Gunwalker and Fast & Furious Updates: Holder, DOJ, FBI, Operation Castaway, ATF

Various ^ | Various | Various

[cowpoke]

Email Confirms ‘Gunwalker’ Known Throughout Justice Department The October 27, 2009 email from ATF Phoenix Field Division Special Agent in Charge (SAC) William Newell regarded a Southwest Border Strategy Group meeting that focused on Fast and Furious. It contained a laundry list of high ranking Justice Department officials that attended the meeting, including:

* Assistant Attorney General (Criminal Division) Lanny Breuer, * Kenneth Melson, Acting Director, ATF * William Hoover, Acting Deputy Director, ATF * Michele Leonhart, Administrator, DEA * Robert Mueller, Director FBI

Four other Justice Department directors or their representatives came from the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), Bureau of Prisons (BOP), U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), and the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA). The chair of the Attorney Generals Advisory Committee (AGAC) also attended the session. Their names were redacted in the released document. U.S. attorneys for all four southwest border states also attended...It strains credibility to claim that the assistant attorney general, the AGAC, the directors of the five major DOJ agencies in charge of law enforcement, and all the U.S. attorneys in the Southwest region were privy to Gunwalker, but that the attorney general himself was unaware of the operation. It suggests that either Holder is being untruthful about what he knew about the operation, and when he knew about it, or that he is so out of touch with a major operation conducted by his key law enforcement agencies that he is too incompetent to fulfill his official duties...more

Deputy Attorney General James Cole Involved in 'Fast & Furious' Whistleblower Cover-up? Operation Fast and Furious (F&F) – a program run by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that allowed thousands of lethal weapons to cross the Mexican border – was apparently no secret among high-level political authorities at the Department of Justice (DOJ). Among those in the know? Newly-confirmed Deputy Attorney General James Cole. Information is now seeping out about the political whiplash that secured a confirmation vote for Cole in exchange for the DOJ’s release of documents to Congress. In a supremely ironic twist, the documents ransomed by Cole’s confirmation strongly suggest that Cole himself was involved in the cover-up of F&F...more

Note also that Congress is apparently having to trade confirmation of Obama officials to obtain certain documents.

Gun-smuggling cartel figures possibly were paid FBI informants Congressional investigators probing the controversial "Fast and Furious" anti-gun-trafficking operation on the border with Mexico believe at least six Mexican drug cartel figures involved in gun smuggling also were paid FBI informants, officials said Saturday. The investigators have asked the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration for details about the alleged informants, as well as why agents at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which ran the Fast and Furious operation, were not told about them. The development raises further doubts about the now-shuttered program, which was created in November 2009 in an effort to track guns across the border and unravel the cartels' gun smuggling networks. The gun tracing largely failed, however, and hundreds of weapons purchased in U.S. shops later were found at crime scenes in Mexico. The scandal has angered Mexican officials and some members of Congress. Investigators say nearly 2,500 guns were allowed to flow illegally into Mexico under the ATF program, fueling the drug violence ravaging that country and leading to the shooting death of a U.S. border agent...more

Obama-Contra As if "Project Gunrunner" and "Operation Fast and Furious" weren't bad enough, we now learn of "Operation Castaway," run out of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' Tampa field division. It's another operation that allowed guns to "walk" south of the border, this time to Honduras, using similar techniques and tactics. Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., sent two letters a week ago to Attorney General Eric Holder and ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melsom inquiring about the program. He shouldn't expect much. As commentator Brit Hume noted on "Fox News Sunday": "The stench of cover-up on this gun-running operation is very strong indeed." "Two weapons found at the scene of the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry were traced back to the ATF's 'Operation Fast and Furious,' and reports now indicate that ATF's Tampa field division trafficked as many as 1,000 firearms to the dangerous MS-13 gang in Honduras through a similar program known as 'Operation Castaway,' " Bilirakis states on his website. Project Gunrunner, of which Operation Fast and Furious was a part, and now Operation Castaway, are without noble purpose. The cover story is that they were part of a plan to trick and track gunrunners. In fact, these schemes made it easy for criminals, drug cartels and gangs to acquire weapons. The real purpose, we have stated and still suspect, was to advance the administration's push for gun control and the stripping of law-abiding Americans of their Second Amendment rights through "common sense" restrictions on private gun ownership by creating chaos and fomenting violence with the guns provided. Indeed, it did not take long for ATF to announce a new gun-control mandate — the requirement that gun store owners in the border states of Arizona, California, Texas and New Mexico make a special ATF report for multiple long-gun sales, the same type of weapons the ATF was freely providing to the worst of the worst...more

ATF Chief Admits Mistakes in 'Fast and Furious,' Accuses Holder Aides of Stonewalling Congress The head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has admitted that his agency, in at least one instance, allowed sales of high-powered weapons without intercepting them -- and he accuses his superiors at the Justice Department of stonewalling Congress to protect political appointees in the scandal over those decisions. Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson made the disclosures about the so-called Operation Fast and Furious in an interview with congressional investigators looking into the controversial anti-gunrunning initiative. Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the two Republicans leading the charge in Congress against Fast and Furious, released a statement Monday noting Melson's testimony, along with a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder outlining their complaints. The two lawmakers accuse Holder's department of "unsatisfactory responses and lack of cooperation" with the congressional probe, and Melson seemed to agree. "It was very frustrating to all of us, and it appears thoroughly to us that the Department (of Justice) is really trying to figure out a way to push the information away from their political appointees at the department," Melson said in one quote highlighted by Issa and Grassley. Melson is quoted as saying, "there were some mistakes made" in Fast and Furious by the ATF's Phoenix Field Division, but Melson said aides to Holder didn't want to admit those mistakes to Congress...more

[wiggen]

Back when it was going down the Marxist connection was all people spoke about and indeed was all that made sense.

[tutstar]

So they are giving appointments in exchange for info? That is outrageous!!

[Howie]