The news on this scandal is really exploding, it’s coming on Fast and Furious now.
{You can now groan at that in the comments.}
bump for later
I’ll bet the lame stream “media” will get right on this (/sarc). What we need is a conservative Woodward and Bernstein.
Another document, a briefing paper from January 8, 2010, shows the administration’s step-by-step policy decisions and plans. The Phoenix Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), wrote that the “investigation has currently identified more than 20 individual connected straw purchasers,” or those who bought weapons, under ATF surveillance, with the intent to traffic them to Mexican drug cartels. The briefing paper shows that ATF’s policy was to allow this to happen. “Currently, our strategy is to allow the transfer of firearms to continue to take place, albeit at a much slower pace, in order to further the investigation and allow for the identification of additional co-conspirators who would continue to operate and illegally traffic firearms to Mexican DTOs [Drug Trafficking Organizations] which are perpetrating armed violence along the Southwest Border.”
GUNRUNNER: House committee tells what Holder won’t
Using documents obtained by congressional investigators, Fox News yesterday did some math and declared in a headline that “More than 1,300 guns were bought illegally by suspected buyers under ATF’s ‘Gunrunner’ program.”
However, that’s not the complete figure. The document alluded to by Fox News has three columns. One column notes the number of guns purchased after the suspect was identified and entered into the investigation. But there is another column, which includes the total number of guns allegedly purchased by each of 15 suspects, and it is significantly higher: 1,725.
A third column shows the number of firearms recovered in this country after the suspects were identified and added to the investigation: 250. That leaves 1,475 guns out there; firearms that may be in the wrong hands, either in this country or in Mexico.
Pressed about the whereabouts of these guns, Holder could only say that he does not know.
An internal memo from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives shows that
U.S. officials allowed criminals to buy 1,318 guns worth nearly $1 million, even after they suspected the buyers were working for Mexican drug cartels, and that the agency’s effort to stop the guns had “yielded little or no results.”—Fox News
In early 2009, it was Holder who first suggested to reporters that a flood of guns was moving south to Mexico, and that U.S. gun shops were the source of these guns, so the administration was considering renewal of the ban on so-called “assault weapons.” Revelations about Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious have shown that gun dealers and even ATF field agents expressed dire concerns about the potential harm these guns could have if they were allowed to get into the wrong hands.
http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-seattle/gunrunner-house-committee-tells-what-holder-won-t-2
There were assurances to the dealers, and criticism for the agents, from David J. Voth, group supervisor for Phoenix Group VII. This was the same man who, according to copies of e-mails attached to a March 3, 2011 letter from Grassley to Holder, advised an official with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix, and ATF’s Assistant Special Agent in Charge George Gillett in Phoenix about the “sense of urgency” regarding the gun sting operation because of the increased violence in Mexico. Voth’s April 2, 2010 e-mail says there were 958 killings in March 2010, 937 murders in January 2010 and 847 slayings in December 2009.
One of the documents shows Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer approved a wiretap application for suspects Operation Fast and Furious targeted in March 2010. The wiretap application process is lengthy and cumbersome, and often requires those applying to make strong case as to why they need it. So, Breuer would have been briefed in detail on Operation Fast and Furious before authorizing the wiretap.
The briefing paper also shows that the “straw purchasing group” made a “blitz” in weapons trafficking from late September to early December 2009.
The third document, an e-mail from Arizona-based U.S. Attorney Shelley Clemens to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official Richard Crocker and FBI official S. Annette Bartlett, shows that the Justice Department has begun scrambling to stop the gun “walking” practice since Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, launched investigations into the program. “Yesterday, we received a directive from the DAG [Deputy Attorney General], instructing on DOJ’s policy regarding guns going south into Mexico,” Shelley wrote on March 10, 2011. The directive from the Deputy AG, as she Shelley quotes it, is: “We should not design or conduct undercover operations which include guns crossing the border. If we have knowledge that guns are about to cross the border, we must take immediate action to stop the firearms from crossing the border, even if that prematurely terminates or otherwise jeopardizes an investigation.”
“Two federal agents are dead,” Issa said in a statement. “While Attorney General Holder and other top officials at the Justice Department have refused to address the reckless decisions made in Operation Fast and Furious that have created a serious public safety hazard, investigations led by Sen. Charles Grassley and I continue to receive information from deeply concerned insiders who believe those responsible for what has occurred cannot be trusted to investigate themselves.”
Spokespeople for the DOJ did not immediately return TheDC’s request for comment on the new release.
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CBS is actually breaking this and Drudge just wants to talk about OBL.
Hang em high Darryl.
I suppose Holder has a minor point - if Agent Terry had been killed by an AR-15 stolen from the Mexican Army instead of one allowed to walk by the BATFE, he’d still be dead.
Watched USAG Holder in testimony before Congress. Didn’t take much for him to be scrabbling and hawking his aides. His mumbled replies and attempted evasions of direct questions looked like something out of a high school principals’ office grilling......
Summation: The Obama Administration - and Holder in particular - is “dirty” on this issue. No way, no how Holder could not be aware of what his Department was doing -if - he was performing the duties of the USAG. >PS
I still do not understand the justification for such a program.