Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update

Breathless hyperventilating over a non-crisis when a Justice Department operation that has killed American agents and innocent Mexicans goes virtually unreported. That's just how our legacy media rolls.

It was very frustrating to all of us, and it appears thoroughly to us that the Department is really trying to figure out a way to push the information away from their political appointees at the Department.

That from Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson testifying to the House Oversight Committee over the July 4th weekend.


And then there is this from the latest letter from the Committee again requesting non-forthcoming info from the Justice Department.

The December 2009 meeting is critical because it occurred immediately after an unusual spike of activity by the straw buyers in which just a few of them purchased 212 guns in six days, primarily from one cooperating gun dealer. According to witnesses, that meeting was for the purpose of convincing the gun dealer to continue selling to the suspects and continue providing information to the ATF despite misgivings caused by the high volume purchases. The Department withheld records about that meeting. Yet, we learned from Mr. Melson that a key record purporting to memorialize that meeting was dated sometime after the controversy broke. Creating such a record more than a year after the meeting could suggest an attempt to paper the file with an after-the-fact rationalization rather than an honest attempt to record an accurate and contemporaneous account of the meeting.

(emphasis, ours)

Back at Seminary, this was called CYA... (Covering Your Ass).

Hell's bells... even the gun dealers thought this was a bad idea.


And then there's this from Of Arms and the Law:

The most impressive revelations are of data that Acting Director Melson gave them. ATF was ready to cooperate until it was gagged by the Deputy Attorney General. They informed the Deputy AG that they had documents that contradicted the "official story" Justice was giving out. A memo describing an important meeting -- held to convince a cooperating gun dealer who was getting worried about allowing all these suspicious gun buys -- was actually written over a year later, after the controversy broke. Melson says there is a memo that is a "smoking gun," which Justice is still refusing to reveal to the Committee.

This is the hottest political story since Watergate ... and of course (with a few exceptions) the MSM is ignoring it. The government itself sets up operations that run thousands of guns to drug cartels, gets two Federal agents and hundreds of Mexican nationals killed, then the coverup goes right up to the Deputy AG (which means it goes at least to the AG: his deputy wouldn't want to be accused of going behind his back), an agency head goes defector. And the MSM is in "move on folks, nothing to see here" mode.

To be fair, the L.A. Times has been covering this but in subtle below-the-fold fashion.


It bears updating: we have yet to see a single shred of evidence that would lead us to believe this was anything other than a callous and cynical plan to bolster a narrative of the free flow of guns from U.S. gun shops and into the hands of Mexican drug cartels for the purpose of passing new gun laws which is exactly what happened.