Project Gunrunner update

Previous posts on Project Gunrunner, the Department of Justice's/ATF's plan to let guns purchased here in the states to walk across the border and into the hands of Mexican drug cartels to better identify those cartels can be found here.




The House panel investigating Project Gunrunner or Fast and Furious released their initial report on this simply wretched operation. Some of the highlights from the report as follows:

Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who chairs the House committee, the report focuses on the efforts of four BATF agents who brought direct knowledge of the program:

“ATF agents have shared chilling accounts of being ordered to stand down as criminals in Arizona walked away with guns headed for Mexican drug cartels,” Issa said. “With the clinical precision of a lab experiment, the Justice Department kept records of weapons they let walk and the crime scenes where they next appeared. To agents’ shock, preventing loss of life was not the primary concern.”

Among the report's highlights, according to an Issa spokesman, are these:

* The supervisor of Operation Fast and Furious was “jovial, if not, not giddy but just delighted about” walked guns showing up at crime scenes in Mexico according to an ATF agent. (p. 37)

* Another ATF agent told the committee about a prediction he made a year ago that “someone was going to die” and that the gunwalking operation would be the subject of a Congressional investigation. (p. 24)

* The shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords created a “state of panic” within the group conducting the operation as they initially feared a “walked” gun might have been used. (p. 38)

* One Operation Fast and Furious Agent: “I cannot see anyone who has one iota of concern for human life being okay with this …” (p. 27)

* An ATF agent predicted to committee investigators that more deaths will occur as a result of Operation Fast and Furious. (p.39)

* Multiple agents told the committee that continued assertions by Department of Justice Officials that guns were not knowingly “walked” and that DOJ tried to stop their transport to Mexico are clearly untruthful. (p. 45-50).

Full report can be found at the link.


And this comes on the heels of a report that an estimated 150 Mexican law enforcement officers and soldiers have been shot with ATF-supplied weapons.


Meanwhile...

The damning evidence that the U.S. Department of Justice agency is a major supplier of cartel weapons will go in front of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this week, in what could be a damning indictment of the ATF’s senior leadership and Eric Holder’s leadership of the Department of Justice.

Attorney General Holder has apparently ordered the DOJ to fight Congressional oversight, with the DOJ and ATF ignoring seven letters and a subpoena from the committee. Neither Holder nor ATF Director Ken Melson will answer questions — which may lead to them being held in contempt of Congress.

But transparency is for chumps, dontcha know?


At this point, you would not be blamed for a degree of cynicism if you thought there was some ulterior political motive behind this deplorable operation. Recall the in-the-recent-past hue and cry against the flow of weapons into Mexico?

As Instaglen puts it: "Call me suspicious, but when I hear that ATF folks were “giddy” over the news that these guns were showing up at Mexican crime scenes, I can’t help but feel that the whole thing was designed to shore up efforts at gun control in the United States based on claims that it was necessary to prevent guns flowing to Mexico. Based on evidence to date, a better way to keep guns from flowing to Mexico would be to defund the ATF."



Concerned over the flow of weapons into Mexico? Who's concerned now?

And if you are accused of being a cynic, let that miserable hack that runs the Justice Department prove otherwise.




P.S. Several months back we ran a poll on who was the biggest hack in this administration. Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, won quite easily. If we ran that poll again today, we are confident the poll winner would not be Geithner.