, Veterans’ Affairs and Foreign Affairs.
Gus Bilirakis is from Tarpon Springs in Pinnellas County - a fairly good Republican when I lived in Tarpon Springs.
I moved 54 miles to Dover, in South Hillsborough County, and he's still my Congresscritter.
Is his a gerrymandered district?
Anyway, Gus refused to release an un-redacted copy of The Barrett Report to me, the report that would put both Klintoons in jail.
Then again, not a single other Congresscritter in the House will release it either, even though THEY can read it, and we-the-people paid for it ......................... FRegards
Methinks this is all going to end badly, and not in the way this marxist administration thinks.
Give our best to mata Sherry.
5.56mm
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