Free Republic

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...

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...

<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...

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...

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...

‘Spillover’ effect from operations concerns Cornyn A senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee called on Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Tuesday to immediately make public any information the Justice Department has on the existence of federal gunrunning operations in Texas and to reveal the source of weapons found at the February 2011 murder scene of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agent Jaime Zapata. Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, said in a letter to Mr. Holder that more than 19 months had passed since the veteran federal drug agent was gunned down during an ambush in Mexico...

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...