Replies

http://thedartmouth.com/2011/11/03/opinion/brooks

Brooks: Too Fast, Too Furious
By David Brooks, Contributing Columnist

Published on Thursday, November 3, 2011

On the night of Dec. 14, 2011, Agent Brian Terry of the U.S. Border Patrol was conducting an operation in the desert near Nogales, Ariz. with three members of his team when they came upon a group of five suspected illegal aliens armed with AK-47 variants. Tragically, in the resulting firefight, Terry was fatally wounded. As he lay there bleeding out in the cold winter air of the high desert, Brian Terry looked at his friend and fellow agent and confided, “I can’t feel my legs.” Those were the last words he uttered. Two of the three rifles recovered from the encounter were traced to an ill-conceived operation conducted by the U.S. Justice Department known as Fast and Furious. The Justice Department, with support from President Barack Obama, has consistently tried to cover up the details of Fast and Furious in a stark divergence from the clear and transparent government on which the president campaigned.

In the fall of 2009, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, with authorization from the Justice Department and the cooperation of several other agencies, began Operation Fast and Furious with the goal of uncovering the nexus of guns shipped into Mexico. During the operation, ATF agents were under strict orders not to interfere with gun buyers, instead allowing guns to transfer into the black market and Mexico. This resulted in highly sophisticated guns, including high-powered sniper and assault rifles, being sold to criminals on both sides of the border. During Fast and Furious, over 2,000 of these weapons made their way to the Mexican cartels, enough to outfit almost two Marine Corps infantry battalions.

ATF field agents strongly objected to the practice, but were told to “get with the program” by their superiors. As guns began to turn up at crime scenes, Fast and Furious supervisors responded to this with “giddy optimism.” However, the level of violence soon began to get out of hand. March 2010 was the most violent month in Mexico since 2005, with 958 people killed and 359 firearms purchased.

Fast and Furious was clearly fueling a drug war in Mexico so ubiquitous and so violent that it threatened to topple the government. Between November 2009 and February 2011, 122 weapons were recovered from 48 different crime scenes. Guns transferred during Fast and Furious were used in the murders of Terry and a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, the high profile kidnapping, torture and murder of a Mexican attorney and an engagement with the Mexican military resulting in an emergency landing of a helicopter. Of the estimated 2,500 guns funneled into Mexico, only about 700 have been recovered.

For all of this, Fast and Furious produced only 20 indictments related to the relatively minor charge of submitting false information on the required paperwork to purchase a firearm — not the more serious charges of weapons trafficking.

In the ensuing investigation, the Justice Department sought to shield internal documents from Congress. At a Congressional hearing, Attorney General Eric Holder claimed that he had “probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks,” but documents were later uncovered that showed Holder was sent briefings on Fast and Furious months earlier. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano claimed that she has never spoken with Holder about Fast and Furious despite admitting that at least twice her ICE agents had been asked to stand down to allow ATF to facilitate trafficking across the border.

How did an operation involving cooperation from five different federal agencies under three different federal departments escape the attention of the heads of those agencies and Obama? The lack of concern shown by Obama about an operation that could severely strain U.S. – Mexico relations and hamper U.S. foreign policy strains credulity. However, the biggest question remains — how was this operation supposed to work anyway? I have yet to see a reasonable explanation as to how the failure to track purchased weapons until they end up at their very predictable crime scenes would reveal any new information about weapons trafficking.

Obama had promised that his administration would represent transparency in stark contrast to the previous administration. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. And the questions remain — questions that the Border Patrol agents who served alongside Brian Terry, his family and the Mexican and American people deserve to have answered.