Posted on 06/27/2012 3:39:22 PM PDT by Qbert
This is perhaps the worst case of agenda driven reporting Ive seen. Fortunes Katherine Eban, a leftwing shrill for Obama who writes for several leftwing rags such as Variety, published this blockbuster investigative report that she claims shows that Fast and Furious never happened.
The problem is that the report is a hack job of the first order and flies in the face of numerous other reports to the contrary. A spokesman for Issas committee nails it.
Fortunes story is a fantasy made up almost entirely from the accounts of individuals involved in the reckless tactics that took place in Operation Fast and Furious. It contains factual errors including the false statement that Chairman Issa has called for Attorney General Holders resignation and multiple distortions. It also hides critical information from readers including a report in the Wall Street Journal indicating that its primary sources may be facing criminal charges.Congressional staff gave Fortune Magazine numerous examples of false statements made by the storys primary source and the magazine did not dispute this information. It did not, however, explain this material to its readers. The one point of agreement the Committee has with this story is its emphasis on the role Justice Department prosecutors, not just ATF agents, played in guns being transferred to drug cartels in Mexico. The allegations made in the story have been examined and rejected by congressional Republicans, Democrats, and the Justice Department.
Not enough? How about this analysis.
For starters, several ATF officers, including Dodson, have come forward saying that they were told to let guns go when they could have interdicted them. (Fortune presents this as the result of grudges among ATF staff.) Also, while the Justice Department denied in February of last year that gunwalking had happened in Fast and Furious, it retracted the claim in December its hard to imagine why theyd concede something like this if it isnt true, especially when the administration is expending so much effort to fight the congressional Fast and Furious investigation in other ways. (Fortune says the administration is trying to avoid a fight over guns in the run-up to an election.) Further, there is an e-mail exchange between Justice officials about Fast and Furious containing the lines Its a tricky case given the number of guns that have walked and Its not going to be any big surprise that a bunch of US guns are being used in MX, so Im not sure how much grief we get for guns walking. While the wiretap applications from Fast and Furious are not public, those involved in the congressional investigation say that they, too, discuss reckless tactics.And gun dealers who cooperated with the ATF report a shift in policy that coincided with Fast and Furious from stopping sales and questioning customers, to telling store owners to just go ahead and sell the guns. While Fortune reports that the ATF had no chance to interdict the guns that might have killed Border Patrol agent Brian Terry the shop that sold the guns informed the ATF that the transaction was suspicious, but it was a holiday weekend and the fax wasnt seen for days the gun stores owner has said he was told in advance to go ahead and sell guns to people he normally wouldnt. The entire Fortune piece seems to neglect the distinctions between probable cause for an arrest, the act of at least questioning people who are trying to buy guns illegally, and the ATFs advice to store owners that they refuse to make any sale that they doubt is legal. A big part of Fast and Furious is that store owners were told to make illegal sales when the ATF couldnt follow up on them or chose not to.
Eban was a member of the infamous journal-list that helped Barack Obama get elected in 2008 and the entirety of her article is written from the perspective of wishful Obama love, not journalistic integrity.
The unserious get unseriouser. Don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
What happened to the 10 day waiting period?
Must have been one of those famous 11 day holiday weekends.
markbook
Neither did the USA land on the moon(which by the way really is made of green cheese) nor did G.W. Bush fly for the National Guard.Just more "Fake but Accurate" BS from the media sycophants.
Just lapping it up. The MSM Koolaid Kommissars are out in force tonight whitewashing mass murder.
She was on CNN, I forgot to mention. Very pretty, and just lapping up the lies with nods and grins.
Does Fortune have the Docs?
LOL.
Fortune is AOl, Huffpo Cnn.
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