Posted on 04/21/2011 3:49:40 PM PDT by neverdem
Damning, newly-obtained emails show that a key gun shop owner made explicit concerns in writing last year in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms' "gunwalking" scandal.
Starting in late 2009, ATF allegedly directed an undetermined number of Phoenix-area gun shop owners to go ahead with sales of thousands of assault rifles and other weapons to suspicious buyers. Insiders claim ATF knew the buyers were connected to Mexico's drug cartels, but let the guns "walk" onto the street anyway in a misguided attempt to obtain intelligence. ATF and the Justice Department have denied that.
Investigators from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) obtained the emails this week.
In an April 13, 2010 email, the unnamed gun shop owner told ATF he was worried how he'd be viewed if the guns he sold ended up in the wrong hands.
"We just want to make sure we are cooperating with ATF and that we are not viewed as selling to bad guys," the gun shop owner wrote to ATF Phoenix Supervisor David Voth. The gun shop owner asked for a letter of understanding to "alleviate concerns of some type of recourse against us down the road for selling these items."
ATF Supervisor Voth tried to reassure the cooperating gun shop owner. "I understand that the frequency with which some individuals under investigation by our office have been purchasing firearms from your business has caused concerns for you... However, if helps put you at east we (ATF) are continually monitoring these suspects using a variety of investigative techniques which I cannot go into [in] detail."
According to Sen. Grassley, in a letter fired off to Attorney General Eric Holder last night, the ATF arranged a meeting between the gun shop owner and the U.S. Attorney's office which is part of the Justice Department. At that meeting, Sen. Grassley says the U.S. Attorney's office declined to provide written terms but assured the gun dealer there were safeguards in place to prevent further distribution of the weapons being purchased from his business.
"As we now know, those assurances provide to be untrue," Grassley wrote.
PDF: Read Grassley's full letter and the emails themselves
Two months later, on June 17, 2010, the same gun shop owner again wrote ATF's Supervisor Voth again after he saw a Fox News report about firearms and the border. The gun shop owner called the report "disturbing" and stated "When you [Voth], [the Assistant U.S. Attorney], and I met on May 13th [2010], I shared my concerns with you guys that I wanted to make sure that none of the firearms that were sold per our conversation with you and various ATF agents could or would ever end up south of the border or in the hands of the bad guys... I want to help ATF with its investigation but not at the risk of agents' safety because I have some very close friends that are U.S. Border Patrol Agents in southern AZ."
This was six months before Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down near the Arizona border. Two assault rifles that ATF had allegedly let "walk" were found at the scene.
Issa subpoenas ATF over gunwalking allegations
ATF agent cooperates in gunwalking investigation
Agent: I was ordered to let U.S. guns into Mexico
Gunwalking scandal uncovered at the ATF
The gun shop owner also stated there were "one or two" occasions on which his employees witnessed and recorded with surveillance cameras an exchange of money between a suspect and another individual on the premises; but the dealer said ATF officials wanted him to proceed with this so-called "straw" purchase. Buying a weapon for personal use and then transferring it to somebody else is against the law.
At left, Grassley discusses the scandal and new emails on the Senate floor.
So far, Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who is also investigating the gunwalking scandal, say they have received little to no meaningful response to their document and information requests from ATF and the Department of Justice. Earlier this week when the Justice Department turned over selected materials to Rep. Issa's staff, sources say Grassley's staff were now allowed entry or access to the same materials.
In response to a question about the alleged gunwalking, President Obama has said a "serious mistake" may have been made, and that neither he nor Holder authorized any such operation. Holder has said the Inspector General is investigating.
All of Sharyl Attkisson's articles, blogs and videos can be found in one place at cbsnews.com/sharylattkisson
This isn’t going to turn out well for the gun shop owners, it just isn’t.
No bureaucracy likes being snitched on. The ATF will make the gun store owner pay somewhere down the road.
This article says the government was attempting to gather intelligence. Not true. This program was started to make the US look bad in its gun dealings. This gunrunning was done as a basis for passing laws to restrict ownership of guns by U.S. citizens. The whole stupid plan backfired on Obama and Holder.
Anybody who doesn’t think that the entire “Gunwalker” operation was to make sure that the Mexican government would be able to show lots of US purchased guns confiscated from the cartels at press events is delusional.
The Obama regime needed to make the facts fit their assertions, that US civilian gun shops were supplying lots of guns to the drug cartels.
Now we know that is was the US government doing so.
Mark
I wish I could hear the crickets, but the media is making so much noise covering this story 24/7.
/Sarc
Of course it's not true it doesn't make any sense at all. They want to see if narco-criminals in Mexico have guns? Besides the huge "duh" factor to that you have to either arrest or find the body of someone to see if they have any guns. At that point you already know that they are narco-traffickers so what difference does it make where any guns found on them have come from? None.
For any gun that is never recovered nothing at all is ever learned about it.
If they want to say they are tracking where guns go in Mexico that come from the U.S. that's absurd.
1) If the BATF sells the guns, directly or through surrogates, the guns didn't really come from the U.S. market they came from the BATF Federal Agency.
2) If you sell a gun illegally to a criminal you already know where it went.
3) If you recover the gun from a different criminal than you sold it to you haven't learned anything useful at all. Criminals sell and trade amongst themselves? That's about as revealing as finding out that the gas in Fred's mower came from the same gas station as the gas in his wife's car. Film at 11:00!
This program was started to make the US look bad in its gun dealings. This gunrunning was done as a basis for passing laws to restrict ownership of guns by U.S. citizens.
It has to be. Only that explanation makes any sense at all. It was a 100% politically oriented project and as the highest elected Dem, and the one who controls Fed LE agencies, 0bama is the one who would benefit most.
That's what I've been thinking. ATF had them in a no-win situation, because they know if they didn't ATF's bidding, even if they knew it didn't smell right, the Feds could make their lives miserable. And now that it's @$$-covering time, they'd love to make the shop owners into scapegoats. They will if they can get away with it.
A year ago, the administration ordered a bunch of weapons. We thought it was to use against us. Were these the weapons they sent to Mexico?
See how the ‘left’ is plotting and planning in fixing the problem they created, ah, I mean found... WHERE is the NRA? IF I did not seek out what is literally going on in this nation, I certainly would NOT be told IF all I listened to was the Jon Stewart media.
One of my local news stations was celebrating with reporter on-site at a local McDonald's because McDonald's was hiring 500 employees in this metro area...
Bastards all of them (ATF).
WHERE is the NRA?
They are concerned that people in PA may not be able to shoot drugged pigeons which are then shot into the sky as projectiles where hunters shoot them down. Anything not dead by gunfire is strangled. Children collect the carcasses in baskets.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2708475/posts?page=8
Cool. A live pigeon shoot. I’ve always wanted to do one of those.
ping for later
More BATFE mis-direction.
This is eerily similar to WACO, we are lucky more Americans have not died this time.
It should be remembered that WACO was actually instigated by BATFE to deflect attention from their issues with internal sexual harassment and discrimination against minority employees, favoritism, attempting to create new law by “Ruling” in questions of “Implementing Regulation”, etc.
Congress was looking into BATFE policies, there was some talk of transferring ATF duties to the FBI.
So BATFE invited the press along to document their big showy bust of an odd-ball cult, to “Prove” how important their agency is to American’s safety.
When it all went wrong, they lied to obtain military equipment to continue the siege.
The list of their criminal actions and coverups have been covered in several books.
“This is not an assault” is one of the better ones.
In the end I expect this to go the same way, BATFE will conveniently find someone or some group to arrest in a spectacular manner, and this outrage will be forgotten.
“Whisked away”?
More like promoted, given a bonus, and retired early with a big bump in base pay!
Janet Reno is still free, Lon Horiuchi was promoted.
To my knowledge no one at BATFE has ever been punished for their involvement in directly or indirectly causing the murder of an American citizen, even less the death’s of foreign nationals.
You’re right! I was a bit over generous it seems.
bump
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