Posted on 10/15/2011 8:05:04 AM PDT by milwguy
Newly surfaced emails reveal problems going back to 2007 with the ATF office in Phoenix and guns ”walking” across the U.S.-Mexico border. The emails about the Bush-era problems were given to Congress by the Justice Department as part of the congressional investigation into the ATF’s botched Obama-era firearms trafficking case, dubbed “Fast and Furious.” The documents show that the special agent in charge of the ATF’s Phoenix office, William Newell, was involved in a 2007 incident that resulted in guns slipping into Mexico and, later, part of Fast and Furious. Newell was the special agent in charge of the Phoenix office until earlier this year. The incident arose on Sept. 27, 2007, when ATF agents were conducting surveillance on subjects under investigation for gun trafficking and they hoped to work with the Mexican government to interdict them. The emails’ existence was first reported by The Associated Press Friday night. Confusion over the incident came to the attention of ATF headquarters from Carson Carroll, who was then the deputy assistant director for the Office of Field Operations. “ATF agents observed this vehicle [carrying guns] commit to the border and reach the Mexican side until it could no longer be seen,” Carroll wrote in a Sept. 28, 2007 email. “We, the ATF … did not get a response from the Mexican side until 20 minutes later, who then informed us that they did not see the vehicle cross. For the first time we are working hand in hand with the GOM [Government of Mexico] and providing them with what they want and this is what we get!”
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
1. The Special Agent in charge was the same in both operations, yet the tactics employed were different. In this operation, the agents followed the guns to the border, and then CONTACTED their Mexican counterparts to interdict the suspect's vehicle. In Fast and Furious, the agents specifically were told NOT to follow the guns once they left the gun stores, and they DID NOT let the mexican government in on the investigation.
2. Once the operation was revealed to be a failure, the higher ups at ATF were demanding answers and they shut the operation down. Hoover specifically says “I do not want any firearms to go south until further notice,” and “I’m so frustrated with this whole mess I’m shutting the case down and any further attempts to do something similar."
3. SOMEBODY restarted the gunwalking investigation between the time it was shut down in Oct. 2007 and early 2009. The question is WHO. Whomever it was HAD TO HAVE knowledge of the previous 2007 fiasco because the same ATF Special Agent William Newell was running the Phoenix office the entire time.
After the 2007 fiasco, ATF Acting Director for Field Operation William Hoover was demanding answers from Special Agent Newell. Newell's direct superiors ORDERED him to shut the thing down. The emails are very clear in showing how the decisions were made, from the top down. This was at the start a possibly rogue Phoenix Office idea that went bad. After it went bad the people at the top said to shut it down. There is no way that Special Agent Newell would RESTART the gunwalking operation a year or so later without somebody above him ordering him to do so. There is no way that Newell would changes the methods of the plan to ELIMINATE tracking the guns once they left the gun store. There is no way that Newell would be the one who decided to NOT INFORM Mexican authorities of the new scheme. These decisions came from above, and there has to be a paper trail leading up to someone. The question is as always, who.
So did Bush perjure himself before Congress?
Notice also that AP (Obi’s sycophant media arm) rleases the emails on Friday night so as to protect THE one. ISSA is on the trail, and little by little the noose is tightening on Obama and Holder. The Obama CNN Espanol interview is particularily damning to Holder’s claim of ignorance about F&F. These new emails show that while gunwalking investigations predated the Obama Administration, the PHOENIX operation was SHUT down and only restarted once Obama and Holder took over.
When did Bush testify before Congress?
If it were deemed damaging to Bush or supportive of Holder/Obama, it wouldn’t have come out Friday afternoon.
“The following day, ATF Acting Director for Field Operation William Hoover was demanding information on the strategy.
“Have we discussed the strategy with the U.S. Attorney’s Office re letting the guns walk? Do we have this approval in writing? Have we discussed and thought thru the consequences of same?” Hoover wrote to Newell and Carroll. “Are we tracking south of the border? Same re U.S. Attorney’s Office. Did we find out why they missed the hand-off of the vehicle? What are the expected outcomes?
“I do not want any firearms to go south until further notice,” Hoover wrote on Oct 5. “I expect a full briefing paper on my desk Tuesday morning from SAC Newell with every question answered.”
On Oct. 6, 2007, Newell wrote in an email, “I’m so frustrated with this whole mess I’m shutting the case down and any further attempts to do something similar. We’re done trying to pursue new and innovative initiatives – it’s not worth the hassle.”
ABC’s headline seems to imply ‘Bush did it too’, but anyone reading the story sees through that smokescreen.
Interesting that now ABC is getting serious about F&F now that CBS has taken the lead in breaking news on it. Only the Obama loving NBC family refuses to cover the story.
We are reaching critical mass, the damn is about to break wide open on this thing. ISSA needs to get Newell under oath and pry out the facts about who ordered F&F to restart. Newell knows, he has to. If in fact he restarted the gunwalking operation on his own after being ordered to shut it down, I would think he is liable for criminal charges in the death of Agent Terry.
An excellent point.
It's starting to appear the idea may have been to recreate something smilier to Iran Contra and the dope running operation into Mena and pin it on Bush.
And the TRUTH I discussed earlier is here now. Ping.
Thank you for pinging me. I appreciate it.
Bush did not testify before Congress; hence no perjury charge to be leveled or inquired about.
On the other hand, Holder did testify before Congress and did perjure himself. =.=
The key difference in the events is there is a distinction between isolated incidents and a systematic process from the top down.
There is a very old post of mine somewhere here in FreeRep where I noted that:
(1) the WSJ and others debunked the “official” statistics with regard to how many U.S. sold weapons were part of the weapons that were confiscated in Mexico by Mexican authorities in their “war” on the cartels.
In other words the reported statistics were wrong and the breakdown of the statistics did not support the charge - being levied by Obama and by Mexico - that a majority of the weapons confiscated in Mexico from the cartels had been sold in the U.S.
So, with the help of the WSJ and others the jig was up on Obama using those stats as a cause with which to invoke greater gun controls.
Then
(2) “fast and furious” followed the debunking of the claim Obama and Mexico were making; about “U.S. sold” guns landing in the hands of the cartels.
I was maybe the first to publicly suggest that what investigators needed to find out was whether or not “fast and furious” was an intentional process to intentionally boost the number of U.S. sold guns landing in the hands of the Mexican cartels, in order to support a claim already given by Obama and Mexico, that U.S. sold weapons were THE major problem in terms of weapons in the hands of the drug cartels.
WSJ and others proved that the stats didn’t support the claim. The question is: Did Obama and the AG try to improve on the “facts” behind the claim? I asked that exact question months ago.
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