Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update

Now, they're just showing off rubbing people's faces in it.

You'd never believe the following if it didn't actually happen. And it sure as hell wouldn't have happened anywhere else but within the federal government.

The ATF has promoted three key supervisors of a controversial sting operation that allowed firearms to be illegally trafficked across the U.S. border into Mexico.

All three have been heavily criticized for pushing the program forward even as it became apparent that it was out of control. At least 2,000 guns were lost and many turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and two at the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.

The three supervisors have been given new management positions at the agency's headquarters in Washington. They are William G. McMahon, who was the ATF's deputy director of operations in the West, where the illegal trafficking program was focused, and William D. Newell and David Voth, both field supervisors who oversaw the program out of the agency's Phoenix office.

McMahon and Newell have acknowledged making serious mistakes in the program, which was dubbed Operation Fast and Furious.

"I share responsibility for mistakes that were made," McMahon testified to a House committee three weeks ago. "The advantage of hindsight, the benefit of a thorough review of the case, clearly points me to things that I would have done differently."

Three Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spokesmen did not return phone calls Monday asking about the promotions. But several agents said they found the timing of the promotions surprising, given the turmoil at the agency over the failed program.

Do we speak the truth?

Oh, we believe it's worth mentioning: these, at best, "incompetents", and at worst, "running a gun-smuggling operation to advance an anti-gun narrative", let 2,000 guns go back across the border which were used to kill one Border Patrol agent and hundreds if not thousands of Mexican officials and citizens and what did all that accomplish? Zero... Zero cartel leader arrests.


Voth supervised the crew of ATF agents under the operation. As they questioned the wisdom of allowing illegal purchases, he countered that because the weapons were turning up at Mexico crime scenes, cartel leaders had to be involved. He told his crew members they were "watching the right people."

His agents did not buy it.

"Whenever we would get a trace report back," said Agent John Dodson, Voth "was jovial, if not giddy, just delighted about that: Hey, 20 of our guns were recovered with 350 pounds of dope in Mexico last night. … To them it proved the nexus to the drug cartels. It validated that were really working a cartel case here."

Mexican drug cartels were using guns? Who'd have ever thunk it?

20 of our guns, 350 pounds of dope, one dead U.S. Border Patrol agent and countless dead Mexicans.


People should swing for this and we aren't being terribly figurative.