Gunwalker: Smoking Gun Email?An internal ATF email seems to support the assertion that Fast and Furious was a PR stunt for gun control.
Posted on 07/14/2011 6:05:18 PM PDT by marktwain
Mexican newspaper Excelsior interviews me on the Phoenix, Tampa & Houston components of Project Gunwalker. Our guesstimate of walked firearms: 5000
Translation:
Excelsior July 8, 2011
Houston and Tampa Source of Other Contraband, They Affirm
More Agents Assert that There Are More Like Fast and Furious
The Link from the Congress to the BATF Informants Could Get to the Crime of Another 3000 Guns
Sidebar: Fast and Furious was in Arizona; another like it whose name is still unknown, was directed from the Houston field office of the BATF. Mike Vanderboegh, activist
By Carmen Alvarez
Operation Fast and Furious which was operated from Phoenix, Arizona, is only a part of the scandal – there have been other similar operations run from Houston which allowed as many as 3,000 guns to walk.
“Both operations combined account for more than 5,000 guns that ended up in the hands of Mexican criminals,” Mike Vanderboegh told Excelsior who helped get whistleblowers of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) in touch with the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“Fast and Furious was in Arizona; another operation whose name is still unknown was directed from the Field Division of BATF in Houston. Another one, (possibly) called Castaway, was operated from Tampa, Florida and let guns walk to Honduras which later ended up at crime scenes in Mexico and other countries,” he added by means of telephone from the south of the United States.
Vanderboegh, who together with his colleague David Codrea, made public the accusations of BATF agents regarding how their superiors required them to disobey their duty to intercept the guns that ended up in criminal hands in Mexico. He believes that this would not have been possible without authorization from the highest levels of the U.S. government.
“This whole affair demonstrates that Project 'Gunwalker' (Gunrunner) the antecedent of operations such as Fast and Furious and Castaway (Tampa) were part of a national strategy, and that the Field Division of the BATF in Houston incidents which occurred in Dallas and in Columbus, New Mexico, and not the Phoenix Division,” he added.
“Many people died because of the guns allowed to walk into Mexico because those who made these decisions about these operations decided to keep the Mexican government in the dark,” he said.
The affair came to light in the Texas press and in the Washington Post where it was revealed that 115 guns confiscated from the cartels did not come from Phoenix, Arizona as did the over 2000 guns from Fast and Furious, but from Texas. The publication myfoxhouston.com also carried the news.
“After that, a curtain of silence has come down in the United States,” added the citizen-journalist and activist who bumped into Project Gunwalker when he was pursuing another BATF scandal.
Dick Deguerin, the lawyer for the chain of gun stores, Carter’s Country in Houston, told Excelsior via telephone from Houston that this firm and some of his [other?] clients informed BATF of suspicious purchasers who obtained numerous assault rifles, 9mm revolvers (sic), and AK-47 rifles who paid cash, and the only thing that happened was that the authorities came back on the stores in order to blame them.
“What happened was that operations such as Fast and Furious failed miserably because the only thing they succeeded in doing was to lose the trail of the arms that were sold legally in the United States later taken to Mexico. It was a complete failure by the BATF,’ said Deguerin.
The lawyer explained that the BATF asked his client, the owner of Carter’s Country, that he cooperate by giving information to them about the operation of suspicious sales and that he continue selling guns to Hispanics who bought high-power guns and paid cash.
“My client cooperated, but BATF took all the information my client got and we never knew what they did with it,” he added.
Gunwalker ping.
He is wrong. The operation is not a failure. It did EXACTLY what Obastard wanted it to do, increase the number of guns found in Mexico traceable back to the US so that he could claim that there was a “problem” with our gun laws.
You’re busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest!
This thing is growing like the blob, and STILL the lsm stays silent.
Keep at it, we got Rather.
“Gun laws” is an oxymoron.
Gun-Running Timeline: How DOJ’s ‘Operation Fast and Furious’ UnfoldedOctober 2009: The ATF’s Phoenix Field Division establishes a gun trafficking group called Group VII. Group VII initially began using the strategy of “gunwalking,” or allowing suspects to walk away with illegally purchased guns, according to a report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the staff of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“The purpose was to wait and watch, in hope that law enforcement could identify other members of a trafficking network and build a large, complex conspiracy case,” the report says. It goes on to say: “Group VII initially began using the new gunwalking tactics in one of its investigations to further the Department’s strategy. The case was soon renamed ‘Operation Fast and Furious.’”
According to the congressional report, the ATF had known that most of the indicted straw purchasers were in fact straw purchasers before Operation Fast and Furious began.
Gunwalker: Smoking Gun Email?An internal ATF email seems to support the assertion that Fast and Furious was a PR stunt for gun control.
I agree —F&F/Castaway was a huge, huge success:
1. Got 150 Mexicans killed we know of so far, and 2 badged US officers.
2. Strengthened Honduran forces opposed to the current Honduran President, an opponent of Barak Obama.
3. Provided fodder for BATF effort to restrict legal multiple sales of semi-auto rifles in the USA.
4. Aided Mexican cartels in their goal of boosting drug smuggling profitability via an effort to begin their own coca base processing efforts in Central America.
5. Boosted pressures on Honduras to prevail on the UN to secure USA signing of Small Arms Trafficking agreement.
Saw your link in mestamachine’s reference at there ping
http://www.nachumlist.com/gunrunner.htm
You may want to re name it. Gunrunner was the LEGIT operation under Bush. It is Fast and Furious. Nicknamed Gunwalker The MSM like to use gunrunner to confuse and blame Bush.
You may want to re name it.
Not a bad idea. I have posted this link around already so it might get confusing. So far, nobody has confused this with bush. Also, now that ‘castaway’ is in the mix, the generic gunrunner term also seems to fit.
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