Gunrunner: A program started under President Bush, to intensively investigate gunshops in the border states. The idea was to find organized gunrunning to Mexico and to stop it.
Gunwalker: After Gunrunner failed to find any largescale gunrunning to Mexico, Gunwalker was created to allow "straw buyers" to take guns to Mexican cartels. The purpose given is to find the routes of the big gunrunners, in Mexico so that they could be "taken down". Just how this was to be done has never been explained, especially as the ATF has no jurisdiction in Mexico, and they had explicit instructions *not* to tell the Mexican authorities what was going on. The ATF agents on the ground repeatedly warned their superiors that bad things would happen with the guns that they "let walk". Previously it had been a hard and fast rule in ATF never to let guns that were under investigation "walk" that is, to get out of their control. The response from the higher ups in ATF was that "if you are going to make an omellete, you have to break some eggs".
It seems much more likely that after ATF failed to find an "Iron River" of guns flowing south (the average age of guns traced to Mexico was 14 years), the administration decided to create such an iron river. It appears that a significant portion of the 2,000 plus guns "walked" were purchased with money provided to informants by the FBI.
Now we see similar tactics were used in Indiana, Texas, and Florida, though we do not have as much documentation or clear numbers for those locations. The operation in Phoenix was called "Fast and Furious". We do not know if there are names for the other operations. Overall, the scandal is called "Gunwalker".
I would think any plan of this magnitude had to be okayed at the very top of government, with the president himself having to sign off on this, as this was very very dangerous and stupid, since we were operating undercover in a foreign country? Wow!
Reference the names for the various operations, the Honduras one (via Florida, I think) was “Castaway.”
I can’t keep up with them. And the Chicago op hadn’t even pinged my radar til now, ‘cause I assumed by the titles, I guess, that it involved nothing more than the USUAL Chicago curruption.
Oh how sick I am each time I read it was merely a “botched attempt to track cartel gun rings.” Bullspit!