Posted on 06/06/2012 12:28:02 PM PDT by neverdem
Sealed applications for wiretaps – approved by senior DOJ officials and obtained by the Oversight Committee – detail gunwalking efforts
WASHINGTON— Today, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa confronted Attorney General Eric Holder with new documents showing that senior Justice Department Officials in Washington were given specific information about reckless tactics in Operation Fast and Furious. In a letter, Issa rebuked the Attorney General for his continuing efforts to mislead Congress about both the contents of the wiretap applications and details of who knew about and gave approval for reckless tactics. While refusing to produce the subpoenaed documents, Holder has previously denied knowledge of and cast doubt on the possibility that the wiretap applications contained information about reckless tactics.
“The wiretap applications show that immense detail about questionable investigative tactics was available to the senior officials who reviewed and authorized them. The close involvement of these officials – much greater than previously known – is shocking,” Issa wrote to Holder. “Throughout the course of the congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious, the [Justice] Department has consistently denied that any senior officials were provided information about the tactics used in Operation Fast and Furious. The wiretap applications obtained by the Committee show such statements made by senior Department officials regarding the wiretaps to be false and misleading. You have repeatedly either denied involvement by senior officials in Fast and Furious, or asserted that the wiretap applications do not contain rich detail about irresponsible investigative tactics.”
Wiretaps utilized in Operation Fast and Furious were intended to allow investigators in Arizona to listen to the phone calls of suspects as part of a strategy to reveal evidence of involvement by high level Mexican cartel associates. The six applications for wiretaps, which have been sealed by a federal judge, detail specific actions taken by agents in Operation Fast and Furious. This includes conscious decisions not to interdict weapons that agents knew were illegally purchased by smugglers taking weapons to Mexico.
The wiretaps, as required by federal law, were submitted to Washington for approval by senior Justice Department officials in the Washington based Criminal Division of the Justice Department. They were approved under the authority of Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer of the Criminal Division. To justify the need for the invasive law enforcement tool, Justice Department officials use robust and detailed information to explain the evidence used to merit its use and why other tactics are not sufficient to achieve the goals of the operation.
Information contained in the wiretaps had been subpoenaed by the Oversight Committee, but the Justice Department had refused to turn them over to investigators. Obtaining them answers some of the questions the Committee and House leadership have warned(PDF) Attorney General Holder he must fully address to avoid contempt proceedings. To date, Holder has not responded to this letter. As the wiretaps have been sealed, the committee cannot publicly release them but copies have been sent to the committee minority and the wiretaps are available for review by Members of the Committee.
Click here for the letter from Chairman Issa to Attorney General Eric Holder(PDF?)
Why should they? It's not like Issa's "investigation" is gonna cause any real problems for DoJ. It has been well over a year since CBS brought F&F to the forefront and nothing but blah-blah-blah has come of it.
here is another reason...at this point some may be afraid because they don’t think they will have any protection...as brought up by the guys who originally broke this story.
I suppose I could see that, with Holder and the Kenyan being willing to throw just about anybody under the bus.
Maybe more light will come with a Romney administration. For all Mitt’s known evils, this level of vindictiveness isn’t among them? (Anyhow, it’s a Rat problem, not a GOP problem.)
As soon as that scat started to be circulated, I knew something was rotten....where are the drug lords getting all those automatic weapons? Grenades? Military grade optics and equipment? From South America....that's where!
It would have worked too....if the Gunwalker scheme had not been exposed Janet and ATF would be rounding up "so called" assault weapons. National gun control was their prize and now these bastards have been caught red handed.....Tan Man needs to appoint a special counsel and get the show on the road....the CIA angle is being floated to give Boner cover to make this go away....
Big fish! Lanny breuer, obama appointee, work in clinton white house with SANDY BERGER!
Big fish! Lanny breuer, obama appointee, work in clinton white house with SANDY BERGER!
Not sure how well that would work, though. If there's anything that DUmmies hate, fear, and loathe worse than the GOP, it's a powerful rogue filled CIA. If a mole could punk it to walk guns, there's no telling what else it could be punked to do. With DUmmies piling on, the investigation would be urged to grow to become truly bipartisan.
I disagree.
If the GOP is unwilling to get to the crux of this, the blatant attack on the Second Amendment, then it is a very LARGE problem for the GOP and more importantly, for all Americans.
I mean, in that the rogue actors are almost all Rats. A spineless GOP unwilling to vigorously police this adds to the greater woe, of course.
And at the same time punked higher ups in the DoJ, punked higher ups in the FBI (FBI handles all NICs requests) and punked higher ups in the DEA?
You betcha!
Order more Orange prison suits now.
You’re saying we would need a broader collusion to make something like this fly? Or that the problems could have gone out in more than one direction, leading to heaven knows what consequences?
Let's call it what it is. State-sponsored terrorism.On this side of the border it's violations of the RICO Act. In Mexico and Honduras it's state-sponsored terrorism.
What else would you call heavily arming international criminal syndicates within a foreign country wherein that country is in a death struggle with those syndicates?
Especially when it goes beyond thousands of assault rifles to include grenades, RPGs, shoulder fired rockets, anti-aircraft guns, night vision equipment, body armor and special deals to bring their drugs onto our soil with legal impunity?
Not to mention the just-revealed news that the rip crew that killed BP Agent Brian Terry was there with DEA and FBI assistance and approval to attack and kill a rival cartel's smuggling crew.
Let's not leave out the FBI and DEA laundering millions of dollars for the drug cartels by setting up bank accounts for them that they otherwise couldn't do.
It's organized, it is spread through every Federal LEA and it violates numerous domestic laws and numerous statutes and treaties that deal with foreign nations. Yet none of it has been officially sanctioned. It's the FedGov acting like mafiosa.
0bama, Holder and Hillary Clinton are all deeply involved in this and it is state-sponsored terrorism. These Chicago machine Marxist thugs are dragging our country down to the level of Tehran and Pyongyang.
I.e. that the trouble of moles in the CIA would show itself in much more than some otherwise nonsensical operation than F&F. Even as an international public relations ploy to try to grab more guns, it was lame, because it was so obvious that it only happened because simple precautionary measures at the source vendors — don’t sell to somebody who has been marked as a sufficiently bad criminal, or not a citizen — were forcibly bypassed. Any half intelligent international observer would be asking “so what did this exercise prove?” But arming homies would make a whole lot of sense for a mole.
operation than F&F => operation like F&F
"Grenade-walking" part of "Gunwalker" scandal
And this...
Worse Than Gunwalker? State Dept. Allegedly Sold Guns to ZetasPhil Jordan, a former CIA operative and one-time leader of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s El Paso Intelligence Center, claims that the Obama administration is running guns to the violent Zetas cartel through the direct commercial sale of military grade weapons:
Jordan, who served as director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s El Paso Intelligence Center in 1995, said the Zetas have shipped large amounts of weapons purchased in the Dallas area through El Paso.
(snip)
“They’ve found anti-aircraft weapons and hand grenades from the Vietnam War era,” Plumlee said. Other weapons found include grenade launchers, assault rifles, handguns and military gear including night-vision goggles and body armor.
More about State Department involvement...
— has sources claiming “Obama’s man in the State Department,” (former) Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg, was the State Department operative who helped Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and the Department of Justice Deputy Attorney General David Ogden formulate the strategy that led to the tactics used in Operation Fast and Furious.Steinberg took office as Deputy Secretary of State on January 28, 2009
A little more than two years later, it was announced that Steinberg's time in the Obama State Department was over. From the New York Times, 30 March 2011:
Mrs. Clinton heaped praise on Mr. Steinberg, describing him as an “indispensable” partner. “On every foreign policy challenge, big and small, he has helped formulate our policy and oversee its execution,” she wrote. Mr. Steinberg, she said, played “Oscar to Jack Lew’s Felix,” referring to Jacob J. Lew, her other deputy, who left earlier this year to become Mr. Obama’s budget director.
Want to read even more about State Dept. involvement? ...
Sipsey Street Exclusive: "In at the beginning." The State Department & the Gunwalker Scandal.
Which would have required FBI assistance because they run the NICs program. Which would have required a sign-off from the DoJ because the FBI can't falsify NICs results without it. Which was not all the FBI was doing as "Money Walker" was their own program. Not sure if the DEA's "Money Walker" schemes were coordinated with the FBI or not.
There were CIA assets involved. You have to take a long hard look at the past operations of the CIA. As Mike Levine said,..it has all the earmarks of a CIA operation.
The CIA likes to pit one side against the other.
Who got the guns????????
Who has mysterious protection????
It is quite feasible that it started to be one thing..and the CIA took control.
CIA trumps all.
There is no way in hell that this operation could go on without CIA knowledge and approval.
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