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Operation Fast and Furious (F&F) – a program run by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that allowed thousands of lethal weapons to cross the Mexican border – was apparently no secret among high-level political authorities at the Department of Justice (DOJ). Among those in the know? Newly-confirmed Deputy Attorney General James Cole. Information is now seeping out about the political whiplash that secured a confirmation vote for Cole in exchange for the DOJ’s release of documents to Congress. In a supremely ironic twist, the documents ransomed by Cole’s confirmation strongly suggest that Cole himself was...

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...

The U.S. State Department warned yesterday that the Juarez Cartel may target its consulate office in Ciudad Juarez -- just over the border from El Paso, TX -- or other U.S. interests as reported by Mary Forgione for the Los Angeles Times. The "emergency message" states: Information has come to light that suggests a cartel may be targeting the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez or U.S. Ports of Entry. In the past, cartels have been willing to utilize car bombs in attacks. Earlier this month a drug cartel in Ciudad Juarez spray painted a public warning to U.S. DEA agents...

ISTANBUL — The United States formally recognized the rebel leadership in Libya as the country’s legitimate government on Friday, allowing the rebel government access to $30 billion in Libyan assets held in the United States. It is not yet clear how and when the money would be released. Enlarge This Image Osman Orsal/Reuters Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton attended the meeting on Libya in Istanbul on Friday. Multimedia TimesCast | Libyan Rebels Recognized Readers’ Comments Share your thoughts. Post a Comment » Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said at an international gathering held to discuss the Libyan conflict...

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...

Obama faces criticism from all sides for terrorism suspect’s offshore interrogation, civilian trialPAUL KORING WASHINGTON— Globe and Mail Update Last updated Thursday, Jul. 07, 2011 7:56PM EDT After holding a Somali terrorism suspect for two months on a U.S. warship, the Obama administration secretly flew him to New York for trial in a civilian court, leaving both rights groups and Congress infuriated. The clandestine imprisonment at sea echoed Bush-era – and widely condemned – efforts to deny detainees constitutional protections while interrogating them offshore. Meanwhile, opting to surreptitiously bring the Somali to a U.S. federal court not far from where...

President Obama is extending full constitutional due-process rights to a Somali terrorist. This sets a troubling precedent. Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame was captured sometime in April on a boat traveling between Yemen and Somalia. He was detained on board a U.S. warship for two months and interrogated by intelligence officials. He reportedly revealed a great deal of valuable information regarding his connections to the Somalia-based al-Shabab militant group and the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. So far, so good. (Snip) The Warsame indictment is an end run around Congress, which last year voted to bar the transfer of terrorist

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,”...

WASHINGTON — Knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious, a controversial border security strategy that allowed guns to be shipped illegally into Mexico in an effort to track them to drug cartels, went to the top of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, according to evidence released on Wednesday at a House Oversight Committee hearing. Witnesses at the House hearing included three relatives of a Border Patrol agent killed in Arizona and three A.T.F. agents, right. The operation, which began in 2009, came under fire after two guns linked to it were found at the scene of the killing of...

ISLAMABAD: The US has established contacts with Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar to negotiate an end to the conflict in Afghanistan, a media report said on Tuesday. Abdul Haqiq, a former Afghan Taliban spokesman who used the alias Mohammad Hanif, played a key role in helping Washington reach out to Mullah Omar, The Express Tribune newspaper quoted a source as saying. Haqiq was arrested by US and Afghan intelligence agents in Afghanistan in June 2007. He was one of the high profile Afghan Taliban spokesmen along with Yousuf Ahmadi, appointed after chief spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi was arrested in...

High-level source concedes DOJ let off CAIR co-founders and others for political reasons. ...a number of leaders of Islamic organizations (all of whom publicly opposed the King hearings on Muslim radicalization) were about to be indicted on terror finance support charges by the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas, which had been investigating the case for most of the past decade. But those indictments were scuttled last year at the direction of top-level political appointees within the Department of Justice (DOJ) — and possibly even the White House.

REPORT: Obama signed secret order authorizing covert U.S. support for rebel forces in Libya...developing..... Just a head line for now....

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I...I just don't know anymore. Israel has been the biggest ally to the United States in the Middle East for years. President Obama is clearly unaware of that. Since coming into office, the President has constantly distanced himself from Israel, declaring much of their actions illegal and refusing to help either militarily or even verbally in any way. Today, Mr. Obama likely made his most disgusting comment yet. Earlier in the day, a Palestinian terrorist blew up a bomb in Jerusalem that killed one and injured thirty. In response, Obama said that violence wasn't the answer... and that he sends...

WND Exclusive FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU After attack on Jews, Obama gives condolences to Palestinians Woman killed, at least 38 wounded in attack at crowded Jerusalem bus stop Posted: March 23, 2011 4:24 pm Eastern By Aaron Klein © 2011 WorldNetDaily President Obama JERUSALEM – President Obama's official statement on today's bombing at a crowded bus stop in Jerusalem included a clause expressing his "deepest condolences for the deaths of Palestinian civilians in Gaza yesterday." The statement seems to draw a moral equivalence between today's attack in Jerusalem, in which Jewish civilians were targeted, and the death of four Palestinian...

Continuing to face down questions as to why the U.S. Justice Department went easy on prosecuting members of the New Black Panther Party who stood armed with nightsticks outside a Philadelphia polling location during the 2008 presidential election, Attorney General Eric Holder expressed his personal frustration over the criticism that race played a role. During a hearing of a House Appropriations subcommittee Tuesday, Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, accused Holder’s DOJ of failing to cooperate with a Civil Rights Commission investigation into the decision to dismiss the case. Holder seemed to take personal offense when Culberson read comments from former Democratic...

Egypt girded for a day of massive protest Friday, firming up army positions around demonstrators occupying central Cairo's Tahrir Square and slapping new restrictions on journalists.