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Senator Chuck Grassley, Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, made the following statement after an Office of Inspector General Report showed that U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke leaked a sensitive document to the press regarding a whistleblower who had come forward with allegations of gunwalking, that he leaked an internal memo regarding Fast and Furious suspect Jaime Avila to the New York Times, and that he lied to Deputy Attorney General James Cole. The document leaked to Fox News was deemed so sensitive by the Justice Department that it was not provided to Congress, except in a secured room at...

Senator Charles Grassley, who launched the first Capitol Hill investigation of Operation Fast and Furious more than two years ago, today blasted the treatment of a chief whistleblower in the investigation by the former U.S. attorney in Arizona, and subsequent attempts to discredit him by the Justice Department. Grassley released a statement after the Office of Inspector General released a report Monday morning that shows former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke leaked “a sensitive document” to a Fox News reporter in an attempt to discredit John Dodson, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The IG’s...

The U.S. Attorney in Arizona violated Justice Department policy by providing Fox News with information apparently aimed at undercutting the credibility of a federal agent who helped reveal the botched arms-trafficking probe called Operation Fast and Furious, the Justice Department's inspector general said Monday. There was substantial evidence in the 2011 incident that then-U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke's motive for disclosing a memo by federal agent John Dodson was retaliation, the inspector general's report said. In testimony to a House committee just two weeks earlier, Dodson had raised serious concerns about Operation Fast and Furious. In Dodson's memo, which was eventually...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General published a new report Monday that confirms former U.S. Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke leaked a document intended to smear Operation Fast and Furious scandal whistleblower John Dodson. The DOJ IG said it found “Burke’s conduct in disclosing the Dodson memorandum to be inappropriate for a Department employee and wholly unbefitting a U.S. Attorney.” “We are referring to OPR our finding that Burke violated Department policy in disclosing the Dodson memorandum to a member of the media for a determination of whether Burke’s conduct violated the Rules of Professional Conduct for the state...

(US President Barack gestures as he speaks at the Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, Friday, May 3, 2013.) (CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama, speaking in Mexico City on Friday, said the United States is responsible for much of the crime and violence in Mexico because of the demand for drugs and the illegal smuggling of guns across the southern border. He told the crowd, “We understand that the root cause of violence that’s been happening here in Mexico for which so many Mexicans have suffered is the demand for illegal drugs in the United States.” He later added, “We...

Guns To Mexico: Once again blaming his own country for Mexico's gun violence without mentioning Fast and Furious, the gun runner in chief pledges to find and jail gun smugglers. Perhaps he should start with his own administration. 'We recognize that most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States. ... We'll keep increasing the pressure on the gun traffickers who bring illegal guns into Mexico, and we'll keep putting these criminals where they belong — behind bars," President Obama told students assembled at the Anthropology Museum in Mexico City on Friday, repeating...

On the same day that the 2013 NRA Convention began in Houston, TX Barack Obama was in Mexico telling an audience that “most of the guns used to commit violent crimes here in Mexico, come from the United States.” What he didn’t tell that audience was that his administration is responsible for Operation Fast and Furious, a program in which the ATF told reluctant gun store owners to sell high-powered guns to bad guys who would then ‘walk’ those guns to drug cartels in Mexico. Yet, Republicans and gun rights activists have avoided bludgeoning those in the administration and on...

An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms senior agent assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010, Dodson's job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen. Dodson's bosses say that never happened. Now, he's risking his job to go public. Agent Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret from Mexico. ATF named...

"Most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States," President Obama said during a speech at Mexico's Anthropology Museum. "I think many of you know that in America, our Constitution guarantees our individual right to bear arms. And as president, I swore an oath to uphold that right, and I always will.""But at the same time, as I’ve said in the United States, I will continue to do everything in my power to pass common-sense reforms that keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. That can save lives here...

When Mexico's former drug tsar Noé Ramírez was arrested on suspicion of receiving monthly payments from the Beltrán-Leyva drug cartel he was confident the charges would quickly be dropped. No court, he thought, would believe testimony from a former cartel member who claimed to have seen Ramírez receive a briefcase full of cash at a Mexico City restaurant – on a day he was actually travelling to Las Vegas for a meeting with US law-enforcement officials, in the company of two US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents. Ramírez was wrong. It took four years, four months and a change of...

Congress is still steadily pursuing the investigation on the very dark spot on the Obama administration's record that is Operation Fast and Furious --- and when I say "dark spot," I do mean that literally, because so much of the evidence was so thoroughly redacted. The administration is continuing to fight Congressional attempts to uncover all of the details into the deadly gun-walking operation, and the dispute has moved into district-court territory. In front of a federal judge on Wednesday, the Department of Justice argued that the court should really just decline to decide on the case and leave the...

A federal judge seemed skeptical Wednesday of the Justice Department's bid to dismiss a congressional lawsuit seeking records related to Operation Fast and Furious, a bungled federal gun-tracking operation in Arizona. Judge Amy Berman Jackson sharply challenged the department's claim that federal courts have no jurisdiction in the dispute. Department lawyer Ian Gershengorn said the battle over the documents should be resolved by the checks and balances between the legislative and executive branches. "I'm a check and balance," countered Jackson, an appointee of President Barack Obama. "The third branch exists."

"Court fight over 'Fast and Furious' papers ratcheting up"WASHINGTON – A court fight over documentation of the Fast and Furious scandal, where the U.S. government trafficked weapons to drug dealers in Mexico, is just ratcheting up now. But Katie Pavlich, author of the New York Times bestseller “Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up,”news editor of Townhall.com and an expert on the Fast and Furious scandal, says the documents will be “damning” for Attorney General Eric Holder, and possibly even President Obama. She said both politicians should be concerned “based on the evidence that Attorney General...

Author says government's actions are 'comparable to U.S. funding al-Qaida' WASHINGTON—The U.S. government running guns to Mexican cartels is “comparable to the United States funding al-Qaida to make someone in the United States look bad,” according to the author of a new best-seller. Katie Pavlich is the author of “Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up,” news editor of Townhall.com and an expert on the Fast and Furious scandal. In an interview with WND, she asserted that the Obama administration intentionally orchestrated a “false flag” against lawful gun dealers, the U.S. Border Patrol and Mexican citizens...

The second of two reports examining who's to blame over the federal anti-gunrunning scheme known as Operation Fast and Furious exonerates top officials at the Department of Homeland Security, but paints a picture of ineptitude, ignorance and mismanagement at the DHS operations in Arizona. A report by the Homeland Security inspector general, obtained Friday by Fox News, concluded many in the agency's Arizona operation knew for a long time the U.S. helped criminals smuggle guns to Mexico in violation of policy, but did nothing to stop it. Further, the report said word of the gun-smuggling operation within DHS never traveled...

The Department of Homeland Security's long-awaited Office of Inspector General report on Operation Fast and Furious “gunwalking” has been obtained by The Los Angeles Times, Richard Serrano reported Thursday. “ATF agents asked their Border Patrol counterparts not to pursue criminal leads or track gun smuggling in southern Arizona so they could follow the firearms themselves, and senior Homeland Security agents ‘complied and the leads were not investigated,’” Serrano writes. “The report … also said that a Homeland Security special agent on the border was collaborating with the ATF in Fast and Furious, but his ‘senior leaders’ in Arizona never read...

The second of two reports examining who's to blame over the federal anti-gunrunning scheme known as Operation Fast and Furious exonerates top officials at the Department of Homeland Security, but paints a picture of ineptitude, ignorance and mismanagement at the DHS operations in Arizona. A report by the Homeland Security inspector general, obtained Friday by Fox News, concluded many in the agency's Arizona operation knew for a long time the U.S. helped criminals smuggle guns to Mexico in violation of policy, but did nothing to stop it. Further, the report said word of the gun-smuggling operation within DHS never traveled...

The top House Democrat on homeland security criticized a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Friday for its role in the failed gun tracking operation, Fast and Furious, after a new report detailed the agency’s involvement. At the urging of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), officials with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit did not pursue leads on potential weapons smugglers, according to the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) inspector general report released on Friday. The 84-page report also found that senior leaders in ICE’s investigative Arizona division failed to read the reports from agents...

House Republicans are standing strong in their pursuit of Operation Fast and Furious documents, The Hill’s Jordy Yager reports, undercutting a narrative the Department of Justice has tried to seep into the media. President Barack Obama asserted executive privilege over the documents minutes before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform voted Attorney General Eric Holder into both civil and criminal contempt of Congress last summer. The full House followed up voting on a bipartisan basis to hold Holder in contempt shortly thereafter, spurning the current lawsuit against the administration for the documents. The DOJ has declined to pursue...

Attorney General Eric Holder told senators on Wednesday that he did not respect the House members who voted to hold him in contempt for not cooperating in the Fast and Furious investigation, and that “the president, the White House was not involved in the operational component of Fast and Furious.” Fast and Furious was the Justice Department’s gun-running operation that allowed about 2,000 guns to flow into Mexico under federal supervision before authorities lost control of the guns. The operation began in the fall of 2009 and was

Attorney General Eric Holder admitted to something that the congressional investigators probing Operation Fast and Furious must have already understood: he has no respect for the legislators who voted to hold him in contempt for refusing to hand over documents about the gun-walking scandal. I have to tell you that for me to really be affected by what happened, I’d have to have respect for the people who voted in that way,” Holder told ABC News when asked about the historic contempt vote. “And I didn’t, so it didn’t have that huge an impact on me.”

The family of a U.S. agent killed in a 2011 ambush on a Mexican highway and another agent who survived the attack on Tuesday sued the government and nearly two-dozen other defendants. The federal lawsuit arises from the Feb. 15, 2011, attack on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Jaime Zapata and Victor Avila. They were attacked in their armored sport-utility vehicle near San Luis Potosi, Mexico, shortly after picking up some equipment from another agent. Zapata died and Avila was seriously wounded. … On Feb. 15, 2011, Zapata and Avila drove from Mexico City to San Luis Potosi to...

Gun Control: The president seeks a review of groups barred from gun ownership, while his attorney general asks the courts to keep hidden documents on running guns to drug lords sealed by executive privilege. Presumably the list of prohibited individuals include Mexican drug lords and their operatives who to this day continue to maim and murder with assault weapons and other semiautomatic firearms provided to them by this administration under the gun-running operation known as Fast and Furious. Attorney General Eric Holder has been tasked to review this list. Unfortunately, this representative of an administration that pretends to care about...

Acting on a tip, DEA agents went on rural property without a warrant, set up surveillance cameras, and used the evidence obtained to get a search warrant and convict the property owners for growing marijuana. And a US district court judge said that was okay. Is it? special to Drug War Chronicle by investigative journalist Clarence Walker, cwalkerinvestigate@gmail.com [7] A case that began with reports of suspicious activity in northeast Wisconsin forest land last spring may be headed for the US Supreme Court. That's because a US district court judge ruled in the case last fall that it was okay...

New York’s penal code makes it a felony to practice medicine without a license. I suspect, however, that one potential defendant who is proposing to do just that, will escape prosecution. Meet “Mayor Bloomberg, M.D.” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg never attended medical school, did not complete a hospital residency, and never has been admitted to the medical profession. Yet this public official – whose ire in recent years has targeted firearms, salt content, fatty foods, and large-sized soft drinks – is now moving to dictate how doctors should be allowed to issue prescription drugs for their patients. Bloomberg’s...

The Washington Post, the same newspaper that falsely smeared border state gun dealerships as cartel suppliers before the Fast and Furious scandal broke, has a new piece out by Ann Marimow fawning over former Department of Justice Deputy Attorney General Jason Weinstein, who resigned in September. A high achiever Weinstein came to Washington as a teenager in 1982 to compete in the National Spelling Bee, having won the regional championship in San Antonio. The son of a hospital administrator and a nurse, he was a high achiever from the get-go. He also was captain of the math and debate teams...

The DEA Web pages on "Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization" are linked with some regularity on FR. They're full of errors in fact and logic; since I couldn't find a comprehensive rebuttal online, I've started creating one. Here's my rebuttal to their "Fact 6;" more to come as time permits. ("Fact 1" rebutted at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2858443/posts; "Fact 2" at /focus/f-bloggers/2861557/posts; "Fact 3" at /focus/f-bloggers/2864032/posts; "Fact 4" at /focus/f-bloggers/2893202/posts; "Fact 5" at /focus/f-bloggers/2932390/posts.) Claim 6: "Legalization of Drugs will Lead to Increased Use and Increased Levels of Addiction. Legalization has been tried before, and failed miserably." Claim: Legalization proponents claim, absurdly, that...

<p>Two of the weapons involved in a drug cartel gunfight last month in Sinaloa, Mexico, that killed five people, including two soldiers and a young beauty queen, have been traced back to the U.S. – one lost during the ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious, the other originally purchased by a supervisory ATF agent who helped oversee the botched gun-tracking operation.</p>

Mexican beauty queen Susana Flores Maria Gamez and four others died in a brutal gun battle between Sinaloa cartel members and the Mexican military in November. CBS News has learned that one weapon recovered from the area of the crime scene was originally purchased by federal agent George Gillett, an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) manager who was faulted by the Inspector General in Operation Fast and Furious. Gillett was the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of ATF Phoenix when Fast and Furious started. The recovered weapon is a so-called FN Herstal pistol nicknamed a "cop-killer" because of its designation...

Another weapon from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agency's controversial Operation Fast and Furious was recently recovered at a Mexican crime scene, CBS News has learned. Congressional investigators say the crime scene was likely where a recent shootout took place between reported Sinaloa drug cartel members and the Mexican military, in which Sinaloa beauty queen Maria Susana Flores Gamez and four others were killed. According to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the Justice Department did not notify Congress of the Fast and Furious firearm recovery in November, even though Grassley has requested an accounting of weapons that...

The Obama administration is strategizing how to fight legal pot in Colorado and Washington, reports Charlie Savage of The New York Times. While "no decision" is "imminent," Savage reports that senior level White House and Justice Department officials are considering "legal action against Colorado and Washington that could undermine voter-approved initiatives." A taskforce made up of Main Justice, the DEA, the State Department, and the Office of National Drug Control Policy is currently considering two courses of action, reports Savage: One option is for federal prosecutors to bring some cases against low-level marijuana users of the sort they until now...

November 30, 2012 Report: Security Clearances Revoked, Criminal Charges Pending For ATF Fast and Furious Officials Katie Pavlich Washington D.C. - According to credible ATF sources, officials heavily involved in Operation Fast and Furious and named as partially responsible for the program's failure by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz and the House Oversight Committee have been stripped of their government security clearances while some have been fired, demoted, and transferred. Criminal charges are also reportedly pending. Former ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix Field Division Bill Newell, former ATF Special Agent in Charge of Operations in...

WASHINGTON—A House panel said Wednesday it believes federal courts have the authority to decide a dispute in which Attorney General Eric Holder is refusing to provide Congress with Justice Department documents about a botched criminal investigation into gun-trafficking on the Southwest border. In a 65-page filing about Operation Fast and Furious, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said federal courts have routinely reviewed the validity of congressional inquiries. The lawyers for the House said Holder's contention that courts cannot adjudicate political disputes would permanently shut the courthouse doors to virtually all disputes between the executive and legislative branches. In...

BALTIMORE (CBSDC) — Attorney General Eric Holder might not be sticking around for a second term. Holder told law school students at the University of Baltimore School of Law that he does not know if he will stay in his job. “That’s something that I’m in the process now of trying to determine,” Holder said. “I have to think about, can I contribute in a second term?” Holder says he needs to sit down with his family and President Obama to see if he wants to continue on the job. “[I have to] really ask myself the question about, do...

By Ty Beaver, Tri-City Herald Owners of a Pasco poppy farm were arrested this week after one of them sold poppy seed pods, which contain narcotic substances, to undercover detectives for brewing tea to obtain a high.

Part II of III Fast and Furious: The Anatomy of a Failed Operation Executive Summary> Operation Fast and Furious was not a strictly local operation conceived by a rogue ATF office in Phoenix, but rather the product of a deliberate strategy created at the highest levels of the Justice Department aimed at identifying the leaders of a major gun trafficking ring. This strategy, along with institutional inertia, led to the genesis, implementation, and year-long duration of Fast and Furious. Shortly after he took office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. delivered a series of speeches about combating violence along...

The loaded .45-caliber Glock handgun left in a crowded Denver International Airport bathroom belonged to a Drug Enforcement Administration agent based in Houston, according to records obtained on Tuesday. The gun, with one round in the chamber and 10 in the magazine, was found by a traveler last week on the back of a toilet seat beyond Transportation Security Administration checkpoints, according to a Denver police report. It was later returned to the agent, who was traveling on Southwest Airlines from Denver to Houston. The DEA has stayed mum on the gun, declining to confirm the agency's ties to the...

Federal judge OKs prosecution of man accused of posting anti-police rants on Facebook, saying that dismissing criminal charges on free speech grounds would be "inappropriate." Anti-government rants on Facebook can land you in a heap of trouble. A federal judge has given the green light to the U.S. Justice Department's prosecution of an Indiana man who allegedly posted incendiary remarks about police. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge William Lawrence in Indiana rejected requests by the defendant, Matthew Michael, to throw out the charges on the grounds that no specific Drug Enforcement Administration agent or other individual had actually been named...

A well-known whistle-blower in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirmed to FoxNews.com that he was fired this week, and he claims his complaints about Operation Fast and Furious played a role in his dismissal. Vince Cefalu said he was served his termination papers Tuesday in a Denny's parking lot in South Lake Tahoe, Calif. But he doesn't plan to go quietly. "It will be challenged," he said. Cefalu, who's served as an ATF special agent for 25 years, was first notified of the plan to fire him more than a year ago but had been on administrative...

Veteran ATF agent Vince Cefalu, a whistleblower who became a particularly controversial figure after voicing concern about the failed Operation Fast and Furious, was “unceremoniously” handed his dismissal papers on Tuesday, according his spokesman. An ATF official met him at the Denny’s parking lot in South Lake Tahoe, Nevada, near his home, where Cefalu turned in his credentials, said his spokesman Patrick Crosby, a former spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta, who now has his own public relations firm. Crosby said Cefalu was fired for “lack of candor.” He did not elaborate. Cefalu has hired an Atlanta law...

Here's the link.

Scandal: A Univision special documents how weapons provided by the administration to Mexican drug cartels repeatedly have taken a deadly toll as families on both sides of the border wait for true answers and accountability. We may never know how many deaths, kidnappings and other criminal activities were facilitated by more than 2,000 weapons that were allowed to "walk" into Mexico under the Obama administration's Fast and Furious program, but a Univision special aired Sunday exposes more of the carnage. The special, put together by Univision's investigative unit and aired as a special edition of Univision's "Aqui y Ahora" ("Here...

(CNSNews.com) - Kevin O’Reilly, a member of the White House National Security Staff who regularly communicated about Operation Fast and Furious with the Arizona-based ATF agent responsible for running the operation that allowed guns to flow to Mexican drug cartels, was suddenly transferred out of the White House and into Iraq in July 2011. The transfer took place shortly after the ATF agent O’Reilly had been communicating with testified about Fast and Furious in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the White House had provided the committee with a series of emails that O’Reilly and the agent had...

Over the weekend the Univision network broke major news in the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal. They found 57 previously unreported guns used in crimes by Mexican cartels, but ABC, CBS and NBC have yet to report the Spanish-language network’s findings. There were zero mentions on Sunday night’s ABC's World News and CBS's Evening News (NBC's Nightly News was pre-empted by Ryder Cup coverage) or on any of Monday’s morning shows. The blackout on ABC’s broadcasts is particularly confounding since they have an excerpt from Univision's report on ABC's official Web site. The refusal by ABC, CBS or NBC to...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: ABC News/Univision: "Fast and Furious Scandal: New Details Emerge on How the U.S. Government Armed Mexican Drug Cartels." Now, none of this is gonna be new to you. But it is new to the audience of Univision. What impact, if any, it's going to have? Who knows? The authors here are Gerardo Reyes and Santiago Wills. "On January 30, 2010, a commando of at least 20 hit men parked themselves outside a birthday party of high school and college students in Villas de Salvarcar, Ciudad Juarez. "Near midnight, the assassins, later identified as hired guns for the...

Fifty seven previously unidentified firearms linked to Operation Fast and Furious were recovered in sites associated with murders, kidnappings, and at least two gruesome massacres. Univision News obtained the list of Fast and Furious weapons and a list containing almost 60,000 recovered firearms compiled by Mexico's Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional (SEDENA). A cross-reference of the serial numbers of the guns resulted in 96 full matches (several partial matches were discarded). The 96 firearms linked to Operation Fast and Furious all turned up at crime scenes in Mexico from 2009 to 2010. In a report published on July 26, Congress...

On January 30, 2010, a commando of at least 20 hit men parked themselves outside a birthday party of high school and college students in Villas de Salvarcar, Ciudad Juarez. Near midnight, the assassins, later identified as hired guns for the Mexican cartel La Linea, broke into a one-story house and opened fire on a gathering of nearly 60 teenagers. Outside, lookouts gunned down a screaming neighbor and several students who had managed to escape. Fourteen young men and women were killed, and 12 more were wounded before the hit men finally fled. Indirectly, the United States government played a...

Equipment Here and Now and Univision Investiga uncover secrets of the failed program that rocked the Obama Administration The program here and now of the Univision broadcast on Sunday September 30th at 7PM / FP6 special center on the controversial Fast and Furious operation of the U.S. government, which facilitated the transfer of hundreds of weapons and went to hands of Mexican drug cartels.

Just when the media thought Fast and Furious had fizzled out, it seems Univision has done a little of their own investigating and will air it all tomorrow night (Sunday) at 7PM eastern. And the word on the street is that it’s a bombshell report.

In July and August I worked on a post for Big Government about the human aspect of Operation Fast & Furious, the government gun walking operation that put guns into the hands of already dangerous Mexican drug cartels. The Old Media largely ignores Fast & Furious, but when they do pay attention, they scarcely mention the victims. Not until I put an enormous amount of pressure on The New York Times did they start saying "Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry" instead of just "a border patrol agent." Tomorrow, September 30, Univision will be airing “Aqui y Ahora” (Here and Now)...