Posted on 07/21/2011 7:08:10 PM PDT by neverdem
Eric Holder's only defense of the ATF's "Fast and Furious" program is that he didn't know it existed.
When Rupert Murdoch went before the British Parliament yesterday to testify about the News of the World hacking scandal, he did not attempt to downplay the severity of his employees’ crimes. Rather, he apologized for the damage done and then said, "I didn’t know of it." When asked who, then, was responsible for the culture of criminality that had developed at News of the World, Murdoch told Parliament, "The people I trusted and the people they trusted."
Even longtime Murdoch haters had to concede that the mogul’s response was brilliant. If he’s telling the truth, the News Corp. owner is guilty only of having trusted the wrong people to oversee his British papers (such as News International chief and former World editor Rebekah Brooks), and of never checking in on things himself. Luckily for Rupert, being a disinterested executive is not a crime. Unforunately for the staff of the shuttered News, this means their boss quite possibly ignored Britain’s largest circulation newspaper into the grave.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Attorney General Eric Holder and his protectors in the Justice Department are using the same defense to keep the DOJ chief from being implicated in the increasingly sordid ATF gunrunner scandal.
Earlier this year CBS discovered that the Phoenix division of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and the U.S. Attorneys office in Phoenix had allowed known gunrunners to buy heavy arms, including several .50 caliber rifles, from border state gun shops and take them to Mexico. The program became public when U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry turned up dead near Rio Rico, Arizona, killed by two assault rifles that the ATF had practically shepherded into cartel possession.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
Maybe he'll claim amnesia?
H0lder should claim to be moronic, or retarded, or idiotic, or that Zer0 made him do it.
What didn’t Holder know, and when didn’t he know it?
It doesn't *appear* that way to me at all. Multiple justice department involvement, Several people just below Holder knew of it. It is not as though is is 1 percent of a media empire, which makes its own decisions. Mike Riggs is also ignoring that it is not just Fast and Furious any more. There appear to be links to the Dallas, Houston, and Tampa offices.
As in Watergate, it is the cover up that is also very important. Melson has as much as said that he was ordered to impede the Congressional investigation.
Holder should be impeached.After his statement that white Ameicans are racist cowards a week after his confirmation, the Black Panther fiasco, the drubbing of Oil Companies and refusal to follow court orders and injunctions on oil leases,the fiasco of trying to set up criminal trials in New York for Guantanamo Bay incarcerated Terrorists,and playing games with immigtration enforcement, initiating a frivolous law suit against Arizona for trying to handle its overwhelminigillegal alien population,and now running guns into Mexico as a matter to establish gun controls contrary to the 2nd amendment? I’d say he is impeachable.Big Time.
I agree. I want it to happen in 2012. I want 17 rats seeking re-election in the Senate to have to squirm over Holder's removal. If they refuse to remove him, it can be an election issue.
The summer of 2012 will see riot and mayhem in Detroit, Chicago, LA, New York, Boston,Miami,New Orleans and San Francisco. The organization for that is in place, just as it was for Operation Arab Spring in Egypt. We will have a hard row to hoe.
I hope Issa gets a pile of facts together and impeaches both Holder and Obama
I don’t buy it! Holder knew of the program early on. He even touted it in a speech in Mexico. How can he declare he knows nothing about it? My BullShi+ meter says he lying!
“Melson has as much as said that he was ordered to impede the Congressional investigation.”
As were others. Melson hadn’t known that he could appear with his OWN attorneys and not doj watchdogs. When he found out, he did just that.
At this point, we have no idea how many other atf district ops were utilized in exactly this fashion. But I am betting there are far more than we have taken note of so far.
Selective amnesia? Either way he should be fired.
“He is too stupid to have done this on His own. Know that as well”
So is obama. Someeone else came up with this and obama set it in motion.
Check the link in comment# 1. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review agrees with you.
It is hard to be sure. The drip, drip, drip of more information and a slow but sure investigative technique can work. Information is getting out, just slowly. It could be that by 2012 enough citizens will know about it that the Republicans can make an impeachment stick. We have way more media now than we did when Clinton was impeached and the Senate refused to even look at the evidence.
They should ALL be indicted. MURDER happened here. Murder they KNEW would happen when this op went forward. Murder they turned a blind eye to. Murders of at LEAST two American Law Enforcement officers. POSSIBLE involvement in the Giffords shooting in which a concerned, Conservative FEDERAL JUDGE was murdered. Now just think about that for second. I’m gonna put my tinfoil hat on and wonder out loud if the JUDGE was the real target.
The ATF has said that there are still over 1,400 guns unaccounted for in Mexico, there were between 200 and a 1,000 "walked" to Honduras and new info from a Tampa ATF agent saying that guns went to other Central American countries. That is a lot of guns and every time some show up at the scene of a murder/shootout there will be new press about it. Especially if more LE agents are murdered with them. Especially if Hezbollah in Mexico gets a hold of some and murders some Americans with them.
This story has the potential to re-surface afresh for a decade with all those arms out there.
Well, I gotta admit, if ignorance is a defense, Holder's home free!
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