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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...

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...

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...

Scandal: The report our attorney general used to justify withholding evidence of who was responsible for the administration program that led to the deaths of two U.S. agents is out. It delivers more scapegoats than answers. The release by the Department of Justice's inspector general of a 400-page report on the administration's gun-walking operation, Fast and Furious, is no big surprise. As Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform (OGR) Committee, Fast and Furious represented a "pattern of serious failures" by various agencies. But he let the buck stop short of where it belongs...

The Justice Department's inspector general cleared Attorney General Eric Holder Wednesday of knowing about the gun-walking operation known as Fast and Furious that allowed thousands of weapons to cross into Mexico. But Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that there were "serious failures" at both the Justice Department and its Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives going back more than six years, CBS Radio News reporter Stephanie Lambidakis reports. Horowitz found that no one running the operations—not agents, nor prosecutors, nor managers—questioned the wisdom of letting guns vanish across the border with Mexico, where they ended up in the hands...

Dozens of senior-level U.S. government officials turned a blind eye to public safety as they pursued an ill-conceived and poorly managed investigation into gun trafficking in Mexico, according to a long-awaited inspector general's report on Operation Fast and Furious. Portions of the Justice Department IG report, which has not been made public, were obtained exclusively by Fox News Channel. The report and accompanying accounts cite a failure in leadership and a lack of accountability and oversight up and down the chain of command at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Justice Department itself and other offices....

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has been forced to postpone a hearing on an inspector general’s investigation of "Operation Fast and Furious" until next week. The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, told Issa in a recent letter that after 17 months of investigating the botched gun-tracking operation, the lengthy report would not be ready for public release until later this week, at the earliest. Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, worried the DOJ would try to delay the report’s release for political reasons, according to an earlier letter to Horowitz sent last month. And the...

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An ethics watchdog group filed complaints against Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) with the Office of Congressional Ethics and the Justice Department on Wednesday for revealing details of federally sealed wiretap applications. In the two complaints filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the group claims that Issa “violated federal law by including material from a sealed wiretap application in the Congressional Record.” As part of Issa’s successful move to place Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for allegedly not responding to a congressional subpoena, the powerful chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee...

Team Obama resorts to default excuse: Blame Bush Obama administration officials must remind each other daily that they will never have to accept responsibility for anything that goes wrong on their watch as long as they can find some way to blame their troubles on George W. Bush. So it should surprise no one that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and the administration’s surrogates are vociferously claiming that Operation Fast and Furious, the gun-walking scandal run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is all Mr. Bush’s fault. Fast and Furious was a program that resulted...

The Justice Department on Monday unsealed an indictment charging five individuals allegedly involved in Border Patrol agent Brian Terry's death, and announced a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to the arrest of those suspects still at large.  For the first time, federal officials also revealed that Terry and an elite squad of federal agents initially fired bean bags -- not bullets -- at a heavily armed drug cartel crew in the mountains south of Tucson in December 2010. During the exchange, Terry was shot and killed.  The announcement comes amid an intensifying debate over the department's...

For the first time, federal officials revealed Monday that murdered Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and an elite squad of federal agents first fired bean bags -- not bullets -- at a heavily armed drug cartel crew in the mountains south of Tucson in December 2011. The announcement came as the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging five individuals allegedly involved in Terry's death. A sixth suspect has also been charged in a related incident. The U.S. is also offering a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to the arrest of four outstanding suspects believed to...

For the first time, federal officials revealed Monday that murdered Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and an elite squad of federal agents first fired bean bags -- not bullets -- at a heavily armed drug cartel crew in the mountains south of Tucson in December 2011. The announcement came as the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging five individuals allegedly involved in Terry's death. A sixth suspect has also been charged in a related incident. The U.S. is also offering a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to the arrest of four outstanding suspects believed to...

Most Americans don't care about whether Attorney General Eric Holder is hiding Fast and Furious documents because they don't understand the story. Until someone can tell us otherwise, there is only one explanation for why President Obama's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives gave thousands of guns to Mexican drug dealers: It put guns in their hands to strengthen liberals' argument for gun control. Precisely because this is such a jaw-dropping accusation — criminality at the highest level of government to score a political point — Republicans refuse to make it. But the problem with Republican rectitude in...

The Department of Justice unsealed documents today showing that Brian Terry was shooting bean bags at men who returned fire with assault rifles.

CEDAR RAPIDS - President Barack Obama didn't answer a question posed by The Hawk Eye about the so-called Fast and Furious scandal, citing the ongoing investigation. But he took the opportunity to defend Attorney General Eric Holder's actions so far. The U.S. House voted to find Holder in contempt of Congress last week, due to the fact that his office did not turn over key documents to aid in Congress' investigation of the scandal. U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has been at the forefront of the investigation, which alleges that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed...

A left-leaning government watchdog organization filed ethics complaints Wednesday against House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) for revealing sealed federal documents in the ongoing Operation Fast and Furious scandal. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), in complaints filed with the Office of Congressional Ethics and the Department of Justice, accused Issa of violating federal law by putting sealed federal wiretap applications in the Congressional Record. The ethics complaint was a nakedly partisan effort by CREW to support the cover-up of the operation by the Obama administration, said House Oversight spokeswoman Becca Watkins. “It is shameful that an...

After more than 18 months of waiting and a contempt of Congress charge against Attorney General Eric Holder, the FBI unsealed an indictment of five illegal Mexican bandits charged with the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry today in Arizona and offered a $1 million reward for information leading to the arrest of four of the five men who are still on the run and suspected to be in Mexico. The men are Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, Jesus Rosario Favela-Astorga, Ivan Soto-Barraza, Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes and Lionel Portillo-Meza, Manuel and Heraclio are brothers. During a press conference earlier today, the FBI confirmed...

Justice Department (DOJ) officials indicted five individuals for the death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry — who was murdered by drug traffickers armed through Operation Fast and Furious – and a $1 million reward for information leading to their arrest. “Agent Terry served his country honorably and made the ultimate sacrifice in trying to protect it from harm, and we will stop at nothing to bring those responsible for his murder to justice,” Attorney General Eric Holder said today. “This investigation has previously resulted in one defendant being charged with Agent Terry’s murder and taken into custody, and...