Another ‘Fast and Furious’ Memo Released

The day before the Justice Department broadly, and falsely, denied that guns had “walked” as part of the botched “Fast and Furious” gun-smuggling operation, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told supervisors in a memo that he had expressed his concerns about the operation to Congressional investigators.

In a July 3 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) questioned whether the memo should have raised red flags at the Justice Department.

“The possibility that DOJ was aware of this memorandum on February 3, 2011, and still sent the erroneous letter to Congress on February 4, 2011, raises more questions about DOJ’s claim that faulty information from Department components inadvertently led to the false letter,” Grassley said.

The memo, from ATF Special Agent Gary Styers, documents a conversation that Styers had on July 2, 2011, with investigators from Grassley’s office.

"Downey and Donovan asked Special Agent Styers what he felt was incorrect about the way the Fast and Furious case was conducted. Special Agent Styers explained that first and foremost, it is unheard of to have an active wiretap investigation without full time dedicated surveillance units on the ground. Special Agent Styers said that other agencies or task force officers may have been used to conduct surveillance and respond to calls of FFLs, but it seemed that either the case agent or Group Supervisor would poll the office for agents who were available to respond at short notice.
Secondly, Special Agent Styers said that it appeared odd to have a majority of ATF Agents working on a wiretap investigation, who had never worked such a case. Especially, when numerous, permanent Group VII agents and detailers had previous wiretap experience."

Gee...if I didn't know any better, I would think that Holder/DOJ wanted Face and Furious to fail in its alleged objective to get to cartel members and arrest them via F&F. In fact, I would have a strong suspicion that that objective was nothing more than a ruse for the unstated objective: get a bill passed to remove gun rights. Yep, that's what it is all about. Why else would DOJ 1) not follow criminal straw purchasers; 2) use incompetent/inexperienced agents to wire tap; 3) ignore the sound and competent procedural advice of experienced agents; and 4) use circular logic regarding firearms tracing. Does this even make any sense?: the special agent was told he had to 'trace firearms that had not been recovered' instead of ATF using their own Suspect Gun Database so that 'if someone else traced the firearms, they would know the firearms were connected to the case [the] Special Agent was assigned? (say again?)

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