Posted on 07/29/2011 8:26:01 AM PDT by Track9
Operation Fast and Furious -- the Obama administration's lethal gun-running fiasco -- keeps getting uglier and uglier.
In a series of hearings, Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley have been systematically dismantling the administration's preposterous claim that no one in the Justice Department -- which oversees the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives -- knew anything about the so-called gun-tracking operation.
In Fast and Furious, ATF officials encouraged "straw buyers" in Arizona -- including two convicted felons who should have been stopped by the FBI -- to purchase more than 2,000 heavy-duty firearms, including AK-47 variants and .50-caliber sniper rifles, and then resell them to the Mexican drug cartels, allegedly to trace and stop crossborder arms trafficking.
Oops! The feds displayed these weapons in January while announcing gun-running indictments thanks to "Fast and Furious" -- but the program flooded Mexico with illegal US arms.
At least two dead American agents later, the scheme looks set to blow up in Attorney General Eric Holder's face -- and now's there's evidence that it might reach all the way to the White House.
On Tuesday, the ATF agent in charge of the Phoenix office, Bill Newell, told Issa's House committee that he discussed the operation with the national-security director for North America, Kevin O'Reilly, an old friend, in the form of a "you didn't get this from me" e-mail in September 2010. (The White House insists the e-mail had nothing to do with Fast and Furious, but instead concerned the larger, legitimate Project Gunrunner gun-tracking program.)
We already knew that the debacle also involved the FBI and the DEA (both part of DoJ), but Newell also revealed that even more agencies were part of the program, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Homeland Security) and the IRS.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
With all the other crap going on, I'm glad these guys are paying attention to the IMPORTANT stuff!
Holder and Obama need to go to prison...
Racists who used the power of their government positions to impose their evil upon a country were lynched at Nuremburg.
Men like Karl Dönitz were just sent to prison.
One thing that struck me as complete BS is the Justice Dept. saying they were tracking these straw buyers and portraying them as part of a larger criminal enterprise with the intent of getting higher ups, but it turns out the JOD actually SUPPLIED the straw buyers. So this is manufactured.. they were their guys!.. with the intent to ‘prove’ that US guns are going to Mexico which the administration has been claiming 95% when in actuality it’s more like 17% coming from the states. They’re coming from South America supplied by China and Iran.
I'm stuned!!
Gunwalker ping.
Thank you.
It is very simple to understand why Obama and Holder were in the loop and knew what was going on. If Holder was unaware of this, Holder would immediately start firing people in the Justice Department and start an immediate investigation and prosecution of these individuals. The would already be under the bus and on their way to Levenworth.
If Obama was not aware and Holder was, Obama would fire Holder, appoint a new head of the Justice Department. The new head of Justice would then investigate and prosecute Holder dependent on the evidence.
This administration throws anyone under the bus that presents a problem to them. The reason no one is under the bus right now is the one chosen to be the “fall guy” is talking and talking and talking to Issa.
The thing that Obama and Holder are terrified of, “who else is talking?”
A good prosecutor always saves the best for last!
This is getting to be a high volume ping list. Wow.
“Holder and Obama need to go to prison...”
Yesterday!
I'm betting these two poor felon smucks had images of Sean Connery (in cahoots with Nicolas Cage) in their head, as in the movie, The Rock. Save America, become heros.
We need an Al Butterfield.
They weren't lynched. They had a fair and public trial, and then a legal and just sentence was carried out.
Take for example my wife, she is rock ribbed conservative and loathes Obama but she just does not get the seriousness and enormity of this. She doesn't get excited and doesn't care. And this is from a woman who is ready to go to jail before she will pay into Obamacare. I try and explain it to her, how some of the purchasers were felons and yet passed a NIC check which is run by the FBI and had to be subverted at the very top and her eyes glaze over and she says "that's nice but we need to cut spending now!"
Sigh. So some flunky goes under the bus while Obama, Holder and Breuer plot their next "Reichstag moment" in their assault on the Second Amendment unimpeded.
Yeah, because as we all know, they couldn't get to the higher-ups by backtracking their drug manufacturing and shipping pipelines. Had to do it with guns.
Stinking LIARS.
July 28, 2011 Senior ATF, Justice officials ignored Mexico-based agents’ complaints, bragged about Fast and Furious successesGil and now-acting ATF attaché to Mexico Carlos Canino also told congressional investigators high-ranking ATF and Justice Department officials bragged about what they considered successes of Operation Fast and Furious. Officials they said included Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who oversees the DOJ’s criminal division, and acting ATF director Ken Melson.
“Lanny Breuer says, yeah, there is a good case, there is a good case out of Phoenix,” Canino said of a meeting he and Gil had with Breuer and the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual.
Gil said Breuer was going to present the outcome of Operation Fast and Furious to Mexican authorities as evidence of a positive effort to stop weapons trafficking. Gil said Breuer said the ATF investigation “looks like it’s going to generate some good results and it will be a good positive case that we can present to the Government of Mexico as efforts that the US government is taking to try and interdict weapons going into Mexico.”
The National Scope of the Gunwalker Scandal. Lanny Breuer & four border state ATF SACs implicated in report. "Lions! And tigers! And bears! Oh, my!"Two months after the January 5, 2010 briefing, ATF headquarters hosted a larger, more detailed briefing. Not part of the normal Tuesday field ops briefings, this special briefing was dedicated to Operation Fast and Furious. David Voth, the Phoenix Group VII Supervisor who oversaw Fast and Furious, traveled from Phoenix to give the presentation. On videoconference were the four southwest border ATF SACs: Bill Newell in Phoenix, Robert Champion in Dallas, J. Dewey Webb in Houston, and John Torres in Los Angeles. (Emphasis supplied, MBV)
In addition to the usual attendees of the Tuesday morning field ops briefings (the Deputy Assistant Directors for Field Operations, including Bill McMahon, and Mark Chait, Assistant Director for Field Operations), Deputy Director William Hoover also attended. Joe Cooley, a trial attorney from the gang unit at Main Justice, also joined. After a suggestion from Acting ATF Director Ken Melson in December 2009, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer personally assigned Cooley as a DOJ representative for Operation Fast and Furious. Kevin Carwile, chief of the Capital Case Unit at Main Justice, may have also been present. According to Steve Martin, the inclusion of Main Justice representatives was unusual.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Gunwalker and Fast & Furious Updates: Holder, DOJ, FBI, Operation Castaway, ATFEmail Confirms ‘Gunwalker’ Known Throughout Justice Department The October 27, 2009 email from ATF Phoenix Field Division Special Agent in Charge (SAC) William Newell regarded a Southwest Border Strategy Group meeting that focused on Fast and Furious. It contained a laundry list of high ranking Justice Department officials that attended the meeting, including:
* Assistant Attorney General (Criminal Division) Lanny Breuer, * Kenneth Melson, Acting Director, ATF * William Hoover, Acting Deputy Director, ATF * Michele Leonhart, Administrator, DEA * Robert Mueller, Director FBI
Four other Justice Department directors or their representatives came from the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), Bureau of Prisons (BOP), U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), and the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA). The chair of the Attorney Generals Advisory Committee (AGAC) also attended the session. Their names were redacted in the released document. U.S. attorneys for all four southwest border states also attended...
If I had money to play with I'd bet you.
The ATF has said that there are still over 1,400 guns unaccounted for in Mexico, there were a 1,000 guns "walked" to Honduras and 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.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.