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Nearly five years after a powerful truck bomb ripped through a U.S. military housing complex in Saudi Arabia – killing 19 Americans and wounding 372 – terrorism charges have been brought against 13 members of the pro-Iran Saudi Hizballah, or “Party of God.” Another, as yet unidentified, person who is linked to the Lebanese Hizballah has also been charged in the attack. According to the indictment returned today by a Federal Grand Jury in Alexandria, Virginia, nine of the fourteen are charged with 46 separate criminal counts including: conspiracy to kill Americans and employees of the United States, to use...

A lawyer for an Alabama inmate put to death by lethal injection said Friday she is concerned his trembling limbs and labored breathing were an indication something “was not right” with the procedure. Robert Melson, 46, was pronounced dead at 10:27 p.m. CDT Thursday at a southwest Alabama prison, authorities said. Melson’s attorneys had filed a flurry of last-minute appeals seeking to stay the execution, arguing that the state planned to use a sedative that would not reliably render Melson unconscious before other drugs stopped his longs and heart. In December, an Alabama man coughed and heaved for the first...

A single internal Department of Justice email could be the smoking-gun document in the Operation Fast and Furious scandal — if it turns out to contain what congressional investigators have said it does. The document would establish that wiretap application documents show senior DOJ officials knew about and approved the gunwalking tactic in Fast and Furious. This is the opposite of what Attorney General Eric Holder and House oversight committee ranking Democratic member Rep. Elijah Cummings have claimed. It appears that email would also prove senior DOJ officials, likely including Holder himself, knew in March 2011 that a Feb. 4,...

A single internal Department of Justice email could be the smoking-gun document in the Operation Fast and Furious scandal — if it turns out to contain what congressional investigators have said it does. The document would establish that wiretap application documents show senior DOJ officials knew about and approved the gunwalking tactic in Fast and Furious. This is the opposite of what Attorney General Eric Holder and House oversight committee ranking Democratic member Rep. Elijah Cummings have claimed. It appears that email would also prove senior DOJ officials, likely including Holder himself, knew in March 2011 that a Feb. 4, 2011 letter...

"I'm shocked! Shocked! To find gunwalking going on here!" Email correspondence and handwritten notes obtained today by David Codrea of the National Gun Rights Examiner and this correspondent provide details on information and strategy being shared between top level officials of the Department of Justice and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, including between Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer and then-ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson. These documents, in the possession of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, provide a much clearer picture than that given by Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer in his statement of yesterday of what...

Top Department of Justice officials had extensive knowledge of and involvement in Operation Fast and Furious, claims a new report released Thursday, hours before Attorney General Eric Holder's scheduled testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The report released by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, top lawmakers investigating the botched gunrunning operation, claims Justice Department officials in Washington and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were involved in the coordination in the early stages of the operation. Justice headquarters "had much greater knowledge of, and involvement in, Fast and Furious than it...

Discovery of a January 2011 e-mail exchange between then Acting ATF Director Ken Melson and the Bureau’s chief council Steve Rubenstein has put the kibosh on Obama administration elites’ latest “we didn’t know about it” defense concerning the regime’s involvement in Operation Fast and Furious. On December 22, 2010, a contributor identifying himself as “1desertrat” posted the following to the “CLEANUP ATF” website: Word is that curious George Gillett the Phoenix ASAC stepped on it again. Allegedly he has approved more than 500 AR-15 type rifles from Tucson and Phoenix cases to be “walked” to Mexico. Appears that ATF may...

“Angry former ATF chief blames subordinates for Fast and Furious,” Richard A. Serrano of the Los Angeles Times reported in his Christmas Eve gift to the administration. The story is he didn’t know, and he’s sticking to it. And if Ken Melson didn’t know, how could Eric Holder? Now the new acting Bureau head, B. Todd Jones dutifully carries the meme forward: [W]eak management structure has given some field agents a license to operate independently of Washington. Except field agents at CleanUpATF, the website dedicated to exposing and correcting agency waste, abuse, corruption and fraud, aren’t buying it: Mr. Jones...

Here's the latest White House spin courtesy of the ever faithful Richard Serrano of the LA Times: In a confidential deposition with congressional investigators, the then-head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives blamed agents, field supervisors and even his top command for never advising him that for more than a year, his agency allowed illegal gun sales along the southwestern U.S. border. The deposition, which was taken in July and was recently obtained by the Washington bureau, shows that Kenneth E. Melson was irate. Even his chief intelligence officer at ATF headquarters was upset with the operation,...

In a confidential deposition with congressional investigators, the then-head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives blamed agents, field supervisors and even his top command for never advising him that for more than a year, his agency allowed illegal gun sales along the southwestern U.S. border. * * * Once Fast and Furious broke into public view, Melson said, Justice officials strenuously objected when he wanted to disclose everything to Congress. "We were floating the idea and asking them to allow us to do that," he said. But he said he was told "it is a long-standing policy...

Kenneth Melson, then-head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives blasted subordinates in a deposition taken in July claiming they failed to inform him of a controversial gun-tracking program which may have led to the death of a Border Patrol agent. Melson criticized his chief intelligence officer and subordinates for not advising him on details of the Fast and Furious program which allowed sales of guns to straw purchasers for Mexican drug cartels reports the Los Angeles Times which obtained the confidential deposition with congressional investigators. Melson also claimed that after lawmakers learned about the program, Justice Department...

"What, me Gunwalker?" Over the Fourth of July weekend earlier this year, Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson came in for a voluntary interview with staff members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He brought his own lawyer. On 5 July, Senator Charles Grassley sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. This is how he characterized Melson's testimony: Yesterday, Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson participated in a transcribed interview regarding Operation Fast and Furious and related matters with both Republican and Democratic staff. He appeared with his personal counsel, Richard Cullen of McGuire Woods LLP. His interview had...

Why a gunrunning scandal codenamed “Fast and Furious,” a program run secretly by the U.S. government that sent thousands of firearms over an international border and directly into the hands of criminals, hasn’t been pursued by an army of reporters all trying to be the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein is a story in itself. But the state of modern journalism aside, this scandal is so inflammatory few realize that official records show the current director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), B. Todd Jones — yes the individual the Obama administration brought in to...

A Gun Rights Examiner/Sipsey Street Irregulars exclusive A just-uncovered January 5, 2011 email to former Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Acting Director Kenneth Melson from Stephen R. Rubenstein, Chief Counsel, ATF, responded to a request by Melson for information regarding allegations on whistleblower website CleanUpATF that walked guns were linked to the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, and indicated this was a violation of ATF Orders and Standards of Conduct. Copies of the email and Melson’s reply are posted in this correspondent's Scribd account and included in the sidebar slideshow accompanying this article. Per Rubenstein’s email:...

n order to prevent further “Fast and Furious” damage to the Obama Regime, it appears the left is ready to pull the plug on one of its favorite exponents of Constitutional abuse: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Since ATF agent-turned-whistle-blower John Dodson went to Senator Charles Grassley with the true story of the Obama Administration’s “Gunwalking” scheme, congressional investigations and diligent reporting by the blogosphere have threatened to upend the President, Attorney General Eric Holder and a host of Regime operatives, all up to their necks in the politics of murder. In fact, “Watergate with Murder” has become...

by John Hill Stand With ArizonaThe disastrous Obama Administration operation "Fast and Furious", which deliberately put guns in the hands of the Mexican cartel, exploded this week with new revelations of a cover-up, and emails which tie the scandal directly to the White House for the first time."Fast and Furious" was an attempt to intercept gun-trafficking that sent 2,000 guns to cartel operatives via straw buyers. Critics believe that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder saw the program as an opportunity to embarrass U.S.-based gun dealers, and help galvanize support for increased gun-control measures, while controlling where and how the guns...

The botched sting operation known as Operation Fast And Furious has claimed the careers of at least three Justice Department officials, with Republican lawmakers expecting even more fallout to come. The operation, run out of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives field office in Phoenix, allowed guns to knowingly fall into the hands of violent criminals in Mexico. A congressional investigation into the operation led by House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Senate Judiciary ranking member Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is examining how high up within the administration the program was known about and authorized....

Kenneth Melson, former acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, has a new job as a "senior adviser" in the Justice Department. A bruised and battered veteran of the U.S. Civil Service explained how the government silences whistleblowers and other uncooperative employees: "They give you a big promotion, a fancy title and a new office, but no staff and nothing to do. Then they tell you to watch the flagpole in front of headquarters and, if that flag moves, you come tell us immediately. After that, you're never heard from again." Whistleblowers in the Washington...

The man who led the controversial Fast and Furious anti-gun-trafficking operation will step down as the interim head of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Justice Department announced Tuesday as it named a new acting director for the agency. Kenneth Melson, the bureau’s acting director, on Wednesday will move to the Office of Legal Policy, where he will be a senior adviser on forensic science, the department said without making reference to the failed gun-tracking operation that is alleged to have ultimately put guns into the hands of criminals. Dennis Burke, the U.S. Attorney in Arizona who oversaw...

Sources say ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson is being moved out of the top job at the Bureau. It's not yet publicly known where he would go, but sources inside the Justice Department believe one option is a transfer to a position at Department of Justice headquarters. The Justice Department had no immediate comment, and did not confirm the move. Melson's move would be another in a number of high-level personnel shifts, as the Inspector General continues investigating the so-called gunwalker scandal at the Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. ATF promotes "Fast and Furious" supervisors...