This is false information. Project Gunrunner, under GWB, was terminated before he left office. Fast and Furious was a brand new operation started under 0bama and Holder.
Gunrunner tracked the guns after they went into Mexico. F&F did not.
Gunrunner kept Mexican LEAs informed of every step. F&F told the Mexican government nothing.
Gunrunner kept American agents in Mexico informed and they were part of the operation. F&F kept American agents in Mexico in the dark.
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ATF Whistleblower Speaks OutJun 30, 2011 - 6:15 - Vince Cefalu, who's being pushed out by the agency, discusses the botched gun operation
Fox News interview with senior agent Vince Cefalu. He says he has been terminated "along with dozens of others" (agents) due to their opposition to operation Fast and Furious. Says DoJ was intimately involved.
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President 0bama denying that he or Holder knew anything about Operation Fast and Furious on Mar 23, 2011.
Obama on "gunwalking" - "Serious mistakes" may have been made (video)
Deputy Attorney General David Ogden plainly states that "the President and AG Eric Holder ordered" new facets to Operation Gunrunner. (and describes to a T the facets of Operation Fast and Furious) on March 24th, 2009.
Obama Orders Launched Fast and Furious (video)
On June 27, CNSNews.com asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, “Could you tell me what is the exact date that the president learned about the Justice Department ATF operation to allow guns to flow into Mexico?”
White House Mum on When Obama Learned of DOJ's Gun-Running Scheme (video)
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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.
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Sen. Chuck Grassley: Guns in ATF sting tied to agent's death
Grassley said he had information that the AK-47s recovered at the shooting scene were traced to Project Gunrunner, an ATF program designed to stem the illegal flow of U.S. guns to Mexico.
Tom Mangan, an ATF spokesman in Phoenix, said he was "not aware of any internal investigation that's going on regarding Project Gunrunner."
At a news conference last week, the ATF and the U.S. attorney's office announced indictments of 34 people in connection with firearms smuggling to Mexico. Bill Newell, ATF special agent in charge for Arizona, said the five separate cases, all part of Project Gunrunner, demonstrate the corruptive reach of Mexican cartels using straw buyers to acquire guns in Arizona for illegal shipment south.
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Issa Says He Doesn’t Believe Holder’s Testimony Was Accurate
However, on Dec. 14, 2010, two rifles sold to one of the smugglers that the Justice Department had allowed to buy guns turned up at the scene of the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
Within 24 hours of Terry’s murder, according to an internal ATF email released by Issa, the FBI had definitively traced the rifles found at the murder scene back to Operation Fast and Furious and had so notified ATF.
While Holder told the Judiciary Committee he had “probably” heard about Fast and Furious” a “few weeks” before May 3, readers of the Washington Post heard about it a few months before that, on Feb. 2, when the Post ran a page-4 story that referred to “Fast and Furious” three times by name in describing how guns sold to a smuggler during the operation ended up at the scene of Border Agent Brian Terry’s murder.
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Gun-Running Timeline: How DOJ’s ‘Operation Fast and Furious’ UnfoldedOperation Fast and Furious Timeline:
September 2009 – Jan. 8, 2010: A Jan. 8, 2010 briefing paper from the ATF Phoenix Field Division Group VII says: “This investigation has currently identified more than 20 individual connected straw purchasers.” It further says: “To date (September 2009 – present) this group has purchased in excess of 650 firearms (mainly AK-47 variants) for which they have paid cash totaling more than $350,000.”
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Gunwalker: Smoking Gun Email?An internal ATF email seems to support the assertion that Fast and Furious was a PR stunt for gun control.
PJM’s Bob Owens has long speculated that the primary reason for Operation Fast and Furious was to perpetuate the lie that 90 percent of illegal firearms in Mexico were from the United States.
Owens’ assertion was buoyed on Wednesday by internal ATF emails obtained by Townhall.com. One email reads:
"Can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same FfL and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks Mark R. Chait Assistant Director Field Operations."--------------------------------------------------------------
The ATF has said that there are still over 1,400 guns unaccounted for in Mexico, there were a 1,000 guns "walked" to Honduras and other Central American countries. That is a lot of guns and every time some show up at the scene of a murder/shootout there will be new press about it. Especially if more LE agents are murdered with them. Especially if Hezbollah in Mexico gets a hold of some and murders some Americans with them.
This story has the potential to re-surface afresh for a decade with all those arms out there.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Assistant Attorney General (Criminal Division) Lanny Breuer got a Power Point presentation on Fast and Furious. (link now scrubbed)
July 28, 2011 Senior ATF, Justice officials ignored Mexico-based agents’ complaints, bragged about Fast and Furious successesGil and now-acting ATF attaché to Mexico Carlos Canino also told congressional investigators high-ranking ATF and Justice Department officials bragged about what they considered successes of Operation Fast and Furious. Officials they said included Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who oversees the DOJ’s criminal division, and acting ATF director Ken Melson.
“Lanny Breuer says, yeah, there is a good case, there is a good case out of Phoenix,” Canino said of a meeting he and Gil had with Breuer and the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual.
Gil said Breuer was going to present the outcome of Operation Fast and Furious to Mexican authorities as evidence of a positive effort to stop weapons trafficking. Gil said Breuer said the ATF investigation “looks like it’s going to generate some good results and it will be a good positive case that we can present to the Government of Mexico as efforts that the US government is taking to try and interdict weapons going into Mexico.”
The National Scope of the Gunwalker Scandal. Lanny Breuer & four border state ATF SACs implicated in report. "Lions! And tigers! And bears! Oh, my!"Two months after the January 5, 2010 briefing, ATF headquarters hosted a larger, more detailed briefing. Not part of the normal Tuesday field ops briefings, this special briefing was dedicated to Operation Fast and Furious. David Voth, the Phoenix Group VII Supervisor who oversaw Fast and Furious, traveled from Phoenix to give the presentation. On videoconference were the four southwest border ATF SACs: Bill Newell in Phoenix, Robert Champion in Dallas, J. Dewey Webb in Houston, and John Torres in Los Angeles. (Emphasis supplied, MBV)
In addition to the usual attendees of the Tuesday morning field ops briefings (the Deputy Assistant Directors for Field Operations, including Bill McMahon, and Mark Chait, Assistant Director for Field Operations), Deputy Director William Hoover also attended. Joe Cooley, a trial attorney from the gang unit at Main Justice, also joined. After a suggestion from Acting ATF Director Ken Melson in December 2009, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer personally assigned Cooley as a DOJ representative for Operation Fast and Furious. Kevin Carwile, chief of the Capital Case Unit at Main Justice, may have also been present. According to Steve Martin, the inclusion of Main Justice representatives was unusual.
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Gunwalker and Fast & Furious Updates: Holder, DOJ, FBI, Operation Castaway, ATFEmail 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 Force (OCDETF), Bureau of Prisons (BOP), U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), and the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA). The chair of the Attorney Generals Advisory Committee (AGAC) also attended the session. Their names were redacted in the released document. U.S. attorneys for all four southwest border states also attended...