[Uncle Miltie]

"Mr. Melson also said he was not allowed to communicate to Congress the reasons for the reassignments. He claimed that ATF's senior leadership would have preferred to be more cooperative with our inquiry much earlier in the process. However, he said that Justice Department officials directed them not to respond and took full control of replying to briefing and document requests from Congress. The result is that Congress only got the parts of the story that the Department wanted us to hear. If his account is accurate, then ATF leadership appears to have been effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand. That approach distorted the truth and obstructed our investigation."

[rdcbn]

The Holder Justice Dept is misusing Executive Privilege to cover up serious misconduct on the part of the Obama Administration.

A lot of the government appointees and career employees who are following the Holder gag order are very high level, experienced and sophisticated. They know they are at the very least in the grey areas of obstruction of justice and they have a lot to lose.

Issa has laid down a marker that the time is running out for these people at DOJ, ATF, FBI, DHS and others to come forward and break the Holder stonewall to cover up what has happened.

Issa directly stated it's time for those involved to tell what they know and they are formally legally allowed to do with with their own lawyers as part of Issa’s agreement with Holder on this issue (ie they cannot hide behind the “I was told to follow Executive Privilege by Holder and not come forward) , or be liable for at least obstruction charges, and possible other criminal charges, soon when things get serious.

Given that the ATF Director has now turned state's evidence those involved know they have been outed, that Issa probably has the cookie crumbs to road map the paper trail which will contain some pretty damaging disclosures and that they are now forced to choose between coming forward with their lawyers are per the Issa/Holder agreement or facing conspiracy to obstruct justice charges once it is too late to come forward.

This will be very interesting. At the very least, Holder's crew are already been caught lying about who knew about this operation.