"Wide Receiver" is the name ATF assigned to a group of gun trafficking cases investigated out of the Tucson, Arizona office beginning in 2006. Like Fast and Furious, it was supervised by ATF Special Agent in Charge Bill Newell. Sources indicate it involved about 275 "walked" guns. According to sources who worked directly on the case, the vast majority of guns were not tracked and Mexico's government was not fully informed of the case. Apparently worried that the gunwalking tactics could be viewed as inappropriate, federal prosecutors in Arizona abandoned the case. Then, in fall of 2009, Justice Department officials decided to go ahead and prosecute the case.
Is this correct? I thought various ex-ATF had testified that guns were stopped at the border?
The Department of Justice ’ s Operation Fast and Furious: Accounts of ATF Agents(above) Four ATF field agents testify under oath that they "never even heard of intentionally letting guns "walk" before F&F."
In that House testimony all four agents define "walking" just as I have and just as Attkinson did.
Another problem with what she wrote there is the assertion that Mexican authorities were not fully informed of Wide Receiver operations. That goes against all previous reporting on this.
She says in a previous paragraph about F&F "the vast majority of guns were not tracked and Mexico's government was not fully informed of the case." That is also contradictory to previous reporting in two ways. First, the only effort to track any of the 2,500 guns walked in F&F was when a field agent bought his own electronics and tried to track one or two guns. His devices failed. Secondly, it has been reported that neither Mexican authorities nor ATF agents stationed in Mexico knew anything at all about F&F operations.