Posted on 03/07/2012 5:17:25 AM PST by marktwain
“ATF’s #2 Says Agency Mistakenly Used Drug Strategy in Operation Fast and Furious,” Tickle the Wire reported yesterday, citing Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Deputy Director Thomas E. Brandon’s appearance on the radio program “The Badge.”
“Being totally candid with you and the public, we made mistakes and we’re owning up to them,” Brandon told host Howard Safir, citing good intentions but bad decisions to apply a drug and money-walking strategy to gun investigations.
“You’re on the street and you’re watching dope deals go down, and you’re trying to locate the stash house so you let…you know…you follow it and so forth,” he said.
“Basically that’s what happened,” Brandon claimed, adding “those mistakes won’t happen again—we changed the management team in Phoenix.”
Only that’s not what happened, not even close: a recurring charge by whistleblowers is that the guns were not followed—in many cases under orders from ATF management. Characterizing Fast and Furious as “a mistake” totally dismisses the criminal aspect of allowing guns to walk across an international border to result in untold deaths. Presuming that ordering management realignments is the same as “owning up” merely advances talking points established by “ATF’s #1,” Acting Director B. Todd Jones, who has publicly identified the operation as a personnel matter. And intentionally confining his remarks to Phoenix ignores that the gun identified in the murder of ICE agent Jaime Zapata was traced to Dallas, the Houston-based case involving Carter’s Country, documented reports of directed straw purchases in Indiana, insider-sourced allegations of similar operations in Tampa…
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
Gunwalker ping.
There used to be a show on that documented the DEA and how they did their thing. I believe it took place in Detroit and in NY/NJ. Have a very good friend that works for them. He interviews a snitch. Snitch tells them, that every drug dealer in the world watches the show and now knows what they do. DEA then takes a look at the seizures being made in both places and to their surprise, seizures of all types have gone down. Imagine that.
I did a fair amount of narcotics work. The one thing that never walked, was the PRODUCT. The money was allowed to walk all the time, as most, if not all of it was seized from another dope dealer. But to my knowledge, the PRODUCT was NEVER allowed to walk. At least in the stings that I took part in. They don’t even do that in the movies.
These clowns are so damn stupid, its painful. And to think, these guys are America’s best and brightest minds on law enforcement.
The whole problem with Gunwalker was that this was NOT carried out as a sting. If it had been, then all would be copacetic. It can’t be compared to drug stings.
Doing a sting at some remove from the transaction site is easier for guns which in principle have serial numbers and whatnot, than for drugs which could have come from anywhere. Still, sometimes a drug sting at a remove is done when postal officials catch a package of drugs and then, after alerting DEA authorities, permit the package to be delivered as normal.
This is not an argument over the details of methods of doing stings. Gunwalker was not even a sting of any kind, unless intended to gin up political opposition to “loose” US gun policies which were in fact only “loose” because the Federales told the dealer in question to be “loose.”
Back to the grind...ping.
The Just Us Department denials come across like when a stupid robber tries to hold up a 7-11, is shot and wounded by the clerk, runs from and is tackled by the police, who he fights with until trussed and thrown in the back of a squad car while screaming racist epithets at them.
When shown the store video that shows him holding a stolen gun while wearing a football jersey with his name on the back, his response?
“Wasn’t me”. Repeatedly.
There wasn’t anything stupid about this. Evil, yes. Treasonous, yes. Criminal, yes.
But there was no stupid in it at all.
“” There wasn’t anything stupid about this. Evil, yes. Treasonous, yes. Criminal, yes.
But there was no stupid in it at all.”
BINGO!
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