Free Republic

Just as Second Amendment civil rights activists feared, federal government bureaucrats were supplying illegal firearms to Mexican drug cartels in the expectation that it would led to pressure for more regulation. Analyzing a 60 page document release in response to a FOIA action by Judicial Watch Attkisson writes:

Project Gunrunner The New AmericanAndy Ramirez Thursday, 26 May 2011 It was 11 days until Christmas and Detroit-born Brian Terry was looking forward to leaving the U.S.-Mexico border at the end of the week for a holiday visit with his family in his home state of Michigan. He had joined the Border Patrol three and one-half years before and had quickly excelled, becoming a member of the elite BORTAC (Border Tactical) Unit detailed out of the Naco, Arizona, station. A rugged, muscular, 6-foot-4 athlete, prior to the Border Patrol he had served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps —...

From the Second Amendment-hating fascists at ATF: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Project Gunrunner’s objective is to deny Mexican drug cartels the “tools of the trade,” which they employ to murder rival drug traffickers, civilians, as well as political, military, and law enforcement figures in order to strengthen their grip on the lucrative drug and firearms routes into and out of the United States." http://www.atf.gov/firearms/programs/project-gunrunner/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This stupidity gave birth to Operation "Fast and Furious". The idea was this: Allow the straw purchases of weapons in US southern border states and track the weapons to the cartel kingpins, while hoping no one was killed...

The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released copies of redacted emails on Wednesday that detail the involvement of the head of the ATF in a controversial gun-tracking program as early as March of 2010. The emails strike a stark contrast to letters the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) have sent to lawmakers in which they denied selling assault weapons to known and suspected straw purchasers for drug cartels and claimed that they made every effort to prevent weapons from going to Mexico. In one of the emails, released by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.),...

I’ve been keeping you abreast of all the Obama administration’s Project Gunrunner stonewalling since March (links/chronology below). Today, vigilant GOP House Oversight and Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa is holding another hearing to pressure Team Obama for the whole truth. On Monday, Issa and GOP watchdogs spotlighted DOJ obstructionism (Sipsey Street Irregulars has a rundown here.) More fit is hitting the shan. And in one of those rare confluences, other MSM outlets have joined CBS News in exposing the story. First, new documents. Just in from Issa’s office: Moments ago in his opening statement at today’s hearing, Operation Fast and...

It is the closest thing to a smoking gun congressional investigators have in their probe of Project Gunrunner -- a program that was intended to stop the flow of guns to criminals in Mexico but instead allowed those guns to be smuggled to Mexico instead.   An internal memo from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives shows that U.S. officials allowed criminals to buy 1,318 guns worth nearly $1 million, even after they suspected the buyers were working for Mexican drug cartels, and that the agency's effort to stop the guns had "yielded little or no results." ...

Having deflected questions so far regarding how much he knew about a federal project suspected of allowing guns sold in the U.S. to be illegally smuggled to Mexico, Attorney General Eric Holder is under fire again, this time from the National Rifle Association, a conservative group with a loud voice and influence in Washington. Sources tell Fox News that NRA Executive Director Wayne LaPierre will call for Holder's resignation in a Saturday morning speech at the NRA's annual meeting in Pittsburgh. LaPierre has criticized Holder's handling of "Project Gunrunner." The program of the Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and...

In the two years since Barack Obama took office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ramped up its Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious gun trafficking sting operations, drug war homicides in Mexico nearly tripled, according to an article published over the weekend by Global Research. This revelation comes coincidentally to the publication of the transcript of an interview on Univision, made available today by independent blogger Mike Vanderboegh, one of two men responsible for uncovering the Project Gunrunner controversy. Figures quoted by the Global Research article come from the Trans-Border Institute at the University of...

I suggest that before you read this post, you read the previous one on the Waco coverup and David Hardy's book "This Is Not An Assault." In fact, the post on Waco was suggested to both me and David Codrea by someone who wishes to be referred to as "an anonymous federal employee." His caution below underscores the Waco coverup lesson, as he commented in the preface email to us: "The reason is that the Congress makes decisions based on politics, not facts." Here is his analysis -- I have developed a sense that both sides (Congress and the Executive...

"Word is that curios George Gillett the Phoenix ASAC stepped on it again. Allegedly he has approved more than 500 AR-15 type rifles from Tucson and Phoenix cases to be �walked� to Mexico. Appears that ATF may be one of the largest suppliers of assault rifles to the Mexican cartels! One of these rifles is rumored to have been linked to the recent killing of a Border Patrol Officer in Nogales, AZ. Can anyone confirm this information?" Thus began the first post last December on an historic thread at the CleanUp ATF forum website on the subject of the Project...

“Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform today announced the issuance of a subpoena to the Department of Justices' Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) for documents related to the highly controversial ‘Project Gunrunner,’" the Committee announced in an April 1 press release. The unwillingness of this Administration – most specifically the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms – to answer questions about this deadly serious matter is deeply troubling," said Chairman Issa. "Allegations surrounding this program are serious and the ability of the Justice Department to conduct an impartial...

Alexander's Essay – March 31, 2011 "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." --Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Barack Hussein Obama and his Socialist cadre, in their enthusiasm to "fundamentally transform the United States of America," have redoubled efforts to do what all tyrannical governments must do to establish absolute state supremacy and usurp Rule of Law -- disarm the people. Leftists accomplish this through incremental implementation of gun confiscation measures, most of which are overt political machinations....

(CBS News) WASHINGTON - South of El Paso on Mexico's side of the border lies Juarez - the most dangerous city in the world. CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports ATF Special Agent Rene Jaquez has been stationed there for the past year trying to keep U.S. guns from being trafficked into Mexico. "That's what we do as an agency," Jaquez said. "ATF's primary mission is to make sure that we curtail gun trafficking." That's why Jaquez tells CBS News he was so alarmed to hear his own agency may have done the opposite: encouraged U.S. gun dealers to...

Anyone remember when President Obama invited Republicans to a sit-down on health care? The Prez proceeded to dominate the “discussions,” completely ignored Republican suggestions and rammed through one of the largest and most unpopular pieces of legislation in United States history. That’s just one example of the President’s bogus bi-partisanship: the Commander-in-Chief’s desire to appear centrist without actually being centrist. Is it any wonder that National Rifle Association jefe Wayne LaPierre greeted Obama’s invitation to meet with the Prez and gun control groups to discuss current gun laws with his own invitation to the President to fuck off and die...

It was tough picking a Liberal to lampoon for today’s column. Yes, children, the chum slick was thick this week, and I was tyrannized with too many options upon which to opine for my 900-word screed. For instance, one of the things I wanted to write about was how James O’Keefe handed NPR their testicles in his undercover video slam-dance that finally showed America these taxpayer-funded weasels for the anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti- Second Amendment, Muslim Brotherhood courting radio rats we’ve always known them to be. That was a tempting topic. Yep, should I spotlight how we now have these “elites”...

MEXICO CITY – The Mexican Senate on Thursday called a hearing over reports that U.S. agents allowed guns to be smuggled into Mexico as part of investigations into drug traffickers. The Senate voted to summon U.S. Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan to discuss the issue, though it set no date. The lawmakers also asked Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinoza to demand information from the U.S. State Department. CBS News and the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity reported that agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigating gunrunning by cartels allowed hundreds of guns purchased in the U.S. to...

A major scandal is developing around a signature U.S. effort to track and stop the flow of illicit weapons to Mexico, as officials at the Department of Justice close ranks, hoping to cover up an investigation critics say is responsible for an untold number of dead. The investigation was known as Project Gunrunner -- a joint task force headed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Department of Justice -- that took place in 2010. It was conceived after the bureau was criticized for not conducting more complex investigations on straw buyers -- people who were...

A federal operation that allowed weapons from the U.S. to pass into the hands of suspected gun smugglers so they could be traced to the higher echelons of Mexican drug cartels has lost track of hundreds of firearms, many of which have been linked to crimes, including the fatal shooting of a Border Patrol agent in December. The investigation, known as Operation Fast and Furious, was conducted even though U.S. authorities suspected that some of the weapons might be used in crimes, according to a variety of federal agents who voiced anguished objections to the operation. Many of the weapons...

Disturbing recent news reports suggest that federal agents knowingly let arms buyers for Mexican drug cartels smuggle high-powered weaponry across the border, with deadly consequences for U.S. law enforcers. Mexican leaders have warned for years that lax U.S. enforcement of gun smuggling was fueling border-area violence, but they should be particularly disturbed to learn that, in some cases, weapons were being deliberately allowed to flow southward. CBS News reported last week about Project Gunrunner, an operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to track how weapons purchased in U.S. gun stores reached Mexican drug gangs. Had Gunrunner...

The Gunwalker scandal proceeds apace. Senator Grassley’s still fighting the Department of Justice for a full accounting of the ATF Gunrunner program. That’s the anti-gun smuggling interdiction effort that allowed indeed enabled illegally-obtained weapons to “slip through the net,” into the hands of men who used them to murder U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agent Brian Terry. The truth about the ATF’s extra-legal bungling and the subsequent government cover-up—which likely extends to Janet Napolitano and Eric Holder–has yet to ping the mainstream media radar. Meanwhile, it’s important to note that northern Mexico continues its descent into lawlessness. And that the...