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Fortune’s Horribly Bad Reporting on Fast and Furious
Macsmind.com ^ | 6/27/2012 | MacRanger

Posted on 06/27/2012 3:39:22 PM PDT by Qbert

This is perhaps the worst case of agenda driven reporting I’ve seen. Fortune’s 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 Issa’s committee nails it.

“Fortune’s 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 Holder’s 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 story’s 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 — it’s hard to imagine why they’d concede something like this if it isn’t 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 “It’s a tricky case given the number of guns that have walked” and “It’s not going to be any big surprise that a bunch of US guns are being used in MX, so I’m 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 wasn’t seen for days — the gun store’s owner has said he was told in advance to go ahead and sell guns to people he normally wouldn’t. 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 ATF’s 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 couldn’t 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.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 2deadfeds; 300deadmexicans; atf; banglist; brianterry; cnn; dea; dhs; doj; fastandfurious; fbi; gunrunne; gunrunner; gunwalker; holder; ice; jaimezapata; murdergate; obama; terry; zapata
Journolista Eban... now refusing to answer questions about her hit piece...


1 posted on 06/27/2012 3:39:30 PM PDT by Qbert
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To: Qbert; Joe Brower; Travis McGee; LucyT; vette6387; MetaThought; 60Gunner; XHogPilot; ...

The unserious get unseriouser. Don’t know whether to laugh or cry.


2 posted on 06/27/2012 4:00:22 PM PDT by MestaMachine (obama kills)
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To: Qbert
the shop that sold the guns informed the ATF that the transaction was suspicious, but it was a holiday weekend and the fax wasn’t seen for days

What happened to the 10 day waiting period?

Must have been one of those famous 11 day holiday weekends.

3 posted on 06/27/2012 4:25:37 PM PDT by occamrzr06
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To: Qbert

markbook


4 posted on 06/27/2012 4:36:46 PM PDT by razorback-bert (I'm in shape. Round is a shape isn't it?)
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To: Qbert
“blockbuster investigative report” that she claims shows that Fast and Furious never happened.

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.

5 posted on 06/27/2012 5:12:35 PM PDT by Don Corleone ("Oil the gun..eat the cannoli. Take it to the Mattress.")
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To: Qbert
At 8pm the cute brunette chick reporter was practically slobbering all over Eban's face.

Just lapping it up. The MSM Koolaid Kommissars are out in force tonight whitewashing mass murder.


6 posted on 06/27/2012 5:40:43 PM PDT by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: Travis McGee

She was on CNN, I forgot to mention. Very pretty, and just lapping up the lies with nods and grins.


7 posted on 06/27/2012 5:41:50 PM PDT by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: Qbert

Does Fortune have the Docs?

LOL.

Fortune is AOl, Huffpo Cnn.


8 posted on 06/27/2012 5:45:25 PM PDT by NoLibZone (I trust Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney, Cain, Perry, Bachman : I trust their judgment on their 2012 pick.)
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