Okay. Fine, but who signed off, who authorized the operation?
While the report blames Newell and Voth for poor judgment, attorneys for the two say higher-ups and the ENTIRE ATF chain of command were aware of everything they did.
Kind of answers your question....
Executive Privilege.
"You can delegate responsibility; you can not delegate accountability."
You are directly responsible for teaching and training those you manage in the performance of their duties, which makes you directly accountable for their failures. Newell, Voth, and MacAllister could not have run the operations without direct assistance of the management in the DC offices of Justice, the FBI, and ATF. The fault ties directly to Holder.
Federal agents can’t wipe the a**es without permission. Their warrants are drafted by Asst. US Atty’s. They then have to submit very detailed operational plans which go all the way to DC, so that they can be analyzed and modified, so as to shield the agency as much as possible.
This is why there are so many ‘Task Forces’ with local law enforcement. Federal agents are very restricted in what they can do. Local law enforcement is not.
So to say that this whole thing was the brainchild of some local supervisors and then ran by those same supervisors is absolutely ridiculous.
Hopefully, one(or more) of those about to be thrown under the bus, was smart enough to keep some emails and has already hired a good attorney to go see Issa and Grassley in the near future.
A cogent question.
Given that Fast & Furious was a multi-agency caper -- also involving the FBI, the IRS, ICE, the Border Patrol, Homeland Security, among others...and that, while it was purportedly an ATF operation, it was actually run out of the DOJ's U.S. Attorney's office by Dennis Burke...one might wonder how the likes of AIC Newell, Supervisor Voth and Case Agent MacAllister could have arranged (much less authorized and commanded) all this inter-agency cooperation.
The I.G's report just lost all credibility, did it not?