This morning, Issa and Senator Charles Grassley released a letter that they sent yesterday to Attorney General Eric Holder. It is explosive, to say the least. You should read it in its entirety; here are some excerpts:
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 originally been scheduled through the Justice Department to occur on July 13 in the presence of DOJ and ATF counsel. As you know, however, under our agreement Department witnesses who choose to attend a voluntary interview with their own lawyer are free to exercise that right rather than participate with counsel representing the Department’s interests.
After being made aware of that provision of our agreement, Acting Director Melson chose to exercise that right and appeared with his own lawyer. We are disappointed that no one had previously informed him of that provision of the agreement. Instead, Justice Department officials sought to limit and control his communications with Congress.
According to Mr. Melson, it was not until after the public controversy that he personally reviewed hundreds of documents relating to the case, including wiretap applications and Reports of Investigation (ROIs). By his account, he was sick to his stomach when he obtained those documents and learned the full story.
Mr. Melson said that he told the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (ODAG) at the end of March that the Department needed to reexamine how it was responding to the requests for information from Congress.
According to Mr. Melson, he and ATF’s senior leadership team moved to reassign every manager involved in Fast and Furious, from the Deputy Assistant Director for Field Operations down to the Group Supervisor, after learning the facts in those documents. 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.
When confronted with information about serious issues involving lack of information sharing by other agencies, which Committee staff had originally learned from other witnesses, Mr. Melson’s responses tended to corroborate what others had said. Specifically, we have very real indications from several sources that some of the gun trafficking “higher-ups” that the ATF sought to identify were already known to other agencies and may even have been paid as informants. The Acting Director said that ATF was kept in the dark about certain activities of other agencies, including DEA and FBI.
The evidence we have gathered raises the disturbing possibility that the Justice Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons but that taxpayer dollars from other agencies may have financed those engaging in such activities. While this is preliminary information, we must find out if there is any truth to it. According to Acting Director Melson, he became aware of this startling possibility only after the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and the indictments of the straw purchasers, which we now know were substantially delayed by the u.s. Attorney’s Office and Main Justice.
However, two days after he told Acting Deputy Attorney General Cole about serious issues involving lack of information sharing, the Wall Street Journal reported that unnamed sources said that Melson was about to be ousted.
The full transcript of Melson’s testimony, when released, will be a fascinating document. In the meantime, it appears clear that the Fast and Furious scandal reaches to the very top of Barack Obama’s Department of Justice.
“The evidence we have gathered raises the disturbing possibility that the Justice Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons but that taxpayer dollars from other agencies may have financed those engaging in such activities. While this is preliminary information, we must find out if there is any truth to it."
Still nothing in the MSM media sites. Wonder why?
I hope he hired some good body guards.
Is “Fast and Furious” the new name for the program called “Gunwalker”?
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The file on gunrunner-gate
http://nachumlist.com/gunrunner.htm
The more they obfuscate and stall the more Issa and Grassely will get traction.
At some point, it will be too big to contain and the MSM will have to start asking the much harder questions.
I can only hope Issa keeps this thing on a slow boil until about six weeks before 2012 election
This does sound big.
and the reason they were reassigned instead of fired? (hint: civil service)
...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.
bye bye 'my people' Hold er, bye bye 'then don't fly' Napoli tan ooo and bye bye Zeroooooooo
I believe this has achieved full “Gate” status.
Fast and Furious-gate.
Our Senator Grassley was just on ( 4:30 central time) WHO radio on Simon Conway’s show. There will probably be a transcript up at some point.
Grassley won’t be backing down. He will follow this as high as it goes. Sorry I don’t have more detail on what he said today.
http://www.whoradio.com/pages/simonconway.html
Mark my words..This goes ALL THE WAY to the top...Bambi himself. The buck stops there!
He knows Obama will at some point HAVE to toss him under the yellow bus
Bill is an old hand manipulating a scandal
I wonder how the Clinton's will work this scandal into more power over Obama
And Eric, you might want to make recordings of your farts cause after a few months in a Mex Prison "Senorita Erica" they'll sound like curtains fluttering in an open window.
NB that assisting those who are straw-buyers of guns running them into Mexico (eg, giving them money or other material assistance) qualifies this activity as “international terrorism” as defined in USC Title 18.
This is not a small thing. Just watching passively whilst straw buyers come in and then trying to trace where the guns go afterwards is a known and upheld law enforcement practice.
But if the DOJ/DEA/et al gave any material assistance.... the Congress should use their platform to accuse Holder (et al) of taking part in international terrorism. And then they should offer to hear from Mexican law enforcement in sworn testimony.
MSM will do everything in its power to “embargo” (bury) this.
I know in my gut that the intent of this program was to undermine gun rights, blaming murders on such weapons that made their way across the US border.
No other reason explains the stupidity of the concept that supposedly was Gunwalker’s purpose.
This will go to the Office of the President and to the president himself if it is permitted to proceed unhindered.
Socialists must get rid of gun ownership.
bttt
It better be good. Or else we are one step closer to being a banana republic.