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WASHINGTON - "Watch your back," the gun dealer warns the ATF Agent in an audio recording obtained by CBS News. The secretly recorded conversations are between the primary gun dealer cooperating with ATF in its "Fast and Furious" operation, Andre Howard, and lead case ATF agent Hope MacAllister. Howard owns Lone Wolf Trading Company in Glendale, Arizona. Secret recordings raise new questions in AFT 'Gunwalker' case As CBS News first reported last February, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allegedly allowed thousands of weapons to "walk" onto the streets without interdiction into the hands of suspected traffickers for...

CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson has revealed a recent document submitted by the Department of Justice to congressional investigators. The document shows that guns linked to Operation Fast and Furious are responsible for at least three more murders in addition to the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry: Weapons linked to ATF’s controversial “Fast and Furious” operation have been tied to at least eight violent crimes in Mexico including three murders, four kidnappings and an attempted homicide. According to a letter from U.S. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), the...

Weapons linked to ATF's controversial "Fast and Furious" operation have been tied to at least eight violent crimes in Mexico including three murders, four kidnappings and an attempted homicide. According to a letter from U.S. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the disclosed incidents may be only a partial list of violent crimes linked to Fast and Furious weapons because "ATF has not conducted a comprehensive independent investigation." When added to the guns found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in the U.S., the newly-revealed murders in...

Fox News is reporting that a third gun apparently found at the murder scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was linked to Operation Fast and Furious, but its existence may have been deliberately concealed by the FBI to protect the identity of an informant “who works inside a major Mexican cartel.” That informant, according to the report by Fox reporter William Lajuenesse, “provided the money to obtain the weapons used to kill Terry.” This tends to support statements made by Kenneth Melson, former acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, to congressional investigators in a...

I just got off the blower with Brent R. Weil [above] 0f Kightlinger and Gray, LLP. The Evansville, Indiana lawyer represents the [as yet unnamed] gun store that sold firearms to ATF-enabled straw purchasers. “The ATF told my client to let the sales go through,” Mr. Weil told TTAG. “He later told me that the guns went to Chicago gangs.” In one case, a straw purchaser failed to pass the FBI’s NICS [National Instant Check System] background check . . . The dealer called an ATF agent in the parking lot; the agent told the dealer to let the sale...

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has acknowledged an Indiana dealer’s cooperation in conducting straw purchases at the direction of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.  Exclusive documents obtained by Gun Rights Examiner show the dealer cooperated with ATF by selling guns to straw purchasers, and that bureau management later asserted these guns were being traced to crimes. From the confidential source providing the documents: The dealer…was sent a "demand letter," based on the number of traces to him, which was retracted after his attorney pointed out they resulted from his cooperation with ATF. (Strangely, he...

At least three White House officials had some knowledge of a controversial federal gun-running investigation that resulted in a large number of guns falling into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, according to emails the Justice Department sent to Congress. However, the emails do not indicate that the White House aides were briefed on the most controversial aspect of Operation Fast and Furious: the practice of allowing guns to “walk” or move across the border with little or no interference by law enforcement officials despite their suspicions that the guns were headed for drug gangs. The new emails, delivered to...

“These guns went to ruthless criminals,” Carlos Canino, ATF Acting Attaché to Mexico said in testimony on Capitol Hill Tuesday regarding the scandal-plagued Operation Fast and Furious. “It’s alleged that over 2,000 guns were trafficked in this investigation. To put that in context, upon information and belief, the U.S. Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment has approximately 2,500 rangers. That means that as a result of this investigation, the Sinaloa cartel may have received almost as many guns that are needed to arm the entire regiment. Out of these 2,000 weapons, 34 were .50-caliber sniper rifles. That is approximately the number of...

The Obama administration sought to intimidate witnesses into not testifying to Congress on Tuesday about whether ATF knowingly allowed weapons, including assault rifles, to be “walked” into Mexico, the chairman of a House committee investigating the program said in an interview Monday. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, California Republican, said at least two scheduled witnesses expected to be asked about a controversial weapons investigation known as “Fast and Furious”received warning letters from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to limit their testimony. Mr. Issa's committee is set to hear testimony from six current...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Libya has become a new source of smuggled weaponry for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, a senior Israeli official said on Thursday. With eastern Libya largely held by rebels who rose up against Muammar Gaddafi in February, arms were being brought across the border, through neighboring Egypt, to the Islamist Hamas-ruled territory, Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon said. "Weapons are available in Libya as a result of the unstable situation there, and Hamas has exploited it to buy weapons from Libyan smugglers," he told foreign journalists in a briefing, without elaborating on the kind of munitions involved.

ATF Acting Director Ken Melson's testimony shows just how far the DOJ has gone to impede the investigation and to protect political appointees.Attorney General Eric Holder continues to duck responsibility for Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed more than 2,500 weapons, including thousands of AK-47 variants and .50 caliber sniper rifles, across the Mexican border and into the hands of the cartels. The weapons were used to murder Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and an estimated 150 Mexican nationals. In May of this year, Holder was called to testify in front of Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) House Committee on Oversight...

Email Confirms ‘Gunwalker’ Known Throughout Justice Department The October 27, 2009 email from ATF Phoenix Field Division Special Agent in Charge (SAC) William Newell regarded a Southwest Border Strategy Group meeting that focused on Fast and Furious. It contained a laundry list of high ranking Justice Department officials that attended the meeting, including: * Assistant Attorney General (Criminal Division) Lanny Breuer, * Kenneth Melson, Acting Director, ATF * William Hoover, Acting Deputy Director, ATF * Michele Leonhart, Administrator, DEA * Robert Mueller, Director FBI Four other Justice Department directors or their representatives came from the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task...

When the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee released a report -- “The Department of Justice’s Operation Fast and Furious: Accounts of ATF Agents -- it infuriated law enforcement officers and American citizens across the country. One police commander in New Jersey told Law Enforcement Examiner, "We need to get to the bottom of this renegade operation fast. I am furious that our government actually contributed to the killing of two American law enforcement officers -- one in the U.S., the other in Mexico." The at times shocking report includes testimony from four Bureau of...

Gunwalker: Holder’s resignation is almost inevitable And the only way that doesn’t happen is if he is fool-enough to stay in office, Obama is fool-enough not to fire him, and Congress has no choice but to remove him from office. Consider: On the 4th of July, a national holiday, acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives gave testimony to House and Senate investigators on Operation “Fast and Furious,” aka “Gunwalker.” Without telling his bosses. And bringing his own lawyer, not the Bureau’s and not the Department of Justice’s. To quote Allahpundit — Dude! This morning, House...

Brit Hume was on Fox News Sunday this morning while the panel was discussing Operation Fast and Furious: [VIDEO AT SITE] Hume: This is a real scandal. And once again we have the classic question "what did the Attorney General, for example, know and when did he know it." This Obama Justice Department reminds me of nothing so much as the Nixon Justice Department. You have the scent of high level knowledge, of serious wrongdoing, and you have the smell of cover-up and I think the stench of cover-up on this gunrunning operation is very strong indeed. How high this...

Newly released documents show that the Department of Justice (DOJ) allowed for the release of Marxist radical and domestic terrorist Marilyn Buck from federal prison because officials believed she learned her lesson and had “expressed a dramatic change from her previous political philosophy.” These new documents, obtained by investigative journalist Cliff Kincaid’s America’s Survival organization, shed more light on why Holder’s officials decided to release Buck, a convicted radical left-wing domestic terrorist. “Incredibly, Buck’s attorney, Soffiyah Elijah, cited Buck’s ‘Master of Fine Arts in Poetics,’ completed behind bars, as evidence that she deserved parole. It’s a fraud and a racket,”...

No, she didn't. Oh yes she did! DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, fresh off her can't-fix-stupid clip saying the GOP wanted to "make" being an illegal alien "a crime", now is attacking the GOP for passing Voter ID laws to stop illegal aliens from voting, saying they "literally want to drag us...back to Jim Crow". What a disgraceful insult to every Black American to compare discrimination of LEGAL black citizens to upholding Federal law against ILLEGAL invaders. And what a bigger insult to the 82% of Americans who support Voter ID laws in the wake of revelations that thousands of illegal...

Former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine’s last-minute attempt to return an imprisoned murderer to his native Germany, where he likely would have been freed in two years, is threatening to emerge as a key early issue in one of the most anticipated U.S. Senate races next year. National Republicans are in hot pursuit of records from Mr. Kaine’s last year as governor that they say could shed light on why he tried to return Jens Soering to Germany instead of allowing him to serve a life sentence in a U.S. prison. The former University of Virginia student is serving two life...

The granting of U.S. citizenship to three individuals who were convicted as a result of a terrorism-related investigation was “outrageous,” Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), chairman of the House Judiciary immigration policy and enforcement subcommittee, told CNSNews.com. The report showed that the three people were among “defendants where the investigation involved an identified link to international terrorism but they were charged with violating other statutes, including fraud, immigration, drugs, false statements, and general conspiracy charges.” The three became naturalized American citizens under the Obama administration, two in late 2009 and one in 2010. “It’s outrageous that you can have people under...

AFL-CIO Attorney: "It is legally impossible to conduct a nationwide raffle"We recently sent a complaint to the Federal Election Commission with regard to the "Dinner with Barack" fundraising promotions of 2007 and 2008. The Center for Competitive Politics quoted AFSCME (part of AFL-CIO) associate general counsel Jessica Robinson on the use of raffles to raise money for political campaigns. Ms. Robinson says unequivocally that it is impossible to legally conduct a nationwide raffle and furthermore that doing so violates the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) statute. Racketeering includes systematic violations of any state's gambling laws.. This means there...