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Expressing dismay at an increase in Equal Employment Opportunity complaints under the administration of recently confirmed permanent Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director B. Todd Jones, a moderator at CleanUpATF blasted the agency Thursday by citing Department of Justice statistics, also released yesterday. Longtime readers of this column recall CUATF is a website run by disaffected ATF agents dedicated to exposing Bureau waste, abuse, corruption and fraud. It was from their forum that this correspondent and citizen journalist Mike Vanderboegh of the Sipsey Street Irregulars blog first got wind of allegations that ATF was facilitating “gunwalking” into Mexico...

Sharyl Attkisson touted 'Fast and Furious' whistleblower John Dodson as "a rare example, especially amid the Obama administration's war on leaks" during a segment on Monday's CBS This Morning. Attkisson, whose reporting on the arms trafficking scandal won CBS a Edward R. Murrow Award, spotlighted the ATF senior agent's new book on "the inside story of why he went public to expose the government's false denials about its gunwalking secrets." The correspondent also pointed out how "there's still a court battle over the 'Fast and Furious' documents that President Obama is withholding from Congress under executive privilege". She also featured...

In case you missed it over the weekend, late Friday night Attorney General Eric Holder issued a motion to appeal after U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled in September she will not dismiss contempt and executive privilege lawsuits against the Justice Department. Department of Justice attorneys argued the lawsuits should be dismissed on grounds the judiciary has no business getting in-between Executive branch and Legislative branch disputes. Jackson disagreed with their argument, saying the judiciary has an obligation to look at these kinds of disputes. Holder was hoping to get the case in front of the U.S....

A wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of slain Border Patrol agent Brian Terry has been dismissed by a federal judge on the grounds that a court settlement would interfere with the powers of the U.S. government, which has a compensation scheme of its own. Terry died in a shoot-out with Mexican drug cartel gunmen in southern Arizona in December 2010 in a case tied to a flawed bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, gun-running operation that embarrassed the Obama administration and strained relations with Mexico. Last year Terry's parents, Kent and Josephine Terry, filed a...

A federal court tonight has thrown out a case brought by the family of Brian Terry, the Border Patrol agent who was killed in a firefight on the Arizona-Mexico border in December 2010. Sharyl Attkisson reports that money already awarded to the family precludes this sort of case from proceeding.

Rep. Issa commented on the DOJ grenade-walking scandal: When you have the attorney general's own offices being informed about a very dangerous person exporting hand grenades and converting AK-47s into machine guns and they let him continue as part of not, Fast and Furious, but a completely separate failure, I think what you see is an administration that I'm beginning to think really did want to let bad things happen in hopes they would get [an] assault weapons ban. The dots are being connected more and more to these kinds of actions.

(CBS News) CBS News has learned of a shocking link between a deadly drug cartel shootout with Mexican police last week and a controversial case in the U.S. The link is one of the grenades used in the violent fight, which killed three policemen and four cartel members and was captured on video by residents in the area. According to a Justice Department "Significant Incident Report" filed Tuesday and obtained by CBS News, evidence connects one of the grenades to Jean Baptiste Kingery, an alleged firearms trafficker U.S. officials allowed to operate for years without arresting despite significant evidence that...

Washington (CNN) -- A federal agent will be allowed to write a book with an insider's account of Operation Fast and Furious, reversing an earlier government attempt to block publication for "morale" reasons. However, John Dodson, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, won't be allowed to make money on the book. A U.S. law enforcement official familiar with the matter says the Justice Department, ATF and the Federal Bureau of Investigation will review Dodson's manuscript and, after making redactions to protect sensitive law enforcement information, will clear it for publication. However, federal employee guidelines prohibit...

The Boston Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has a new Special Agent in Charge, the Associated Press reported yesterday. Special Agent Daniel Kumor, whose credentials before joining ATF in 1988 include stints as a police officer and Deputy United States Marshal, assumed the helm in September. Per ATF’s website, Kumor’s new assignment puts him in charge of a division “responsible for ATF criminal enforcement and industry regulatory operations throughout the six New England states.” But it’s an earlier assignment that should raise questions that could shed some light on an ongoing and longstanding investigation....

Transparency: The Justice Department blocks a tell-all book by an ATF special agent on how Brian Terry, Jaime Zapata and hundreds of Mexican nationals were killed with weapons supplied by this administration. ATF Special Agent John Dodson is a national hero who in 2011 blew the whistle on Operation Fast and Furious, the Obama administration's gun-running operation to Mexico. Testifying before Congress, he disclosed that his supervisors had authorized the flow of semiautomatic weapons into Mexico instead of interdicting them, weapons that found their way into the hands of Mexican drug cartels with deadly results. Dodson has put his intimate...

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is blocking the main whistleblower in the Fast and Furious case from publishing a book for pay, claiming his retelling of the Mexico “gun-walking” scandal will hurt morale inside the embattled law enforcement agency, according to documents obtained by The Washington Times. ATF’s dispute with Special Agent John Dodson is setting up a First Amendment showdown that is poised to bring together liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and conservatives in Congress who have championed Mr. Dodson’s protection as a whistleblower. The ACLU is slated to become involved in the...

Serial abuses of justice by America’s top law enforcement official should be enough to make just about any tinhorn banana republic dictator blush. Yet regarding any embarrassment evidenced by the leader of the free world… not so much. Despite the fact that our attorney general has been indicted for contempt of Congress on both felony and civil charges, has repeatedly lied under oath, and has routinely turned a blind eye to laws that he is duty-bound to enforce, Mr. Holder continues to serve at the behest of his presidential mentor. At least he has so far. Apparently not so very...

Scandal: The truth about how and why Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata and hundreds of Mexican nationals were killed with weapons supplied by this administration may yet come out as a court lets a lawsuit proceed. The most transparent administration in history suffered a defeat Monday, when U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson turned down the Justice Department's request to dismiss a lawsuit seeking "Fast and Furious" documents hidden by Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department after President Obama invoked executive privilege. The lawsuit was brought by Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee after...

Late Monday night, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson denied a Department of Justice request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the House Oversight Committee last summer over Operation Fast and Furious documents. “In the Court's view endorsing the proposition that the executive may assert an unreviewable right to withhold materials from the legislature would offend the Constitution more than undertaking to resolve the specific dispute that has been presented here,” Jackson wrote in her ruling. "Neither legal nor prudential considerations support the dismissal of this action, the defendant’s motion to dismiss the action will be denied." The lawsuit...

Mexican authorities have announced the arrest of a third suspect in the December, 2010 murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, Reuters reported this morning. Ivan Soto Barraza was apprehended in Sinaloa by “Mexican Interpol agents working with federal and state police” and the FBI, and awaits extradition to the United States. Terry’s killing prompted a post a week later on CleanUpATF, a website established by agents frustrated with Bureau waste, abuse, corruption and fraud, alleging weapons found at the murder scene were tied to federally-sanctioned “gunwalking,” now known to the world as Operation Fast and Furious. That post was...

Scandal after scandal, coupled with an ongoing contempt for the law and the Constitution, demonstrated by high-level officials and the president himself, point to one deeply troubling conclusion: the Obama administration may be the most corrupt administration ever inflicted on the American public. And while the mainstream media have done a remarkable job deflecting much of that reality, even they cannot keep up with the avalanche of disturbing revelations that arise, seemingly on a daily basis. We begin with yet another report about the Fast and Furious gunrunning operation, courtesy of Sharyl Attkisson, one of the few remaining reporters who...

Three more weapons from the Fast and Furious gun walking operation by U.S. law enforcement "have turned up at crime scenes in Mexico" as reported by Sharyl Attkisson for CBS News: "A steady stream of the guns have been recovered at crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S. But the Justice Department has refused repeated requests from Congress and CBS News to provide a full accounting. An estimated 1,400 guns are still on the street or unaccounted for." Over 200 people have been killed, including border patrol agent Brian Terry, by Fast and Furious guns. The Justice Department says it...

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley has sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder reminding him that the Department of Justice has an obligation to inform Congress when Operation Fast and Furious weapons are found at crime scenes. Just last week, the Los Angeles Times reported Mexican Police Chief Luis Astorga and his body guard were killed by cartels using guns from the lethal operation. "Since the beginning of this investigation, we have followed the link between Fast and Furious weapons and crimes committed on both sides of the border. On numerous occasions we have asked the Department to keep us...

WASHINGTON – The controversy surrounding the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ infamous Fast and Furious program has faded over the past few months but it’s unlikely to be relegated to the background for very long. Last week it was revealed that a high-powered rifle employed in the unsuccessful gun-tracking program was used to kill a police chief and his bodyguard in the Mexican state of Jalisco, signaling that some of the weapons used in the enterprise are now in the possession of members of drug cartels – the same people Fast and Furious was supposed to entrap as...

Barack Obama and Eric Holder are doubtlessly grateful that virtually everyone, including the mainstream media, has turned the Fast and Furious page and moved on to more recent White House Administration scandals.  But, the human carnage continues to mount.A Los Angeles Times investigation uncovered Justice Department documentation of the assassination Luis Lucio Rosales Astorga, the Police Chief of Hostotipaquillo in the west-central Mexican state of Jalisco, who "was shot to death Jan. 29 when gunmen intercepted his patrol car and opened fire."  Also killed was one of Astorga's bodyguards.  The Chief's wife and another bodyguard were also wounded.  Eight suspects...