MURDERGATE:
A million times worse than Watergate.
Posted on 06/24/2012 6:42:36 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross
Pity lead House Republican investigator Rep. Darrell Issa of California. It is his misfortune that he isn’t looking into matters about which the Obama administration can talk freely — namely, all its covert national-security programs.
If Justice Department documents that Issa’s committee seeks from Attorney General Eric Holder had been the subject of a top-secret meeting in the White House Situation Room, their contents already would have been splashed across the media. Issa could read the A1 New York Times story and be done with it.
But the Holder documents are an entirely different matter. They relate to the bizarrely misconceived Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed guns purchased from U.S. shops to fall into the hands of Mexican drug gangs on the theory that . . . well, it’s not clear exactly what the theory was. Somehow, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives thought that letting 2,000 guns “walk” into the arsenals of bad actors with no means of tracking them would be a devastating blow against gun-trafficking.
The cone of silence has slammed shut on the latest batch of Fast and Furious documents subpoenaed by Issa. When it is a secret, high-tech program to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program, administration officials are chatty and expansive; when it is documents that could further embarrass Attorney General Holder, their rule is “Loose lips sink ships.” President Barack Obama is making a dubious claim of executive privilege to protect documents that, if they are truly of no consequence, there’s no reason to protect.
From the beginning, Holder’s Justice Department hasn’t been able to keep its story straight on Fast and Furious, although it’s always insisted that top officials had no prior knowledge of it. In a February 2011 letter, it told Congress that the ATF made “every effort” to interdict the guns before they got into Mexico (wrong) and that it hadn’t “‘sanctioned’ or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons” to suspicious people (false). The proximate cause of the current showdown is Issa’s quest to see documents that might shed more light on who worked up and approved the misleading letter.
The head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Lanny Breuer, didn’t bother to tell Congress in testimony that he saw drafts of the letter and forwarded them to his personal e-mail account. Now he’s been afflicted with a severe case of Beltway amnesia. “I cannot say for sure,” he has told Congress, “whether I saw a draft of the letter.” Poor Mr. Breuer just can’t recall.
His boss has, at times, given the impression of mistaking congressional hearings for an Abbott and Costello skit. Asked about an e-mail between top Justice officials with a reference in it to Fast and Furious back in 2010, Holder insisted — with comic brazenness — that the e-mail didn’t refer to Fast and Furious. He had to backtrack the other day from his contention in congressional testimony that his predecessor, Bush attorney general Michael Mukasey, had been briefed about a Bush-era gun program loosely resembling Fast and Furious. As a mercy to his attorney general, Obama should make up some claim of executive privilege that keeps him from subjecting himself to the rigors of congressional testimony ever again.
When White House spokesman Jay Carney said in his briefing that the claim of executive privilege was all about principle, reporters laughed. Executive privilege is important to protecting communications involving the president and his staff. It was never meant as an all-purpose shield to keep cabinet agencies from having to cooperate with congressional investigations. Obama’s claim in this instance is so risible it naturally raises the suspicion that the documents must contain more discomfiting information for Holder.
If the documents back the Justice Department’s contention that it has dealt openly and honestly with Congress, why wouldn’t they be made public like all other information — even classified information — helpful to the administration’s public image? If Holder can’t quite bring himself to turn them over to Congress, surely he can leak them.
When they're not leaking vital national security secrets, they're claiming executive priviledge regarding "The People's" business. The head mobster likes to make comparisons to Lincoln. Completely opposed to the corrupt WithHolder, President Lincoln spoke about a broad, united, God-fearing, honorable and legal 'People' ....
We all know why Obama claims Executive Privilege, and in this case he has a case.
Executive Privilege was meant to protect a presidents confidential communications between he and his staff.
President Obama by claiming Executive privilege— admits his total involvement in Fast & Furious and has every right to claim it , since he was in on it from the beginning.
I think one of the best kept secrets surrounding Obama is that from Day One he was never allowed to control the launching of any ballistic nuclear missile. Obama may think he has the power but it was decreed behind other closed doors that Obama would be lead to believe he is in control.
Also was the very important briefings of certain black book projects from advanced weaponry to even UFO research, they fed Obama a song and dance act. They knew he was an idiot affirmative actor back then, we need to remind Obama of this now and then.
A million times worse than Watergate.
Possibly the most apt sentence ever published about Fast and Furious.
It would be more accurate to say ‘those runing the ATF thought’ ... agents int he field were shocked at the change in the previous program and a couple or three have now become the whistleblowers exposing this evil.
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