Posted on 11/01/2011 1:05:28 PM PDT by neverdem
Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News keeps plugging away at the story the Obama Administration very sternly instructed her to drop. Yesterday she published a remarkable new revelation about Operation Fast and Furious, the deadly inter-agency operation that pumped American guns across the border to Mexican drug gangs.
It looks like all those Justice Department assurances of blissful ignorance about the crazy misadventures of those Phoenix ATF renegades just became, as they say, “inoperative”:
Documents just released this afternoon show the head of the Justice Department's criminal division, Lanny A. Breuer, learned about the tactic of ATF gunwalking as early as April of last year.In a memo, Breuer's deputy wrote him that, in a case called "Wide Receiver" started under the Bush Administration, "ATF let a bunch of guns walk" in an effort to catch the big fish of Mexican drug cartels and said the gunwalking case could be "embarrassing" to ATF.
As you may recall, Attorney General Eric Holder claims he was completely unaware of gun walking until just before he was called before Congress to testify about it. Lying to Congress is a pretty big deal, but Breuer’s got his boss covered:
Today, Breuer issued a statement saying he "regrets" that he didn't alert others in Justice Department leadership, apparently including his boss Attorney General Eric Holder.In a separate ATF case reported by CBS News earlier this year, called "Fast and Furious" and started under the Obama Administration, Breuer says he likewise regrets not alerting leaders about the similarities in the cases. That, said Breuer, was a mistake.
So… what do the Attorney General and his deputies talk about, exactly?
Operation Wide Receiver, by the way, was very different from the Obama gunwalking program that has killed over 200 Mexicans, plus at least one U.S. Border Patrol agent, and possibly a U.S. Immigration agent. It was less than one-quarter the size of Operation Fast and Furious, it included a serious (but bungled) attempt to follow the “walked” guns with radio tracking devices, it was shut down immediately when the radio tracking system didn’t work, it didn’t involve extensive coordination with other federal agencies… and, of course, it was a novel bad idea, not a vast extension and upgrade of a bad idea that had already failed miserably.
Attorney General Holder is set to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week. There he will cross paths with ranking Republican Charles Grassley, who will be asking some pointed questions about the new Breuer memo revelations. Grassley previewed those questions in a statement released today:
Yesterday Assistant Attorney General Breuer made a public statement regarding an ATF case known as Operation Wide Receiver. In the statement, he said:“When the allegations related to Operation Fast and Furious became public earlier this year, the leadership of ATF and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona repeatedly assured individuals in the Criminal Division and the leadership of the Department of Justice that those allegations were not true.”
The Justice Department officially assured me that the allegations were not true. On February 4, 2011, the Department sent me a letter that read: “ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico.” However, as Mr. Breuer’s admissions in yesterday’s statement made clear, the Department’s claim was not true.
According to documents received last night, Mr. Breuer's deputy asked the most basic question of Wide Receiver that anyone should have known to ask of Fast and Furious upon becoming aware of the number of guns involved: “[D]id ATF allow the guns to walk, or did ATF learn about the volume of guns after the FFL began cooperating?” In Operation Wide Receiver, around 300 guns were walked by ATF. In Fast and Furious, just 5 of the straw buyers were allowed to purchase nearly 1000 guns while an FFL was cooperating, while being watched by ATF, while their phone calls were being monitored by a wiretap approved by Justice Department headquarters, and while a prosecutor from headquarters was assigned to the case.
The headquarters prosecutor was assigned to Fast and Furious because of an email that ATF Director Ken Melson sent Mr. Breuer in December 2009. Director Melson requested an attorney to work with ATF Phoenix Field Office on a case. Mr. Breuer said it was a “terrific idea” and assigned someone from the Gang Unit by March 2010.
That same month, Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler—now the Attorney General’s Chief of Staff—was being briefed in person on investigative details of Fast and Furious. The briefing included a very detailed PowerPoint presentation from ATF, and Mr. Grindler made a number of hand-written notes on a print-out of the PowerPoint. The PowerPoint included such details as the fact that by March 12, one straw buyer had already bought as many guns as were ever walked in Wide Receiver. The PowerPoint also included a map of where in Mexico guns were being recovered and the amount of money each straw buyer had spent on the gun purchases, most in the tens of thousands of dollars, along with a note from Mr. Grindler saying “all cash.”
The American people—and especially the family of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry—deserve answers from the Justice Department about why they claim they didn’t know gunwalking was occurring in Operation Fast and Furious when the department’s fingerprints are all over it.
(Emphasis in the original.) Hopefully his testimony before Grassley’s committee doesn’t distract Attorney General Holder from his important job of having absolutely no idea what the Justice Department is doing.
Top Justice Dept. official: ATF should have stopped 'gun walking' tactics
DOJ official knew of ATF "gunwalking" in April 2010
Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime & Terrorism is hearing Lanny Breuer now on C-Span2
Everyone but Holder knew; who knew? Obama & Co. going to make the most of Cain's alleged sexual harassment brouhaha for as long as possible. Brewer's toast.
For all you youngsters out there here is a little history lesson from the Nixon Years and, in particular, the Watergate scandal.
Sharyl Attkisson's use of the term "inoperative" is a clear reference to the lies that were put out by the Nixon Administration about Watergate up until April 17, 1973. I like that use since it puts the Fast and Furious scandal on the same level as Watergate which brought down a President despite being, in my humble opinion, way overblown. Fast and Furious is certainly a more serious affair than Watergate.
Here is the historical reference. This is where "inoperative" came into wide use as a political term:
With the White House now clearly implicated, President Nixon on April 17, 1973, announced that he had begun a new investigation. White House press secretary Ronald L. Ziegler said that all previous statements issued by the executive branch regarding Watergate were “inoperative.” On April 30 Nixon stated publicly that he took responsibility for the actions of staff members implicated in the case, and he accepted the resignations of advisers H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Dean and of Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst.
That wasn't Sharyl Attkisson who's been doing yeoman's work on this for CBS. That was Human Event's John Hayward.
But gee, fellas....
I think you are right. I thought he was quoting Attkisson but now I see that those were Hayward's words.
How Did Obama Know About "Fast and Furious" Before Holder?
Thanks for the link. Lemme guess before I check it, a guy named O’Reilly, who was Newell’s pal in the White hut, that was sent to Iraq.
Yes, since THREE THOUSAND is a number greater than 200, then I see that this is a true statement.
If a POTUS is black, does it MATTER if he killed 3,000 Mexicans?
I guess we will find out.
Feinstein used to committe to push for gun registration. The guy from JUSTICE was also pushing for the same thing. They used the hearing to push gun contro. It was on c-span this morning. Not surprised.
Well, no, it wasn’t that revelation. It’s just a video found of 0bama saying that Holder didn’t know about F&F. What is interesting is that 0bama is saying that about a month and a half before Holder testified that the first time he heard about F&F was “over the last few weeks.”
Thanks for the ping!
“Ignored for the better part of a year is the fact that the Obama administration and Holder ‘Justice’ Department are complicit in the murders of US drug enforcement agents, plus hundreds or thousands of other US citizens as well as Mexicans — BUT OUR TOP STORY IS SOME CONVENIENTLY TIMED CONCOCTION ABOUT HERMAN CAIN”.
Thanks neverdem.
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