Fast and Furious update

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Back in 2009, Rahm Emanuel, Team O's first chief of staff was quoted famously as saying that you "never let a crisis go to waste." However, in the case of Fast and Furious, if there is no crisis, you create one.

The latest chapter in the unfolding travesty that is Fast and Furious regards a DOJ budget that the President has threatened to veto because House Republican have stripped funding for a reporting mechanism for gun shops in the four southern border states - a reporting mechanism that came about as a result of Fast and Furious.

President Barack Obama has threatened to veto a Department of Justice appropriations bill House Republicans passed because, among other things, it includes a provision that blocks a gun control law his administration used Operation Fast and Furious to pass.

The Obama administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives wrote, and began implementing, a new rule that would require gun dealers in the four U.S. states that border Mexico to report sales of multiple semi-automatic rifles to the ATF.

In the 2013 fiscal year budget for the Department of Justice and related agencies, House Republicans inserted a rider, or condition, that would force the ATF to not implement that rule.

In a statement the White House released upon receiving the House appropriations bill, the administration threatened it would veto the legislation because of that ATF rider, among other things.

In the statement, the White House called that rider blocking the ATF rule’s implementation one of the few it “strongly opposes” because the Obama administration thinks it represents “problematic policy and language riders that have no place in funding legislation.”

Several House Republicans have charged that the Obama administration had an anti-gun agenda when it carried out Fast and Furious, and are particularly wary of Attorney General Eric Holder, who once expressed the need to “brainwash” the American people into disliking firearm ownership.

They cite emails CBS News acquired in December, in which lead Fast and Furious Agent Bill Newell and ATF Field Operations Assistant Director Mark Chait discussed how to use the scandal’s aftermath to promote the long-gun reporting requirement for multiple sales.

“ATF officials didn’t intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called ‘Demand Letter 3,’” CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson reported in December. “That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or ‘long guns.’ Demand Letter 3 was so-named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.”

(italics, ours)

We will again point out that CBS News and the L.A. Times have been the only legacy media outlets that have been consistent in their coverage of Fast and Furious.

The italicized portion of the linked article says it all: ATF and the Justice Department knowingly let guns walk across the border with zero intention of tracking them all to establish a narrative of an unchecked flow of weapons into the hands of Mexican drug cartel.

Mission accomplished.


So, you think that there would be some backtracking or some shame exhibited regarding Fast and Furious. You don't know politics and specifically Washington politics very well, do you?

Democratic politicians have also invoked Fast and Furious when pushing for stricter gun control laws. During an early November 2011 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein tried to leverage the crisis to push for anti-gun regulations.

“My concern, Mr. Chairman, is there’s been a lot said about Fast and Furious, and perhaps mistakes were made, but I think this hunt for blame doesn’t really speak about the problem,” Feinstein said during a Nov. 1 hearing. “And the problem is, anybody can walk in and buy anything: .50-caliber weapons, sniper weapons, buy them in large amounts and send them down to Mexico. So, the question really becomes, what do we do about this?”

“I’ve been here 18 years,” Feinstein continued. “I’ve watched the BATF get beaten up at every turn on the road. And, candidly, it’s just not right.”

During that hearing, Feinstein advocated for using Operation Fast and Furious as a springboard from which to advocate for strict gun control laws, including national databases and government-controlled firearms registration. She argued that new laws could prevent future programs like Fast and Furious from reaching maturity.

So, let's get this straight: we need stricter gun laws to prevent the government from running guns across the border. That is what Feinstein is saying, right?

We need stricter gun control laws to prevent Border Patrol and ICE agents as well as hundreds if not thousands of Mexican officials and citizens from getting killed as a direct result of actions taken by the U.S. government.

What we need is a complete turnover of the failed, power-hungry, cynical and decadent political establishment in Washington. Feinstein's statements make that irrefutable fact.

Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update: the miserable hack goes to the Hill edition

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The miserable hack that runs the Justice Department trudged up to the Capitol yesterday to tesify before Congress regarding Operation Fast and Furious and claiming no one at DOJ lied to Congress regarding the same.

Attorney General Eric Holder denied that anybody at the Department of Justice lied about the Fast and Furious program that allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug lords, even though he admitted that the DOJ sent inaccurate information to Congress.

Last week, the DOJ took the rare step of formally withdrawing a letter it sent to Congress in February that falsely claimed the program being executed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives did not allow guns to "walk" into Mexico.

Confronted about this by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., Holder defended the DOJ.

"Nobody at the Justice Department has lied," Holder insisted.

When Sensenbrenner pressed Holder on the distinction between lying and misleading Congress, Holder said it was a matter of a person's "state of mind."

Holder said that when DOJ officials provided inaccurate information to Congress, they didn't know at the time that it was inaccurate.

We blogged specifically about that a couple of days ago and the related fact that it looked like the Justice Department was attempting to set up a fall guy.

And drawing a distinction between lying and misleading as depending upon a person's "state of mind" doesn't exactly inspire confidence, now, does it?




Also, you'd be pleased to know that Holder has admitted the the guns allowed to walk into the hands of Mexican drug cartels will stay there for quite some time.

Attorney General Eric Holder suggested Thursday that weapons lost during the course of the failed "Fast and Furious" gunrunning operation will continue to show up at crime scenes in the U.S. and Mexico "for years to come."

And those 2,000 guns are exclusive of the estimated 4,900 guns that fell into the bad guys hands in just 2009 alone in a separate program that we can only imagine looks like selling weapons to the Mexican military out of the back of a State Department van.

And here's the sick part. Want to know why Holder felt obliged to acknowledge that those lost Fast and Furious guns were going to be at the crime scenes both here and Mexico for years to come? As a pretext for putting into place stricter gun laws.

Holder said such a program "must never happen again," but effectively urged lawmakers to move on -- and tackle the broader issue of the flow of firearms into Mexico.

"We cannot afford to allow the tragic mistakes of 'Operation Fast and Furious' to become a political sideshow or a series of media opportunities," he said. "Instead, we must move forward and recommit ourselves to our shared public safety obligations."

He used the occasion to prod Congress to support efforts to give the Justice Department broader legal tools to track firearms purchases.

Un. Freaking. Real

How he made it up to Capitol Hill with those basketball-sized cajones he must be carrying around is one of life's great unexplained mysteries.

The Justice Department and the State Department have proven to be entirely complicit in supplying guns to Mexican drug cartels, and they now want more power to do what exactly? Stop the flow of guns into Mexico? How has that been working?

We suspected all along that Fast and Furious was merely a set-up for precisely what Holder was asking and now we appear to have the proof.

Again, Sheryll Atkisson of CBS News is on the case:

Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation "Fast and Furious" to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.

In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the "big fish." But ATF whistleblowers told CBS News and Congress it was a dangerous practice called "gunwalking," and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

ATF officials didn't intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called "Demand Letter 3". That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or "long guns." Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.

On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF's Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:

"Bill - can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks."

Smoking. Gun.


Also, in his testimony, Holder could not even remember if he had discussed Fast and Furious with the President once he was made aware of it... whenever that was.

Scooter Libby was given jail time for far, far less egregious offenses.



Amongst fans of college sports, there is a term that is applicable here. Holder is either complicit in the operation of Fast and Furious or he is completely incompetent with respect to his lack of knowledge of it when the evidence suggests otherwise. Either way, things have gotten so out of hand at ATF and the Justice Department with this and other circumstances, Holder has displayed a demonstrable lack of institutional control and, by hook or by crook, needs to be removed from his position.

Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update (UPDATED)

(please scroll down for the update)


So, the miserable hack that runs the Justice Department has a little trouble remembering things like when exactly it was he was briefed on a federally-sponsored gun-running operation.

New documents obtained by CBS News show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress.

On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing, "I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."

Yet internal Justice Department documents show that at least ten months before that hearing, Holder began receiving frequent memos discussing Fast and Furious.

The documents came from the head of the National Drug Intelligence Center and Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer.

In Fast and Furious, ATF agents allegedly allowed thousands of weapons to cross the border and fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

It's called letting guns "walk," and it remained secret to the public until Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered last December. Two guns from Fast and Furious were found at the scene, and ATF agent John Dodson blew the whistle on the operation.

Ever since, the Justice Department has publicly tried to distance itself. But the new documents leave no doubt that high level Justice officials knew guns were being "walked."

Two Justice Department officials mulled it over in an email exchange Oct. 18, 2010. "It's a tricky case given the number of guns that have walked but is a significant set of prosecutions," says Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division. Deputy Chief of the National Gang Unit James Trusty replies "I'm not sure how much grief we get for 'guns walking.' It may be more like, "Finally they're going after people who sent guns down there."

The Justice Department told CBS News that the officials in those emails were talking about a different case started before Eric Holder became Attorney General. And tonight they tell CBS News, Holder misunderstood that question from the committee - he did know about Fast and Furious - just not the details.

We're kind of scratching our head here because we thought the gross inconsistency between what documents showed of Holder having knowledge of Fast and Furious and when he told Congress he had knowledge of the program was old hat. We'll check the records.

But back to the matter at hand: so, which is it? Is Holder so incompetent that he did not desire to ask for more details regarding a program that sends U.S.-purchased guns back across the border or did he know the details all along and was just distancing himself from culpability? Either way, it shows he is not fit to be running the Justice Department and needs to be shown the door immediately.




/sound of other shoe dropping

House Republicans are calling for a special counsel to determine whether Attorney General Eric Holder misled Congress during his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious, Fox News has learned.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, was sending a letter to President Obama on Tuesday arguing that Holder cannot investigate himself, and requesting the president instruct the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel.

The question is whether Holder knowingly made false statements of fact under oath during a Judiciary Committee hearing on May 3. At the time, Holder indicated he was not familiar with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program known as Fast and Furious until about April 2011.

"I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks," Holder testified.

However, newly discovered memos suggest otherwise. For instance, one memo dated July 2010 shows Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, told Holder that straw buyers in the Fast and Furious operation "are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels."

The miserable hack should just spare everybody the pain and step down.



(UPDATE #1) : This really shouldn't be all that funny but it's Iowahawk:

/picking up in the middle of phone conversation originating from Washington D.C.

Now... now Juan... let's just calm down here a minute. Just, okay.. okay... let me please explain, okay? See, the funny thing is, it turns out, a couple years back there was, well, this stimulus program money, and then there were these brainstorming sessions, where, well, there were some ideas what to do with it. So, anyhoo, one of the ideas that happened was, 'hey, what if there were, say, 2000 machine guns that got sent to Mexican drug lords?' and so forth.

Well no, of course we couldn't tell you. It would have ruined the surprise.

Well, okay, I guess the gato is out of the ol' bag-o. You know that drug cartel war problem you've been having? So, well, the idea was, hey, wouldn't it be great if somehow we could put a trace on the machine guns, and then, surprise! It'd be a like a whole pinata full of drug lord information.

Mmhm.

Why? Well see, if we traced all the machine guns we gave to your drug lords, then we could all learn how your drug lords get their machine guns.

Well, Juan, yes, certainly, that's one hypothesis. But I mean besides from us.

Tracers?

Oh, those tracers. See, the funny thing is - and this is such a hoot - someone forgot to buy batteries for them. You know how it is when you buy those Christmas presents, and it's like "batteries not included," and...

If you're in the mood for more black humor, go here.

Your Fast and Furious update

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The long-awaited and much-anticipated Department of Justice Inspector General report on the federal government's wildly successful gun-running scheme, Fast and Furious, was released today.

Here's Fox News with some of the details:

A major report released Wednesday on the Operation Fast and Furious scandal faulted a range of federal agencies for the failed anti-gunrunning program — and has resulted in the resignation of one Justice Department official.

Jason Weinstein, the deputy assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, is resigning in the wake of the Justice Department inspector general report on Fast and Furious. The report essentially concludes that he is the most senior department official who was in a position to stop Fast and Furious.

The nearly 500-page report was completed after investigators reviewed 100,000 documents and interviewed 130 people.

The reports also says that no one responsible for the case at ATF Phoenix or the U.S. Attorney’s Office raised a serious question or concern about the government not taking earlier measures to stop Fast and Furious.

And here's CBS News:

The Justice Department’s inspector general cleared Attorney General Eric Holder and his top deputies Wednesday of knowing about the gunwalking operation known as Fast and Furious that allowed thousands of weapons to cross into Mexico, CBS Radio News reports.

Two of those weapons turned up at the scene where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed during a shootout in 2010 with drug traffickers.

While the inspector general heaped most of the blame for Fast and Furious on investigators in Phoenix, one senior official, Jason Weinstein, is blamed for not acting to stop the tactics.

Weinstein resigned Tuesday night. His lawyer told CBS Radio News that the report was badly flawed.

Former acting director of ATF, Kenneth Melson, of whom the report was highly critical retired upon release of the report.

It's a pretty damning and scathing report that casts a wide net of blame but most importantly, for the administration, it doesn't place any of the blame at the feet of the miserable hack that runs the Justice Department.

The question remains, then: if Holder did not know about Fast and Furious then what was the purpose of the President shielding him with executive priviledge?

We are still finding it unlikely that an operation that was by definition "international" was carried out without the knowledge of the top dog.

At best, we still have a federal department that exhibited a complete lack of institutional control and wound up getting people, including two American agents killed. At worst, Holder knew about it and gave it either his tacit or active approval and support.

We're sorry. There are still unanswered questions out there. We aren't satisfied. Are you?

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Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update

So, now the FBI is complicit in Fast and Furious?

In the latest chapter of the gunrunning scandal known as Operation Fast and Furious, federal officials won't say how two suspects obtained more than 360 weapons despite criminal records that should have prevented them from buying even one gun.

Under current federal law, people with felony convictions are not permitted to buy weapons, and those with felony arrests are typically flagged while the FBI conducts a thorough background check.

However, according to court records reviewed by Fox News, two of the 20 defendants indicted in the Fast and Furious investigation have felony convictions and criminal backgrounds that experts say, at the very least, should have delayed them buying a single firearm. Instead, the duo bought dozens of guns on multiple occasions while federal officials watched on closed-circuit cameras.

Congressional and law-enforcement sources say the situation suggests the FBI, which operates the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, knowingly allowed the purchases to go forward after consulting with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which initiated Operation Fast and Furious.

Under the failed anti-gun trafficking program, straw buyers -- those who legally purchase guns and illegally sell them to a third party -- were allowed to buy guns, many of which were sold to Mexican drug cartel members and subsequently lost. Related to the case, the U.S. government in May charged Manuel Osorio-Arellanes with killing Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last year using a gun purchased through the program.

Now guess who isn't talking? That's right - add the FBI to Justice Department and ATF leadership (with the exception of acting ATF head, Kenneth Melson) in the stonewall gang.

We have the very agency, the FBI, that is responsible for denying the sale of firearms to criminals now green-lighting those purchases to make sure they get into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

Linked article refers to Fast and Furious as "botched". Again, with the botched. What was botched about it? It performed brilliantly in bolstering a wild, wild West narrative that guns by the truckload were flooding into Mexico to throw gasoling on a raging drug war.

So a couple of federal agents and countless Mexican officials and civilians got killed in the process? When you are talking the amount of weaponry (we've heard anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 guns) that was allowed to walk back across the border, some people getting killed with those very same guns was probably just considered collateral damage.

It bears repeating: We have yet to see, hear or read anything that would lead us to believe that Fast and Furious was anything other than just a deadly cynical operation that was carried out for purely political reasons for the ultimate goal of getting tougher gun laws passed.

Mission: Accomplished!




P.S. The third round of hearings by the House Oversight Committee will go down today where Chairman Issa will question ATF officials who had originally defended Fast and Furious as well as former and current ATF attaches to Mexico who claimed their agency never informed them of the operation.

Fast and Furious update

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The miserable hack that runs the Justice Department again trudged up to Capitol Hill yesterday and again stonewalled Congress looking into the wildly successful federal-operated gun-running scheme.

We're going to scale back coverage of this because at this point we're rehashing the same material and until Congressman Issa (R-CA) serves a contempt charge on Holder, there's really no use in boring everyone with the same information. As a taste of just what a farce these hearing have become, the miserable hack would like you to know that emails describing "Fast and Furious" weren't really referring to "Fast and Furious".

Attorney General Eric Holder claimed during congressional testimony today that internal Justice Department emails that use the phrase “Fast and Furious” do not refer to the controversial gun-walking operation Fast and Furious.

Under questioning from Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who read excerpts of the emails at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Justice Department oversight, Holder claimed that the phrase “Fast and Furious” did not refer to Fast and Furious but instead referred to another gun-walking operation known as “Wide Receiver.”

However, the emails refer to both programs -- "Fast and Furious" and the "Tucson case," from where Wide Receiver was launched -- and reveal Justice Department officials discussing how to handle media scrutiny when both operations become public.

Got it.

How it is that there has not been either a special prosecutor assigned or a contempt charge slapped on Holder's ass is completely beyond us.

Again, we'll get back to you all when something substantive has happened.

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Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update

Again, props to the L.A. Times and CBS News for being about the only main stream outlets to consistently cover this deadly federally-sponsored gun-running scheme.


Scrambling...

Two top supervisors at ATF headquarters in Washington -- the deputy director and the assistant director for all field operations -- have been reassigned as the beleaguered agency attempts to remake itself amid the fallout from a failed gun-tracking operation along the Southwest border called Fast and Furious, according to two sources briefed on the changes.

William J. Hoover, the No. 2 man at ATF, will become special agent-in-charge of the agency's Washington field office, while Mark Chait, who ran all of the field investigations around the country, is being reassigned as head of the Baltimore field office.

Thomas Brandon, who was sent to Phoenix to run the field office there and help it recover from the repercussions of Fast and Furious, will be taking Hoover's spot as deputy director.

Hoover had broad supervision over Fast and Furious, was given routine updates on the "gun walking" operation, and grew concerned over the number of firearms getting into Mexico without any U.S. indictments on this side of the border.

He tried to get it shut down six months after it began in the fall of 2009. But he failed, and the program continued until January of this year. During that time, a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed in Arizona and two Fast and Furious weapons were recovered at the scene.

Panic...

The heavily redacted memos don’t explicitly implicate ATF and other federal agencies in an illegal scheme, as ATF whistleblowers have alleged. But if there’s a coverup going on, why would they?

And coverup there seems to be. On top of stonewalling Rep. Darrell Issa’s House investigation of the mess, Justice has floated a series of contradictory excuses:

* There was no such program.

* Even if there weres, Holder never knew about it.

* Even if he should have known about it, he might not have read Breuer’s memos.

* Even if he read Breuer’s memos, he misunderstood the simple question: “When did you first know about the program, officially, I believe, called Fast and Furious?”

With the recent exposure of another apparent “gunwalking” operation, Wide Receiver, that may date back to the Bush administration, some are already pushing a “Bush-did-it-too” meme. If true, it shows the rot at Justice goes deeper than we thought -- but it has nothing to do with whether Holder may have committed perjury.

If all they've got as a defense is Obama = Bush then they're in a lot more trouble than they're willing to admit.


And potential intimidation intended to chill inquiry and freedom of the press?

While the bulk of the national press corps is off inspecting Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s back forty for residual signs of racism, CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson and Fox’s William La Jeunesse have been doing the heavy lifting on Fast and Furious -- and getting some tough pushback from Obama officials.

On the Laura Ingraham radio show yesterday, Attkisson told of being “yelled at” by Justice flack Tracy Schmaler and being “screamed” at by White House official Eric Schultz for being “unfair.”

Said Attkisson: “They will tell you that I’m the only reporter -- as they told me -- that is not reasonable. They say The Washington Post is reasonable, the LA Times is reasonable, The New York Times is reasonable, I’m the only one who thinks this is a story, and they think I’m unfair and biased by pursuing it.”

CBS has reportedly yanked Attkisson from further media appearances this week. But isn’t independent inquiry the function of a free press? Nobody thought there was a story in Watergate, either, until Woodward and Bernstein proved otherwise.

If true, going after the press is even worse than stonewalling a Congressional investigation. It wreaks of panic. The blood is in the water now.

Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update

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Just getting caught up on some Fast and Furious news from over the past week or so.



First off, confirmed: Joe Lieberman is a racist.

Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman has directed the staff of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, which he chairs, to examine miscommunication between law enforcement agencies related to the Justice Department’s Operation Fast and Furious.

A spokesperson told The Daily Caller Wednesday that Lieberman “believe[s] that the lack of interagency coordination along the border merits further examination, and as Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he has directed his staff to follow up with the relevant federal agencies on that topic.”

Fast and Furious was a program of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, overseen by Holder’s DOJ. It sent thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels via straw purchasers — people who legally purchase guns in the United States with the known intention of illegally trafficking them somewhere else.

At least 300 people in Mexico were killed with Fast and Furious weapons, as was Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. The identities of the Mexican victims are unknown.

(italics, ours)


That's an interesting choice of terms as it very much appears to be quite excellent communications amongst the agencies under the DOJ umbrella that allowed those thousands of guns to be smuggled across the border and placed into the hands of violent Mexican drug cartels. Lieberman's efforts do, however, remove whatever heft of the partisanship and, umm, bigotry charges that have been levied at the House and Senate committees investigating this.

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And what has that miserable hack that runs the Justice Department been up to lately? Campaigning against illegal firearms, of course?

The number of officers killed in the line of duty jumped 13 percent in 2011 compared with the year before — and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder condemned the increase as “a devastating and unacceptable trend” that he blamed on illegal firearms.

The number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty rose to 173 this year, from 153 in 2010, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund announced Wednesday. This year’s figure is 23 percent higher than 122 killed in the line of duty in 2009.

Holder said “too many guns have fallen into the hands of those who are not legally permitted to possess them,” in explaining the increase.

...

“This is a devastating and unacceptable trend. Each of these deaths is a tragic reminder of the threats that law enforcement officers face each day,” Holder in a statement. “I want to assure the family members and loved ones who have mourned the loss of these heroes that we are responding to this year’s increased violence with renewed vigilance and will do everything within our power — and use every tool at our disposal — to keep our police officers safe.”

For much of the past year, one fatality in particular has weighed heavily on Holder’s mind, that of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, whose December 2010 murder sparked interest and public investigations into the Justice Department’s botched Fast and Furious gun-walking program.

(italics, ours)

Again, how it is the miserable hack gets around Washington lugging those basketball-sized stones is a minor miracle in itself.

But we suppose that Holder can play it straight here as the guns ran into Mexico can hardly be considered illegal as Fast and Furious was executed under the full faith and credit of the miserable hack's own department. The DOJ and ATF are here to protect us, right?

And about the death of Agent Brian Terry: obviously not weighing heavily enough as the hack has repeatedly stonewalled and/or otherwise obfuscated and bobbed and weaved through sworn testimony against efforts to get to the bottom of this botched wildly successful American law enforcement gun-running operation.

Holder is doing everything possible to make this a campaign issue for his boss in the coming year.

Fast and Furious update

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Remember the good ol' days when dissent was patriotic? And remember when the whistleblower made Time's person of the year back in 2012? Boy, those were the days but ancient history now, so try to preserve as best you can those gauzy memories as coming forward to expose the truth of a highly successful and deadly gun-running scheme isn't what could be considered a career-enhancing act.


From the Daily Caller:

House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley are asking the Department of Justice’s internal investigator to hold accountable anyone who retaliated against or threatened to retaliate against Operation Fast and Furious whistleblowers.

In a Friday letter to the DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Grassley and Issa said they’re now concerned retaliation is much more likely following Thursday’s votes to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal and civil contempt of Congress.

“We just learned that ATF senior management placed two of the main whistleblowers who have testified before Congress about Fast and Furious under the supervision of someone who vowed to retaliate against them,” they wrote before describing how senior political figures have made dangerous threats before.

And who is this person in question?

Thomasson also allegedly said that: “All these whistleblowers have axes to grind. ATF needs to f—k these guys.”

According to Grassley and Issa, when Thomasson was asked about whistleblowers’ allegations that guns were allowed to walk, Thomasson said he “didn’t know and didn’t care.”

Grassley and Issa have given Horowitz until July 6 to answer whether Thomasson was “admonished” for those threats against whistleblowers, how he got his job in the first place and how the DOJ and ATF are going to make sure he doesn’t retaliate against whistleblowers moving forward.

For those of you in Placentia, California, to "f-k", in this context, can be roughly equated to "ruining one's career".

Issa and Grassley have given Horowitz until July 6 to answere whether or not Thomasson was admonished for the threats and, who the guy is and how in the hell did he get his job.


Issa and Grassley also released new documents that showed ATF's Washington headquarters issuing talking points regarding Fast and Furious two weeks before Grassley ever confronted the Justice Department or ATF.

Grassley didn’t confront the Justice Department or ATF with those questions until Jan. 27, 2011, but ATF headquarters had prepped internal talking points as early as Jan. 12, 2011.

In that Jan. 12, 2011, memo, ATF officials laid out expected questions about gunwalking in Fast and Furious and Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s murder with Fast and Furious weapons – and canned answers ATF officials were supposed to give to press or anyone else asking about it.

-“The death of Agent Terry in tragic and is a sad and dark day for all of law enforcement. We’ve lost one of our own. This is another example of the dangers faced by law enforcement every day across this country when pursuing these violent criminals.”

-“Agent Terry’s death is the exact reason why we must continue going after those who are determined to destroy the lives of so many innocent individuals in our communities by plying their illicit trade. For those who would say it is Mexico’s problem, I say Agent Terry’s death and all of those who have perished because of this violence prove that this challenge belongs to everyone.”

-“The investigation into the murder of Agent Terry is active and ongoing. ATF has pledged its support and resources to bring to justice the perpetrators who are guilty of that crime. I won’t say anything here today to jeopardize that investigation or the subsequent prosecution of those responsible for this terrible crime.”

- blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

(italics, ours)


Time will tell and hopefully we can get to the bottom of who exactly authorized Fast and Furious and what exactly was Holder's role in it and his subsequent actions after it was shut down but the falsely-generated memos, the re-assignments, the stonewalling, the heavily-redacted memos and now these whistle-blower threat allegations all suggest an organization with something to hide.

Yeah, there was a time when transparency was pretty damn patriotic, as well.

Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update (Updated)

(please scroll down for the update)




For those of you who think that perhaps we should just go ahead and change the name of our blog, don't blame us... perhaps if the Justice Department would quit stonewalling and give this country some answers we all could just get on with life.



This is starting to look bad for Team O and quite possibly for the miserable hack that runs the Justice Department: a charter member of the dead tree media, the L.A. Times, is starting to cover the Gunrunner scandal instead of merely providing cover.

The embattled head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has told congressional investigators that some Mexican drug cartel figures targeted by his agency in a gun-trafficking investigation were paid informants for the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration.

Kenneth E. Melson, ATF's acting director, has been under pressure to resign after the agency allowed guns to be purchased in the United States in hopes they would be traced to cartel leaders. Under the gun-trafficking operation known as Fast and Furious, the ATF lost track of the guns, and many were found at the scene of crimes in Mexico, as well as two that were recovered near Nogales, Ariz., where a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed.

In two days of meetings with congressional investigators over the weekend, Melson said the FBI and DEA kept the ATF "in the dark" about their relationships with the cartel informants. If ATF agents had known of the relationships, the agency might have ended the investigation much earlier, he said.

As a result of Melson's statements, "our investigation has clearly expanded," a source close to the congressional investigation said Wednesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry is ongoing. "We know now it was not something limited to just a small group of ATF agents in Arizona."

. . . . . .

Sources said investigators had "very real indications from several sources" that some of the cartel leaders the ATF was trying to identify through Fast and Furious were "already known" to the other agencies and apparently had "been paid as informants."

Finally, Melson said, ATF agents along the U.S.-Mexico border realized that the FBI and DEA were running separate operations and that it "could have a material impact on Fast and Furious." Melson said he notified his superiors of this problem in April.

Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot...


The ostensible purpose of Fast and Furious was to track guns purchased here in the U.S. back to shadowy drug cartel figures so they could be positively IDed. However, it appears we already knew the identities of at least some of these heretofore shadowy figures because they were already on the government payroll. And not only were the agencies not communicating with each other, it appears, according to testimony, that the FBI and DEA were running separate operations.

So, taking all this in toto, it begs the question: what was the true purpose of Operation Fast and Furious? Because, as we see it right now, as horrible of an idea as it may have been to let weapons walk back across the border to identify who the Mexican drug king pins were, Fast and Furious didn't have an ice cube's chance in hell of even accomplishing that because the facts on the ground suggest that wasn't the reason why it was put into effect.

Dig this:

Mexican authorities have long complained that most of the guns that fuel the drug wars there are purchased in the U.S.

On Wednesday, Mexican federal police released a videotaped interrogation with recently captured Jesus Rejon Aguilar, an alleged founder of the Zetas gang who is wanted in the slaying of a U.S. immigration agent in Mexico. He brazenly told them that "all the weapons are bought in the United States" and that "even the American government itself was selling the weapons."

He added, "Whatever you want, you can get."

Terrific. Several rogue government agencies having a free-for-all down on our southern border region doing god-knows-what for god-knows-why.

When they said there was a border violence problem who among us thought that our own law enforcement agencies would be aiding and abetting that violence?



(UPDATE #1):Wouldn't you know? It's like a bad dream... $10,000,000 in the Porkulus package funded Gunrunner.

From page 16 the bill:

For an additional amount for ‘‘State and Local Law Enforcement
Assistance’’, $40,000,000, for competitive grants to provide
assistance and equipment to local law enforcement along the
Southern border and in High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas to
combat criminal narcotics activity stemming from the Southern
border, of which $10,000,000 shall be transferred to ‘‘Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Salaries and Expenses’’
for the ATF Project Gunrunner.

A tragic convergence of failed Obama administraion policies. There's your shovel-ready.


(H/T: Commenter Harrison and Hot Air)

Take our Attorney General, please

We're a little late to the party with this but Congressman Issa (R-CA) head of the congressional oversight committee had a chance to question that miserable hack that runs the Justice Department during a judiciary committee hearing earlier this week on what/when he knew about ATF's south-of-the-border operation, Project Gunrunner.

(Previous posts on this little misadventure, here)

Video of the exchange grilling can be found here.

Some highlights via Patterico:

ISSA: Mr. Attorney General, we have two Border Patrol agents who are dead, who were killed by guns that were allowed, as far as we can tell, to deliberately walk out of gun shops under the program often called Fast and Furious. This program, as you know — and the President’s been asked about it, you’ve been asked about it – allowed for weapons to be sold to straw purchasers, and ultimately, many of those weapons are today in the hands of drug cartels and other criminals. When did you first know about the program, officially, I believe, called Fast and Furious? To the best of your knowledge, what date?

HOLDER: I’m not sure of the exact date but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.

ISSA: How about the head of the Criminal Division, Lanny Breuer. Did he authorize it?

HOLDER: I’m not sure whether Mr. Breuer authorized it. You have to understand the way in which the Department operates. Although there are operations, this one has become — has gotten a great deal of publicity.

ISSA: Yeah, there are dead Americans as a result of this failed and reckless program. So I would say that it hasn’t gotten enough attention, has it, Mr. Attorney General?

ISSA: Mr. Attorney General, do you take seriously a subpoena signed by the Clerk of the House?

HOLDER: Of course.

ISSA: After 14 days of waiting for a letter to be signed or acknowledged or responded to, we sent a subpoena signed by the Clerk of the House. 32 days later, last night, your people responded by giving us 92 pages representing 3 documents that were public records already.

We'll get to what was in those documents later but the fact that Holder sent Issa documents Issa could get online is priceless.

ISSA: We’re not looking at the straw buyers, Mr. Attorney General. We’re looking at you. We’re looking at your key people who knew or should have known about this and whether or not your judgment was consistent with good practices and whether or not instead the Justice Department is basically guilty of allowing weapons to kill Americans and Mexicans. So will you agree to cooperate with that investigation both on the House and Senate side?

HOLDER: We’ll certainly cooperate with all the investigations, but I’m going to take great exception to what you just said. The notion that somehow or other this Justice Department is responsible for those deaths that you mentioned, that assertion’s offensive. And I want to tell you that –

ISSA: But what if it’s accurate, Mr. Attorney General?

Ouch. This was pretty much a text book dressing down. As we wrote before, we're not sure what is worse: signing off on this operation that started under George W. Bush or not having any knowledge of it at all.



OK. So, what was in those totally public documents that the Justice Department so begrudgingly turned over? Turns out the Lanny Breuer Issa questioned Holder about did indeed know about the operation.

Three Project Gunrunner documents Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican and House Oversight Committee chairman, released on Wednesday show high-ranking Justice Department officials were aware of Operation Fast and Furious and that there was a consistent administration policy that allowed American guns to be “walked” into Mexican drug cartels’ possession.

One of the documents shows Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer approved a wiretap application for suspects Operation Fast and Furious targeted in March 2010. The wiretap application process is lengthy and cumbersome, and often requires those applying to make strong case as to why they need it. So, Breuer would have been briefed in detail on Operation Fast and Furious before authorizing the wiretap.

Another document, a briefing paper from January 8, 2010, shows the administration’s step-by-step policy decisions and plans. The Phoenix Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), wrote that the “investigation has currently identified more than 20 individual connected straw purchasers,” or those who bought weapons, under ATF surveillance, with the intent to traffic them to Mexican drug cartels. The briefing paper shows that ATF’s policy was to allow this to happen. “Currently, our strategy is to allow the transfer of firearms to continue to take place, albeit at a much slower pace, in order to further the investigation and allow for the identification of additional co-conspirators who would continue to operate and illegally traffic firearms to Mexican DTOs [Drug Trafficking Organizations] which are perpetrating armed violence along the Southwest Border.”

Well, since KSM and now bin Laden won't be going to a civilian trial anytime soon and Project Fast and Furious has been shuttered (do we assume too much?), the miserable hack has quite a bit of free time on his hands. How do we know this? Because Justice is apparently going to get to the bottom of this whole BCS business. (courtesy The Liberator Today):

The Department of Justice has sent a letter to NCAA President Mark Emmert asking why the association does not have a major-college football playoff and it wants to know if Emmert believes some aspects of the Bowl Championship Series system do not serve the interests of fans, schools and players.

Words fail us.


We were pretty much the first ones on the Dump the miserable hack bandwagon and dude has done nothing... absolutely nothing to dissuade us from that opinion.

Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update

Good news: Looks like Congressional Democrats are finally getting onboard with the investigation into the botched wildly successful gun running operation of weapons bought here in the States and shipped down to Mexican drug cartels south of the border.

Democratic lawmakers contend that Operation Fast and Furious exemplifies the need to strengthen U.S. gun laws to give federal law enforcement officials more tools to prosecute criminal weapon traffickers.

“This hunt for blame doesn’t really speak about the problem,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein at a recent Senate Judiciary hearing while discussing Fast and Furious.

“And the problem is, anybody can walk in and buy anything, .50-caliber weapons, sniper weapons, buy them in large amounts, and send them down to Mexico. So, the question really becomes, what do we do about this?”

The ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) have introduced a dedicated firearms trafficking statute, but it has stalled in the House Judiciary Committee.

Wait, what...?


Is Feinstein actually claiming that Fast and Furious, which has resulted in one dead Border Patrol Agent and hundreds if not thousands of dead Mexican officials and innocent civilians, is cause for more gun control laws?

Unreal. Proof positive of our contention that this federally-sponsored gun trafficking operation had nothing to do with actually bringing down Mexican drug cartels rather advancing a bogus narrative about an unchecked flow of guns across the border and the need to stop it.

There are 2-3,000 guns now unaccounted for down in Mexico because of Fast and Furious and Feinstein doesn't see that as a problem and doesn't think anyone needs to be held accountable because of it. Good to know.



Can't blame them, however, for wanting to talk about something else.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who worked as a federal prosecutor for six years, pointed to the federal sentencing guidelines for possession of illegal automatic machine guns, saying that the second illegal machine gun guarantees life in prison.

“When I hear people trying to make this a political conversation about the need to reform federal gun laws, what do you want other than life?” said Gowdy in an interview with The Hill. “I get it, I’d want to change the subject too if I were them. I’m happy to have a conversation about broader gun laws, but we’re going to do it after Fast and Furious.”

(italics, ours)

Perhaps Feinstein and that miserable hack that runs the Justice Department might want to explain to the widow and family of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry how it is that these new gun laws they wish to implement will actually save the lives already lost due to a sickening and deadly political stunt.

Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious Direct Commercial Sales update

We may need to retire the series after this.

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Why let U.S.-purchased guns made by straw buyers walk back across the border and into the hands of Mexican drug cartels when you can cut out that middle-man and let the Mexican government purchase them directly with a 26% chance they will still wind up in the hands of the drug cartels?

Wholesaling drug/gun violence, anybody?

The problem of weapons legally sold to Mexico - then diverted to violent cartels - is becoming more urgent. That's because the U.S. has quietly authorized a massive escalation in the number of guns sold to Mexico through "direct commercial sales." It's a way foreign countries can acquire firearms faster and with less disclosure than going through the Pentagon.

Here's how it works: A foreign government fills out an application to buy weapons from private gun manufacturers in the U.S. Then the State Department decides whether to approve.

And it did approve 2,476 guns to be sold to Mexico in 2006. In 2009, that number was up nearly 10 times, to 18,709. The State Department has since stopped disclosing numbers of guns it approves, and wouldn't give CBS News figures for 2010 or 2011.

With Mexico in a virtual state of war with its cartels, nobody's tracking how many U.S. guns are ending up with the enemy.

(emphasis, ours)

There's some more of that famous Obama administration tranparency.

The State Department audits only a tiny sample - less than 1 percent of sales - but the results are disturbing: In 2009, more than a quarter (26 percent) of the guns sold to the region that includes Mexico were "diverted" into the wrong hands, or had other "unfavorable" results.

That works out to nearly 4,900 guns for just 2009 alone, far more than the 2,000 guns Fast and Furious allowed to fall into, uhh, "unfavorable" hands.

We understand the theory of allowing foreign governments to purchase our weaponry in order to fight their domestic bad guys, especially when taking out those same bad guys is in the best national security interests of both countries. But how can anybody with a straight face, knowing that in a single year alone, almost 4,900 guns wound up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels, in large part because 150,000 Mexican troops have defected to those cartels over the past few years, tell us that it's good for our national security?

The State Department's silence and failure to disclose in this matter speaks volumes.

And to think that Fast and Furious may have merely been a distraction to avert our eyes from the real travesty.




P.S. CBS News goes to lengths to emphasize that this gun purchasing program (DCS) is completely legal. Why? To draw a distinction between DCS and the entirely dubious nature of Fast and Furous? Or possibly to illustrate the absolute absurdity of this apparently above-the-board program? As always, your thoughts are welcome in the comment section.


P.P.S. Props to CBS News and reporter Sharyl Attkisson who was the first legacy media member to break Fast and Furious and who now appears to be out in front of this story. You may recall, back in October, Attkisson told of being yelled and screamed at by Justice and White House officials for being "unfair" in her reporting of Fast and Furious. Heh. Wonder what their reaction will be to her reporting of this?



H/T: Hot Air

Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update

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We're late to this update due both to time constraints and the fact that there is really nothing to update. The miserable hack that heads up the Justice Department testified up on Capitol Hill again on Thursday and again merely stone-walled and again told Congress that he doesn't have to share his emails invoking a highly dubious executive priviledge and generally snarked his way through his questioning.

A petulant, angry, and defiant Attorney General Eric Holder refused yesterday to take any responsibility for the growing scandal surrounding Operation Fast and Furious, the ill-conceived and incompetently managed program in which federal agents allowed thousands of guns to be purchased in the United States by known suppliers to Mexican drug cartels.

In testimony last year before the House Oversight and Government Operations Committee chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa of California, Holder said he first learned about Fast and Furious only after media reports began appearing about the congressional investigation started in the wake of Terry's slaying. He subsequently recanted that statement and acknowledged being told about the program by aides a few months before the media reports. He has since strenuously denied intentionally misleading Congress about when he first learned of Fast and Furious, and has accused congressional Republicans of using the program to concoct a partisan witch hunt.*

And this from Jim Geraghty on Congressional Oversight Chairman, Darrell Issa (R-CA), potentially holding the miserable hack in contempt if he does not turn over the sought-after documents Issa has been asking for since October:

Thus, the administration that took military action in Libya without any authorization from force from Congress, that appointed czars with policymaking authority without congressional confirmation, and that made “recess” appointments while Congress was not in recess is invoking executive privilege to cover how the Department of Justice reacted when Congress began asking about a gun-trafficking operation that got U.S. law enforcement officers murdered by Mexican drug cartels.

All from a president who railed against a runaway imperial presidency when George W. Bush sat in the office he currently occupies.

Uh-oh. We feel another O > W moment coming on.




For those of you new to this blog or new to this story, allow us to bottom line this for you:

The Department of Justice was the focal point for a gun-running operation that allowed upwards of 2,000 guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. There is credible evidence that there was no effort to actually track the weapons to better locate/identify the bad guys on the other side of the border. Further, there is also credible evidence that this gun-running operation was carried-out to, in large part, enforce a narrative of an unchecked flow of guns from the U.S. to Mexico to, in turn, put more restrictive gun control laws into place.

Forgive us for speaking slightly out of turn. We'd be remiss if we did not mention that they did indeed manage to track at least some guns that were part of the Fast and Furious gun-running operation: the guns that were left behind at the murder scene of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in December of 2010 and those of other dead Mexican officials and innocent civilians.

Either Holder had no knowledge of an operation of this magnitude, for which he proves himself to be incompetent and unfit for the job or he had knowledge of the operation and is thusly complicit in the murder and violence it begat. Either way, Holder should step down or otherwise be relieved of his duties.





* The charge of "witch hunt", especially with respect to what some see as bullying tactics by Issa is leveled intentionally to make people think of McCarthyism. It certainly rings true to us as though many questioned the tactics and personal integrity of McCarthy himself, it never disproved the fact that there were indeed "witches" working in the State and Defense departments.

Fast and Furious update

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Again, unlike the Secret Service/Columbian hooker fiasco, it's a shame no one got laid as a result of Fast and Furious as more people might be paying some attention to it. As it is, even we think Congressman Issa has allowed himself to be distracted a bit by the twin godsend scandals of the aforementioned hooker-gate and the GSA/Las Vegas follies. Time to get back to work:







From Fox News:

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa has circulated a lengthy pair of documents making the case for holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress over his "refusal" to cooperate in an investigation of the ill-fated Fast and Furious operation.

Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on Thursday sent to every member of his committee a 64-page draft contempt order against Holder, as well as a 17-page memo outlining the history of the scandal.

"Operation Fast and Furious' outrageous tactics, the Justice Department's refusal to fully cooperate with the investigation and efforts to smear and retaliate against whistleblowers have tainted the institutional integrity of the Justice Department," Issa wrote.

The committee is not citing Holder or holding the attorney general in contempt at this point. However, the documents lay out the case for contempt should members be called to vote.

Word around the campfire is that Issa is not getting a whole lot of support from GOP leadership (read: John Boehner and Eric Cantor) as a leveling an actual contempt charge would be "off message". It remains unexplained just what message that is absent getting to the bottom of what that miserable hack that runs the Justice Department knew and when did he know it. Holder lied and people have died?: Would that not be the message?

The Justice Department, itself, has admitted to releasing documents that were deliberately misleading with respect to Fast and Furious and there is credible evidence from within the Justice Department that there was never any intention of tracking those weapons sold in the U.S. back across the border supporting the contention that this scheme was carried out in order to support a narrative of an unchecked flow of guns across the border to Mexican drug cartels.


Oh, and you will love this:

"Holding someone in contempt is one of the most serious actions Congress can take, but it is being used in this case as part of a partisan election year witch-hunt," Cummings said in a statement.

He's getting old so you can forgive him some forgetfulness as this investigation has been going on for a year, stretching back well into 2011.


Mr. Romney would be well-served to make this the center-piece of what is a crowded field of examples of this administration's corruptness and ineptitude.

Mexicans: Doing the jobs Americans won't

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With budget-trimming all the buzz in Washington D.C., maybe the Justice Department was really just ahead of the curve with respect to how they executed Fast and Furious. Traditional inside-the-box thinking would have had ATF wasting needless man-hours in actually tracking weapons sold to straw buyers and, in turn, handed over to violent Mexican drug cartels. Fast and Furious, however, employed a unique manpower-saving technique by not tracking those weapons and instead left that job for the Mexican government... somewhat after the fact.

Mexican authorities have arrested a reputed enforcer for the country's most powerful drug cartel -- a man also alleged to have amassed weapons from the U.S. government's failed Fast and Furious gun-smuggling operation (link, in Spanish, includes video).

Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, 33, is also wanted by U.S. officials on drug-trafficking charges in El Paso. Mexican and U.S. authorities say he served as a top lieutenant to Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and the Sinaloa Cartel and was in charge of operations in the border state of Chihuahua (link in Spanish).

It was there, in the violent city of Ciudad Juarez, that a raid by Mexican police in April 2011 turned up high-powered assault guns purchased illegally through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives "Fast and Furious" program. As the Washington Bureau's Richard A. Serrano reported last fall, the discovery confirmed that Fast and Furious weapons were reaching the ruthless Sinaloa organization and that the geographic spread of the "walked" guns was wider than originally thought.

"Failed"... "Botched"... There they go again. It's a shame that ATF and the Justice Department aren't getting the credit they deserve for a wildly successful multi-agency operation that we are now finding out was the very organizational epitome of "lean" as well.

We assume their thinking is that one dead U.S. Border Patrol agent and a few hundred dead Mexicans is a small price to pay for this bit of forward-thinking excellence.

Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update

CBS News, which was the first major legacy media outlet to cover this story and then appeared to fall silent is apparently back on the case.


To the White House we go...

At a lengthy hearing on ATF's controversial gunwalking operation today, a key ATF manager told Congress he discussed the case with a White House National Security staffer as early as September 2010. The communications were between ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office, Bill Newell, and White House National Security Director for North America Kevin O'Reilly. Newell said the two are longtime friends. The content of what Newell shared with O'Reilly is unclear and wasn't fully explored at the hearing.

It's the first time anyone has publicly stated that a White House official had any familiarity with ATF's operation Fast and Furious...

It's unknown as to whether O'Reilly shared information with anybody else at the White House.

Congressional investigators obtained an email from Newell to O'Reilly in September of last year in which Newell began with the words: "you didn't get this from me."

"What does that mean," one member of Congress asked Newell, " 'you didn't get this from me?' "

"Obviously he was a friend of mine," Newell replied, "and I shouldn't have been sending that to him."

Newell told Congress that O'Reilly had asked him for information.

"Why do you think he asked for that information," Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) asked Newell.

"He was asking about the impact of Project Gunrunner to brief people in preparation for a trip to Mexico... what we were doing to combat firearms trafficking and other issues."

Today, a White House spokesman said the email was not about Fast and Furious, but about other gun trafficking efforts. The spokesman also said he didn't know what Newell was referring to when he said he'd spoken to O'Reilly about Fast and Furious.

(italics, ours)

Other gun trafficking efforts? What the hell?

It would seem that O'Reilly had got wind of the true nature of Fast and Furious. After all, if a gun trafficking operation is shooting up Mexican government agents and civilians, the White House might want to have its story straight when it tells Mexico what its gun trafficking efforts are doing to thwart, you know, gun trafficking efforts.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the jury is far from being out but at this point our choices appear to be between: rotten-to-the-core corruptness or monumental and fantastic incompetence and ineptitude or, very likely, a combination of both.

Yep, we're in the best of hands.

Fast and Furious update

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The two clips below might explain why it is the miserable hack that runs the Justice Department has been stonewalling, for over a year now, regarding what was his knowledge and involvement was in the highly successful federal gun-running scheme known as Fast and Furious.

First up, this clip:




There would appear to be some timeline discrepancies that the miserable hack has not yet cleared up.




Now, this clip which is actually quite fascinating. From March of 2009:




0:57 : (boom) "Project Gunrunner" (funded, in part, by Porkulus money, natch)


Back in May of 2011, we reported out on Project Gunrunner which was the public face for the internal Fast and Furious operation.

This is what we wrote:

The following is an article from NBC News from September of 2010 reporting on documents obtained from the Justice Department which detail how it is that the ATF was going to be cracking down on corrupt American gun dealers and going after high-value drug world figures.

U.S. law enforcement officials have devised an aggressive and potentially controversial new strategy to crack down on the illegal gun trade to Mexico by targeting cartel networks inside this country and "corrupt" U.S. firearms dealers, according to internal Justice Department documents obtained by NBC News.

The documents also state that the drug traffickers appear to have expanded efforts to acquire firepower in the U.S. by tapping well-developed supply networks beyond the Southwest border region in order to acquire high-powered assault rifles as well as components for improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

The new strategy was prepared in recent weeks by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)’s Office of Field Operations, in the wake of stinging criticism of current ATF efforts to stem the flow of weapons to the cartels by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

Labeled “law enforcement sensitive,” it calls for ATF agents to put more emphasis on monitoring the activities of U.S. guns stores and other federally licensed firearms dealers who may be assisting or turning a blind eye to gun purchases by drug cartel operatives. The report describes such “corrupt” U.S. firearms dealers as “high value targets” -- a phrase that could rile gun rights groups and their supporters in Congress who charge ATF is already too aggressive in regulating the firearms industry.

The principal thrust of the revised strategy directs that ATF agents focus on taking down the operations of high-level gun traffickers working for specific Mexican cartels rather than simply trying to arrest low-level “straw buyers,” as they have often done in the past. It also calls on agents to use more sophisticated investigative methods, such as analyzing financial and telephone records, routinely used in terrorism and organized crime cases, and to work more closely with other federal agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The new strategy document, entitled “Project Gunrunner; A Cartel Focused Strategy,” appears designed in part to address criticisms of enforcement efforts contained in a recently circulated draft report by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General. That report reviewed the efforts of Gunrunner, an ATF initiative that involves dispatching teams of agents known as Gunrunner Impact Teams (or GRITs) to cities near the border that are believed to be primary sources of weapons for the cartels.

(bold, italics... it's all ours)

And later in the article:

The new strategy document lays out the dimensions of the problem in stark terms. While shying away from specific figures -- which have been the source of fierce debate -- it concludes that “a significant percentage” of all the weapons seized from the Mexican cartels are originating in the U.S.

/picking jaw up off of ground

OK, back to real time.

Project Gunrunner: take focus off the straw buyer and focus on the big cartels.

Fast and Furious: let straw buyers walk across border with guns to turn over to the big cartels.


We're definetely betting men and we are betting that the documents that the Justice Department is holding out on will show the linkage between the front operation that was Project Gunrunner and the aggressive tactics it was to employ as a cover for what was really happening with Fast and Furious.

We're invoking Occam's razor here as it is the most plausible explanation for what is going on and for what the Justice Department is covering up.

A House contempt vote and a probable ruling on ObamaCare all coming up this next week. Buckle up.

Constitutional republics are, like, hard: the O > W edition

This is a re-post of a running series/theme we started around two years ago and which seems quite timely given the date on the calendar. Please feel free to share with your Bush-hating and/or undecided friends.



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You've waited six long months for it, but we've finally got around to our running post that either makes Bush-hating liberals squirm or perhaps develop a severe case of amnesia regarding what they were saying about the man from about 2003 to the very early part of 2009.



First, however, a totally related Fast and Furious update:

Prior to the miserable hack that runs the Justice Department getting a Congressional Oversight committee contempt charge leveled at him (House floor vote coming next week) for stonewalling on the upper reaches of the Justice Department's knowledge and involvement in Fast and Furious, the federal government's (contrary to what the article below says) highly successful gun-running scheme, he was granted Executive Privilege from his BFF, the President (perhaps a little pay-back for the home-work assignment Holder was tasked after the President said it would be unprecedented for the Supreme Court to strike down a law that was on the books).


From the NY Times (whose article at the link may constitute more column-inches on F&F than all other articles they published on the same subject combined):

Republicans on the House oversight committee voted on Wednesday to recommend holding Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt of Congress in a dispute over internal Justice Department documents related to the botched gun trafficking operation known as “Fast and Furious.”

The 23-to-17 vote, which fell along party lines, came after President Obama invoked executive privilege to withhold the documents and communications among Justice Department officials last year as they grappled with the Congressional investigation into the case. As part of the operation, weapons bought in the United States were allowed to reach a Mexican drug cartel in an effort to build a bigger case.

It was the first time that Mr. Obama had asserted the privilege since taking office, and it sharpened the long-festering dispute between Mr. Holder and Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Democrats called for the panel to hold off voting on the contempt citation during an often acrimonious partisan debate, but Republicans pressed forward with it.

Now take a wild guess who wasn't too keen on Executive Privlege just a short 5 years ago? If you guessed the back-bench senator from the Land of Lincoln, take a seat at the head of the class.





You may have thought that the perfectly legal firing of political appointees to be somewhat unseemly but it's not even in the same ballpark when it comes to 2 dead federal agents, hundreds of dead Mexican officials and innocent civilians and scads of guns that are still un-accounted for.

Exit question before the roll call: If, as Holder has asserted, the President had no knowledge of Fast and Furious, how then does Executive Privilege apply?



And now, the O > W electric boogaloo (newbies set off by asteriks):

Closing Keeping open Gitmo.


Ending Formalizing the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists.


Ending Maintaining military tribunals.


Not letting unemployment get above 8 10.5 percent with a $800 billion stimulus package.


Discontinuing Continuing other Bush-era policies like rendition, Project Gunrunner and TARP.


Ending Throwing into warp drive the politicization of the Justice Department under the leadership of the biggest hack in the administration.


Engineering a bankruptcy cramdown of domestic auto companies that will most likely cost the U.S. tax-payers tens of billions of dollars.


Interpreting the Patriot Act to collect information on people via mobile phone geolocating


A crony capitalism that is disguised as a green jobs program.

Including Fisker, SunPower and Beacon Hill

Engaging in an act of war against a country that posed no threat whatsoever to the U.S. with without the consent of Congress.


Swift Painfully slow response to national disasters.


Ending Maintaining the practice of signing statements.


Subjecting our national security to an expensive green technology boondoggle that doubles down on the cronyism.


For you visual types, how about a federal government - Goldman Sachs Venn diagram? (thanks, W.C. )

Signing off on predator drone strikes for the ostensible purpose of assassinating a foreign head of state. And then doing so.


Using executive orders and administrative actions and generally subverting the role of Congress in order to enact his agenda.


Shutting down Operating a seeming revolving door between the White House and Wall Street and K Street.


Signing legislation that would allow the military to indefinitely detain terror suspects, including American citizens arrested in the United States, without charge. Got 4th amendment? Not anymore, you don't.


Pushing through health care reform legislation in the sleaziest, most cynical, un-hopenchangey and business-as-usual manner possible.


Authorizing a program to assassinate American civilians.


Actually authorizing a drone strike hit that killed American-born Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan (from this point forward, we never... never want to hear a peep about water-boarding)


And adopting another Bush-like tendency in combating the war on terror: refusing to provide the legal justification for the killing of U.S. citizens.

*Forcing Catholic institutions to violate their faith conscience by not only mandating them to provide coverage for contraceptives but making it completely free of charge as well.*



*End-running Congress in order to make (totally not) in-recess appointments to the National Labor Review Board.*



*End-running Congress to install immigration policy that countermands the laws that are on the books after claiming just a few months ago that he could not do so because, correctly, that's not how our system works.*

Our system of checks and balances and separation of powers was set up this way to prevent acts of tyranny, a lesson this part-time Constitutional law lecturer didn't forget - he just never believed it in the first place.

Please let us know if there is anything about the above that does not make him absolutely power-mad and Bush a complete rank amateur in that department by comparison.

The more we think about it, the more we think this Bush/Obama mash-up does an extreme disservice to President Bush.





Share it. Share it, brothers and sisters with friends, family and particularly all those alleged Bush-hating Obama supporters to see who it is are the hypocrites in your life. Maybe they aren't hypocrites, however. Maybe they were just jealous that all that Costitution-shredding and amassing of executive power wasn't being done by their guy. Well, they're getting back in spades, now.


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