Posted on 04/01/2014 8:37:39 PM PDT by smoothsailing
Some materials "highly redacted"
by Sharyl Attkisson April 1, 2013
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) Director Todd Jones today met a 5 p.m. deadline to provide Congress with some information related to disciplinary action, or lack thereof, against key players involved in ATF’s Fast and Furious gunwalking case.
That’s according to an official with the House Oversight Committee who says committee members haven't yet thoroughly reviewed the materials but that they are often “highly redacted.”
Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) set the deadline in a letter to Jones last week asking why several ATF employees blamed by the Inspector General for mismanagement or misconduct 19 months ago still work for ATF and apparently haven’t been disciplined, or if they have, why the information hasn’t been made public. The employees are: ATF Fast and Furious case agent Hope MacAllister, former ATF Deputy Assistant Director for Field Operations William McMahon, and ATF Special Agent in Charge Bill Newell.
Read the Inspector General's findings against MacAllister, McMahon and Newell
Issa and Grassley allege that Jones has misused the Privacy Act in the past to withhold the requested information, even though such disclosures to Congress are permitted.
In a related development, the Arizona State Bar recently recommended disciplinary action against former Justice Department U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, alleging unethical conduct for leaking confidential government documents in Fast and Furious. One of the documents Burke leaked was allegedly intended to smear the key whistleblower in Fast and Furious: ATF Special Agent John Dodson.
Burke is one of a number of officials who resigned in the wake of the scandal. He is quoted by The Arizona Republic as saying he leaked the documents in an effort to stand up for his office because doing so “was not a main priority” for the Department of Justice as the scandal unfolded. The newspaper quotes Burke as saying, “Releasing the documents led to greater transparency than was otherwise going to be provided.”
In an agreement made public last week, state bar investigators said that Burke released the documents because the Justice Department, due to its own political interests, failed to come to the defense of Burke’s office when it faced allegations that it had “failed to take actions that would have prevented the death of a federal agent.”
Burke was in charge of the U.S. Attorney’s office that oversaw the Fast and Furious gunwalking case in which ATF agents allowed thousands of weapons to flow into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Some ATF managers who supported the controversial strategy aimed at building a major case to take down a big fish in a drug cartel blamed Burke's office for allegedly requiring an inordinate burden of proof to prosecute gun crimes.
In December of 2010, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in Arizona near the Mexico border by illegal immigrants armed with at least two AK-47 type rifles sold and trafficked as part of the Fast and Furious case. The Justice Department Inspector General who investigated Fast and Furious faulted Burke for the improper document leaks.
The state bar settlement concluded Burke’s misconduct in leaking documents did not cause “actual harm” to a client, and that Burke had no “selfish or pecuniary motive.” It recommends Burke receive a reprimand and pay $1,200 to cover costs.
In August of 2011, Burke gave a transcribed interview with Congressional investigators about the broader Fast and Furious strategy in which he stated, “I need to take responsibility, and this is a case, as reflected by the work of this investigation, it should not have been done the way it was done.” Burke also said, “Just as one example…one of the defendants, Patino, ended up a straw purchaser of over 700 weapons. That’s indefensible. That is not something that I’m going to defend.”
The Justice Department has refused media and Congressional requests for an accounting of where the gunwalked weapons are turning up. In addition to Fast and Furious, ATF was overseeing alleged gunwalking operations including “Too Hot to Handle” in Dallas, Texas; “Castaway” in Tampa, Florida; and cases in Evansville, Indiana; Columbus, New Mexico; and Houston, Texas.
Through sources and tracing reports, we know that three weapons turned up at crime scenes in Mexico in August of 2013. All three were WASR-10 762-calibur Romanian rifles.
In November 2012, a Fast and Furious weapon was recovered after a shootout between a Mexican drug cartel and soldiers in which a beauty queen was killed.
Two weapons used in the murder of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico on Feb. 14, 2011 also came from suspects who were under ATF watch but not arrested at the time.
And a grenade used in a violent fight between drug cartels and Mexican police in Oct. 2013 was believed to have been connected to an alleged firearms trafficker that U.S. officials allowed to operate for years, despite significant evidence that he was moving massive amounts of grenade parts and ammunition to Mexico’s ruthless drug cartels. Three policemen and four cartel members were killed in that battle.
The House Oversight Committee is still pursuing federal court litigation after the June 2012 House of Representatives vote holding U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over subpoenaed documents in Fast and Furious. President Obama exerted executive privilege to withhold information.
Holder should know “if you can’t do the time then don’t do the crime”.
If all the material given is “highly redacted”, they didn’t meet the Congressional deadline.
Sheryl was let go, more or less, so let’s everybody be sure to click on all her links, and help her succeed.
We need a Constitutional amendment saying any information between branches of the government can’t be redacted.
On this side of the border it's violations of the RICO Act. In Mexico and Honduras it's state-sponsored terrorism.
What else would you call heavily arming international criminal syndicates within a foreign country wherein that country is in a death struggle with those syndicates?
Especially when it goes beyond thousands of assault rifles to include grenades, RPGs, shoulder fired rockets, anti-aircraft guns, night vision equipment, body armor and special deals to bring their drugs onto our soil with legal impunity?
Not to mention that the rip crew that killed BP Agent Brian Terry was there with DEA and FBI assistance and approval to attack and kill a rival cartel's smuggling crew.
Let's not leave out the DEA laundering millions of dollars for the drug cartels by setting up bank accounts for them that they otherwise couldn't do.
It's organized, it is spread through every Federal LEA and it violates numerous domestic laws and numerous statutes and treaties that deal with foreign nations. Yet none of it has been officially sanctioned. It's the FedGov acting like mafiosa.
DHS Complicit In Drug Cartel Human Trafficking
CONFIRMED: The DEA Struck A Deal With Mexico's Most Notorious Drug Cartel
businessinsider Jan. 13, 2014
0bama, Holder and Hillary Clinton are all deeply involved in this and it is state-sponsored terrorism. These criminal thugs are dragging our country down to the level of Tehran and Pyongyang.
Bureaucratically Off the BATFE.
The list, Ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
I think the writer doesn't know guns very well. A 762 caliber rifle would be huge! Should have been 7.62 mm.
I am sure the highly redacted material referenced in the threafd article will be most useful./S
Exactly. ATF doesn’t deal with national security. They don’t get to redact.
Happy to see Sharyl Attkisson coming right out covering this, it shows even though the MSM won’t she will be and she still has contacts.
It also shows there was no deal with CBS to silence her for a period of time.
Except that Fast & Furious is state-sponsored terrorism, and probably the easiest treason case to get a conviction in seventy years.
So, yeah, the ATF has everything to redact.
Buy her book. She got slammed for being a good journalist. http://www.sharylattkisson.com/home.html
Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington [Hardcover]
Sharyl Attkisson (Author)
She’s still writing the book. It has a November release date. I plan on ordering through Amazon around then.
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