Posted on 06/06/2012 12:28:02 PM PDT by neverdem
Sealed applications for wiretaps – approved by senior DOJ officials and obtained by the Oversight Committee – detail gunwalking efforts
WASHINGTON— Today, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa confronted Attorney General Eric Holder with new documents showing that senior Justice Department Officials in Washington were given specific information about reckless tactics in Operation Fast and Furious. In a letter, Issa rebuked the Attorney General for his continuing efforts to mislead Congress about both the contents of the wiretap applications and details of who knew about and gave approval for reckless tactics. While refusing to produce the subpoenaed documents, Holder has previously denied knowledge of and cast doubt on the possibility that the wiretap applications contained information about reckless tactics.
“The wiretap applications show that immense detail about questionable investigative tactics was available to the senior officials who reviewed and authorized them. The close involvement of these officials – much greater than previously known – is shocking,” Issa wrote to Holder. “Throughout the course of the congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious, the [Justice] Department has consistently denied that any senior officials were provided information about the tactics used in Operation Fast and Furious. The wiretap applications obtained by the Committee show such statements made by senior Department officials regarding the wiretaps to be false and misleading. You have repeatedly either denied involvement by senior officials in Fast and Furious, or asserted that the wiretap applications do not contain rich detail about irresponsible investigative tactics.”
Wiretaps utilized in Operation Fast and Furious were intended to allow investigators in Arizona to listen to the phone calls of suspects as part of a strategy to reveal evidence of involvement by high level Mexican cartel associates. The six applications for wiretaps, which have been sealed by a federal judge, detail specific actions taken by agents in Operation Fast and Furious. This includes conscious decisions not to interdict weapons that agents knew were illegally purchased by smugglers taking weapons to Mexico.
The wiretaps, as required by federal law, were submitted to Washington for approval by senior Justice Department officials in the Washington based Criminal Division of the Justice Department. They were approved under the authority of Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer of the Criminal Division. To justify the need for the invasive law enforcement tool, Justice Department officials use robust and detailed information to explain the evidence used to merit its use and why other tactics are not sufficient to achieve the goals of the operation.
Information contained in the wiretaps had been subpoenaed by the Oversight Committee, but the Justice Department had refused to turn them over to investigators. Obtaining them answers some of the questions the Committee and House leadership have warned(PDF) Attorney General Holder he must fully address to avoid contempt proceedings. To date, Holder has not responded to this letter. As the wiretaps have been sealed, the committee cannot publicly release them but copies have been sent to the committee minority and the wiretaps are available for review by Members of the Committee.
Click here for the letter from Chairman Issa to Attorney General Eric Holder(PDF?)
Leaking the contents of sealed applications for wiretaps is not the sign of an investigation ready to close up shop IMHO.
WHI says Jarrett has gotten to someone on the Republican side.
This one is going to be hard for Holder to avoid. They have proof the DOJ applied for wiretaps in 2010, before Holder or anyone “knew” about it.
Holder will say, of course, that oh those bastages lied to him and he can’t do anything about that.
Doesn’t matter. He’s in charge, he’s the top dog. If he can’t handle his underlings he’s not competent enough to do the job. Either way, he’s not looking good and the responsibility is on his shoulders.
I don't know what that's supposed to mean. This isn't Watergate. There are hundreds of dead Mexicans and two dead American federal law enforcement officers.
You don't have apparently illegal leaks like this without playing for keeps.
It may just be me, but this lying to Congress by the Attorney General of the United States to cover up responsibility of the death of a border patrol agent is much more egregious than lying to Congress about steroid use by a major league baseball player.
Why of course... it would then be incumbent upon him to investigate THAT and prosecute those who “misled” him. The point is, someone’s going to get tossed under the bus. The only question is, who.
It may just be me, but this lying to Congress by the Attorney General of the United States to cover up responsibility of the death of a border patrol agent is much more egregious than lying to Congress about steroid use by a major league baseball player.
Now we can only believe that Holder is Lieing Absolutely!
or he tolerates Senior Officials in His Administration who Lie to HIM!!
Either way, HOLDER STINKS and should be prosecuted for Grand Treason and Perjury, and probably COLD BLOODED MURDER!
Which would be reflected in an easing of the Issa investigation... but I don’t see that here. Please elaborate.
Remember that the Demorats are pushing the Steroid Case!
Must be a Smoke Screen to hide their Corruption and Decay!
It means that Jarrett threatened someone. If you read the blogs of the two guys who broke this story you will see they also think something is wrong .
I have always said that this will not go anywhere because there is no doubt in my mind that the CIA was involved in this.
““Former deep undercover DEA agent Mike Levine, who has extensive experience working in Latin America, offers his take on ATF’s Fast and Furious, a view that is grounded in first-hand knowledge of the drug war and its sordid history:
… Running guns into Mexico into the hands of criminals? There can be no objective to this but death, and lots of it.
The events in Operation Fast and Furious are eerily identical to those surrounding the arrest of General Ramon Guillen Davila, a CIA asset who was [indicted for] smuggling a ton of cocaine into the US [in] 1996, in what was described as an intelligence gathering operation, the problem being that no intelligence was ever gathered and that the ton was only one of many other similar shipments of cocaine that actually hit the streets of the U.S. by way of CIA agents.
If I were a criminal profiler, it wouldn’t take much to identify a CIA pattern here [with Fast and Furious]: A wacko, barroom commando, illegal operation that makes no sense whatsoever, run outside the control of law enforcement.””
So, some mole in the CIA managed to punk the BATFE into walking guns to his homies?
How embarrassing!
But it would make Gunwalker make sense.
My theory is that the coopted the operation. Took it over.
CIA trumps all.
Boehnless?
Still, why would the BATFE want to be the fall guys for some mole in the CIA? Why aren’t they singing like they were in Carnegie Hall?
See the Franklin Cover up as to why people don’t sing. People end up dead.
But in this case, it could very well be that not many knew.
There is absolutely no way all of this was going on without the knowledge of the CIA.
The CIA has a history of creating chaos to achieve some goal.
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